August 2006

Legislation effecting Immigrants: Politicking not Progress

The Immigration debate has stalled at the federal level.  Early in the year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R) enforcement only bill (HR4477).  This spring the Senate, in a bi-partisan vote, passed a flawed but more comprehensive reform bill, authored by Senator McCain (R), supported by 23 Republicans and favored by President Bush.  Normally, the House and Senate would then begin negotiating differences in their bills. 

However the House, in an unusual move, is organizing more than 20 hearings around the country.  Republican Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona, referring to the House “hearings,” said that they were not “field hearings,” as advertised, but “faux hearings.”   These hearings seem designed to inflame and polarize the issue even further.  As examples, note the titles of two of these hearings:

“July 18th – Do the Reid-Kennedy bill’s amnesty provisions repeat the mistakes of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986?

 July 27th – Will the Reid-Kennedy bill’s amnesty provisions overwhelm the already overburdened U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services?  Will 10-20 million new applicants for citizenship make it easier for criminals and terrorists to evade background checks?”

While these titles attempt to define the Senate bill as a bill written and supported by the Democrats, it is important to remember it was authored by Senator McCain (R), supported by 23 Republicans and favored by President Bush.

We need a new paradigm. We have jobs on this side of the border and workers clamoring to fill them on the other side.  We need to shift our thinking to bring our immigration laws in line with the needs of our economy—not our underground economy.  Reform should bring a greater share of the immigration flow through legal channels so that migrants can be screened, we can have greater control over who gets in, and all workers can exercise their labor rights.  Such reforms, coupled with fair and consistent enforcement of the new laws, are the solution to unauthorized immigration.

Enforcement alone, without providing more channels for immigrants to come legally, has over the past 20 years, created our broken immigration system—with its criminal smugglers, fake document merchants, unscrupulous employers, exploited workers, divided families, deaths in the desert, millions of immigrants here illegally, and communities divided.  Driving immigration further underground and into the black market is not a solution but a perpetuation of the problem.

Our broken immigration system is a complex problem that needs a comprehensive overhaul.  We’ve been implementing piecemeal measures for 20 years, which have made the immigration system more complex, but not more controlled.  “Seal the borders” is a sound bite.  “Enforce our laws” is a sound bite.  Comprehensive reform is a solution, and only by comprehensively changing our laws will we get them to the point where they can realistically be enforced.

Those members of the House advocating an enforcement-first or enforcement-only approach have a good sound bite, but no solution.  They offer no way to deal with the 12 million undocumented immigrants living and working in the United States, and no way to bring future immigration levels in line with economic need so that we don’t have another build-up of illegal immigration.  They simply offer more fences, more agents, more guns, and more policies that push immigrants further into the margins of society.  By contrast a realistic, comprehensive, and bipartisan approach to immigration reform is supported by businesses, diverse faith-based organizations, labor unions, civil rights groups, immigrants and, as demonstrated in poll after poll, by the American people.  Only comprehensive reform offers the realistic prospect for making our immigration system orderly, secure, and legal.