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Immigration reform: Touching the third rail of U.S. politics
Just found it an interesting read. Check it out, if you wish.
If you want the sources for all their info, just click the link at the bottom. They have a source for everything that was written.
http://www.ocregister.com/news/-268564--.html
If you want the sources for all their info, just click the link at the bottom. They have a source for everything that was written.
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On May 15, 2006, in a nationally televised speech, President George W. Bush challenged the Senate to pass an immigration overhaul bill within the month. Thirteen months and 13 days later, hopelessly deadlocked, the Senate gave up. Most of Bush's Republican allies had deserted him. Now President Barack Obama is trying to honor his promise to reform immigration. It won't be easy. Immigration reform never is. The last major immigration law, in 1986, drew on ideas proposed more than a decade earlier. Haunting the debate is the failure of the 1986 act to curb illegal immigration. The law granted legal status to most of the 3.2 million illegal immigrants who lived in the United States at the time. Nearly a quarter-century later, at least 10.5 million more illegal immigrants have settled here exceeding the entire population of Michigan. When she signed her state's immigration enforcement law in April, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer called illegal immigration "a crisis we did not create and the federal government refuses to fix. The truth is more complex. BROKEN SYSTEM Over the past decade, Presidents Bush and Obama and successive Congresses have spent billions on the Border Patrol and prosecutors. Their two principal aims: block immigrants at the border and deport those already in jail. Neither tactic sufficed. The illegal immigrant population grew by 500,000 a year for most of the past decade. It took the Great Recession to stem the tide. At its heart, the failure of the immigration system is economic: Employers want cheap labor. Illegal immigrants want jobs. The demand for unskilled immigrant labor is nearly 20 times the legal supply. Some 7.8 million illegal immigrants, most of them unskilled, are working in the U.S. They far outnumber the immigration authorities. They always will, no matter how many more Border Patrol officers Congress authorizes. "We need to fundamentally reform the system," said James Ziglar, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service from 2001 to 2003. "There's no magic bullet, whether it's building a fence or having 100,000 Border Patrol agents. Here are some reform strategies getting attention now: BORDER SECURITY: Fortifying the Mexican border has been the central focus of immigration policy since the mid-1990s. And since then, the illegal immigrant population has more than doubled. But putting more agents and more technology on the border is popular. The failed 2007 bill and pending legislation promised additional resources for the border. And both the old bill and the leading Democratic proposal contain a trigger: no immigrant-friendly reforms will take effect until the border is secure. The border-first emphasis is "a way of looking like you're doing something about immigration," said Steven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which campaigns for restrictions on immigration. "It's sort of a default policy. AMNESTY: Three words sank the 2007 bill: "path to citizenship." The proposal would have granted legal status to most of the nation's illegal immigrants if they registered and paid a fine. The Democratic plan contains a similar provision. Presidents Bush and Obama accepted the continued presence of illegal immigrants as inevitable. Both called for legalization. Obama said that deporting them "would be logistically impossible and wildly expensive." WORKER ID CARD: During the debate over the 1986 immigration act, Congress rejected a proposal for a national identification card a bugaboo for both the right and the left. Instead, it decided workers could use several existing forms of ID to establish they were in the nation legally and authorized to work. That didn't work. A tamper-proof Social Security card or a secure identity card is likely to be a key part of the next immigration law. The failed 2007 bill would have encouraged and the current Democratic alternative would require workers to present a secure ID whenever they start a new job. To defeat identity thieves, the card would carry a photo and biometric data such as fingerprints or an iris scan. It will cost billions. In the late 1990s, when federal officials first began grappling with the use of fake IDs by illegal immigrants, the Social Security Administration estimated a tamper-resistant card would cost between $3.9 billion and $9.2 billion. MANDATORY E-VERIFY: E-Verify, the Web-based system for confirming people are authorized to work, has been voluntary since its inception in 1996. All the leading bills in Congress would make it mandatory. The agency that runs E-Verify, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, pegged the cost for a mandatory system at $765 million over four years if just new hires are screened. E-Verify covers roughly one in every 10 U.S. employers but a much larger share of the big employers. Close to a third of new hires this year went through an E-Verify check. GUEST WORKERS: America has two channels for importing labor. One is fast, cheap, responsive to employers and illegal. The other is slow, expensive and usually requires a lawyer. Both the 2007 bill and the leading Democratic proposal call for admitting hundreds of thousands of temporary workers to fill unskilled jobs. The idea is that these legal workers would displace illegal immigrants on the job. 'DREAM' ACT: More than 2 million illegal immigrants came to America as children. The DREAM Act short for "Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act" would extend conditional legal status to high school graduates and green cards to those who complete two years in college or the military. California's version of the DREAM Act, passed by the Legislature in 2001, extended in-state tuition at the University of California and California State University to eligible illegal immigrants. But until they become legal residents, most can't find jobs to match their education. 'AgJOBS' ACT: Pushed by big farm interests and the United Farm Workers, the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits and Security Act would allow illegal immigrants who worked in the fields at least 150 days in a two-year period to legalize. They and their families would get temporary "blue cards" and eventually could become legal permanent residents. HARDER CHOICES Those ideas have all found their way into pending legislation. But other, more controversial ideas could get traction particularly if Congress stalemates and if illegal immigration begins growing again. Here are a couple of the most controversial ideas: DATA SHARING: If E-Verify doesn't work, the government could turn to more intrusive ways of finding illegal workers. In a 2006 report to Congress, the Government Accountability Office reviewed letting Social Security and the Internal Revenue Service share their databases with immigration authorities. The GAO warned that sharing the data "could involve divulging information about hundreds of thousands or even millions of U.S. citizens and work-authorized aliens." A milder form of data sharing the Bush administration's 2007 attempt to send employers "no-match" letters identifying workers whose information did not match Social Security records provoked opposition from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO. A federal judge halted the letters, and the Obama administration later gave up the idea. 'BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP' REPEAL: The 14th Amendment grants citizenship to everyone born in the United States. Several Republican senators have proposed hearings to explore repealing birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants. Two House bills, including one introduced by Rep. Gary Miller, R-Diamond Bar, would try to do this by revising immigration law. There are 4 million U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants; the Miller bill, as written, would only apply to children born in the future. LIMIT LEGAL IMMIGRATION: A million legal immigrants have entered the U.S. each year over the past 20 years more than three times the rate during the 1960s. If the "jobless recovery" continues, the decades-old political consensus in favor of expanded legal immigration could break down. GETTING TO 'YES' George W. Bush and Barack Obama both sought "comprehensive" immigration reform, a bill that would legalize millions of illegal immigrants, tighten enforcement and admit more immigrant workers. Bush couldn't persuade his fellow Republicans. Obama so far hasn't been able to move the issue through the most Democratic Congress in decades. Whatever happens in the November election, the next Congress probably will be more Republican. Tamar Jacoby sees potential for a comprehensive bill coming from a divided Congress. She heads ImmigrationWorks USA, a business group that favors increased immigration. "No one in their right mind would be hopeful and rosy," Jacoby said. But "both Democrats and Republicans have a big stake in getting immigration behind them before 2012. Democrats, she said, have to keep their promise to Latino voters to enact immigration reform; just trying won't be enough. Meanwhile, "Republicans probably think there won't be another Republican president until they get immigration off their demerit list with Latinos." As for her own group's favorite cause, importing more labor, Jacoby admits it will be hard to get anywhere in the midst of a recession. But a flexible cap, one that admits few immigrants now but more when the economy booms, might pass, she said. "Even in the worst of times, we need some workers," she said. Even now, "people aren't leaving Detroit ... to clean toilets in hotels or pick fruit." Mark Krikorian heads the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors restrictions. He believes there is no chance for a comprehensive bill in the next two years. "The core dynamic" of comprehensive bills was to trade legalization for the promise of stronger enforcement. The 2007 bill died, he said, because "nobody believes the promise of future enforcement. That leaves "small ball" legislation, such as the DREAM Act and AgJOBS, Krikorian said. The first covers the most sympathetic group of illegal immigrants, the second a powerful interest group. "Small ball may be what you want to do," Krikorian said. ""When I hear the word 'comprehensive,' I grab my wallet and look for cover." AN UNEASY HISTORY The United States has a long history of uneasy relations with its newest immigrants. In the 1850s, the "Know Nothings" sought unsuccessfully to end the mass migration of Irish and German Catholics. In the 1870s and the early 1900s, Californians persuaded the federal government to shut out Asian immigrants. In 1924, having made their peace with the Irish and Germans, restrictionists slammed the door on Jewish and Italian immigrants. In 1965, a descendant of Jewish immigrants, Rep. Emanuel Cellar of New York, co-authored the bill that welcomed a new wave of immigrants. Mexicans have dominated that wave, accounting for nearly a third of all immigrants, legal and illegal, since 1990. Only two other ethnic groups in American history have dominated immigration to that extent: the Irish and the Germans in the 19th century. In time, Mexican immigrants and their descendants like the Irish, Germans, Jews and Italians before them will win political and economic power. For now, however, millions of them can only watch as Congress debates the broken immigration system and their future. Since the collapse of President Bush's immigration plan in 2007, attempts to broker a compromise have gone nowhere. People on one side advocate an enforcement-only approach, saying nothing else should be done until the border is finally secured. People on the other side say nothing can be done until the country accepts the presence of millions of illegal immigrants. "Once polarization starts, it tends to be the opposite of a virtuous circle," said Jacoby, the immigration advocate. President Obama, she said, needs to stop attacking the Arizona immigration law and explain what he will do to improve enforcement. Republicans, she added, "need to be telling other Republicans, 'Tone it down.'" Krikorian, the advocate for restrictions on immigration, said that outside Washington the public has already adopted a calm, unpolarized stance in favor of stronger enforcement. Look at the changing public reaction to employer audits, Krikorian said. In 1999, during the Clinton administration, senior Immigration and Naturalization Service official Mark Reed checked the immigration status of workers at several Nebraska meatpackers. The audit forced 3,500 illegal workers to flee, disrupting business and outraging Nebraska officials. Reed, the INS and the Clinton administration ducked for cover. Fast-forward 10 years. In the summer and fall of 2009, the Obama administration sent audit notices to nearly 2,000 employers. It was orders of magnitude bigger than Reed's brief one-state, one-industry campaign. Yet few objected. "The center of gravity has clearly moved toward more enforcement," Krikorian said. "Things that were unacceptable in the past clearly are within the pale now." Reed, a consultant now, thinks a crackdown on employment could push millions of illegal immigrants home. "They came here to work," Reed said. "So you don't (need to) arrest anybody. This is all about jobs. But James Ziglar, the former INS commissioner, said an enforcement-only approach won't work. "Until we reform our laws with regard to how people get here and how long they stay, we will never get control of immigration," Ziglar said. "You can put all the guards, all the fences you want at the border, and you can do all the worksite enforcement you can, and you will still have illegal immigration." |
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Long, but interesting. Even to this day the e-verify system doesn't work as well, were I work they check every aspect that u can think of and theirs at least 5 people working that do not have documents. Shit they made me take finger prints, drug test, background check, etc. Its all a matter of jobs that americans don't want to do.
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Surprising to see an article take different views into account without calling one side anti-American or racist.
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