What's Going On With Immigration?

May 9, 2011

A brief update on immigration happenings in the 112th Congress.

Hearings Focus on the Negative

The first few months of 2011 were marked mostly by divisive congressional hearings convened by Rep. Elton Gallegly (CA), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement. These hearings covered the impact of immigration on jobs in the United States, the employer verification program E-Verify, and worst, a hearing attempting to pit U.S.-born minorities against immigrants. Chairman Gallegly's approach to these hearings, and to immigration policy, is "attrition through enforcement," which means using harsh enforcement tactics to force undocumented workers to leave the country.

Will the President Lead?

Over the past month President Obama has started talking again about immigration reform. The DREAM Act is his main emphasis (go to 23:40). The bill would provide a pathway to legal status for young people who were brought here without documents by their parents. Senator Harry Reid (NV) has said that he will reintroduce the DREAM Act, but with Republicans in the House so staunchly opposed to any bill that includes legalization, it’s highly unlikely the bill will go anywhere.

Nevertheless, congressional leaders are pushing for action. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (IL) has been hosting events nationwide discussing the impact of deportation on families and children. He has been an outspoken advocate for immigrant families and has been putting pressure on President Obama to deal with the issue. On April 13, 22 senators released a letter sent to President Obama urging him to use his executive authority to provide relief to DREAM-eligible students from the risk of deportation. See FCNL's position on DREAM.

This has prompted an interesting legal conversation on the limits of the president’s authority and what leeway he has within the law to grant relief to immigrants at risk for deportation. On one hand, he is required to follow the law, and cannot reform immigration policy without cooperation from Congress. Also worth noting is that the Obama administration has deported more immigrants than any administration in recent memory. On the other hand, the administration has granted relief to a handful of DREAM-eligible students with the hope that the bill will be passed and they can legally be productive members of U.S. society. Check out what the Immigration Policy Center has to say on the limits of the president’s authority on this matter.

State, local and faith-based organizations have also urged administrative relief. The Interfaith Immigration Coalition, a group of national faith-based organizations to which FCNL belongs, has launched the Let My People Stay campaign. By focusing advocacy efforts on specific immigrant cases through letter-writing, advocates encourage elected officials and other decision-makers to spare immigrants at risk of deportation. Learn more about the Let My People Stay campaign.

One of President Obama’s campaign promises was to address comprehensive immigration reform in his first year of office. Now well into the third year of his term, advocates for realistic solutions to immigration reform are tired of hearing him bring up the issue without seeing any real solutions. The reinvigorated effort that we’ve seen on his part over the past month, mostly in the form of meetings with national leaders, the faith community and Hispanic celebrities and media figures, is definitely a step in the right direction. Political prospects for the issue, however, are so discouraging that it’s hard to believe when he reiterates a commitment to fixing something that should have been fixed years ago.

Push to Reunite Families of All Types

The Reuniting American Families Act was reintroduced by Rep. Mike Honda (CA) on May 5, a family immigration bill that FCNL supports. The bill would change visa country quotas, and reduce visa backlogs so that separated families are reunited faster. The bill also includes the Uniting American Families Act, a bill that FCNL supported in the last Congress. This bill would change legal language in immigration law so that it includes permanent partners as well as married couples.

Family unification is extremely important to FCNL, as it is essential to healthy functioning of families and communities. In the same vein but stepping away from national legislation, a report called Disappearing Parents: A Report on Immigration Enforcement and the Child Welfare System was just released by the University of Arizona that explores the consequences of a judicial and corrections system that does not have specific procedures for dealing with immigrant parents separated from their children. The main problem, according to attorneys, judges and case managers, is the extreme difficulty children and family members have in contacting, or even locating, their family members in the detention system. Children are placed in the foster system, and detained parents are often held in prison facilities with criminals. This study is a painful glimpse at a system that desperately needs to be reworked so that immigrants’ human and civil rights are upheld.

Costs of Deportation vs. Legalization

Another interesting report titled Revitalizing the Golden State was recently released and compares two hypothetical situations: if all the undocumented workers in California were deported, and if that same population were legal workers. The results of the study, published by the Center for American Progress, are dramatic. Deporting the approximately 2.7 million undocumented workers from California would result in a decrease of total employment by 17.4% and eliminate 3.6 million jobs. Conversely, if the 2.7 million workers had legal status, 633,000 jobs would be added to the economy and tax revenues would be increased by $5.3 billion. The study also focuses on Los Angeles county, where the results are even more polarized.

No Getting Around the Need for Congressional Action

Bottom line, immigrants are important to our economy. They are people that have the same human rights as native-born Americans, and everybody has a moral obligation to uphold these rights. A principle way this will happen on a large scale is through legislative reform of immigration policies and laws. The United States has always had a strong tradition of accepting immigrants, and decades of failing to address the changing landscape of immigration patterns that has resulted in an immense undocumented population should not change this. Opponents to reform with a pathway to legalization are using current immigration laws as a just measure with which to back up their argument for deporting undocumented workers, but the truth of the matter is that current immigration laws do not reflect the current economic and labor needs of the country. This needs to be contended with in a way that both best serves our country and the rights of people who are productive members of our economy. The solution is challenging, but the problem is simple: immigration laws need to be updated.

What you Can Do

Find out how you can be involved in the Let My People Stay campaign.
Ask your representative to co-sponsor the Reuniting Families Act.