What Does The Public Want On Immigration?: Sorting Out The Current Political Debate
Ruy Teixeira
Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress
Normally, there’s a modest stream of public opinion data on the immigration issue, much of it confusing. Now, suddenly, there’s a great deal of data on this issue... and it’s still confusing.
Time to try to sort it out. Here are some basic findings on the issue that may help in interpreting the current political debate:
1.The public believes immigration is a serious problem and levels of concern appear to be growing. For example, in the most recent Time magazine poll, 68 percent said illegal immigration was a very or extremely serious problem and, in a just-released Pew Research Center poll on immigration, 74 percent termed immigration a very big or moderately big problem, up from 69 percent in 2002.
In the same Pew poll, 52 percent now say that “immigrants today are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing and health care” (up from 38 percent in 2000), compared to 41 percent who say “immigrants today strengthen our country because of their hard work and talents” (down from 50 percent in 2000).
Note, however, that while sentiment has been turning negative on the burden/strengthen question since 2000, levels of negative sentiment today are about whether they were in 1997 and are still a bit lower than they were in the 1994–96 period.
Note also that positive sentiment about the characteristics of Asian and, particularly, Latino immigrants has been increasing over the last decade or so and that, today, according to a Pew analysis, positive sentiment about immigrants is strongest in precisely those areas where immigrants are the most common. Finally, the public overwhelmingly sees illegal, not legal, immigration as the more serious problem—by 60 percent to 4 percent in the Pew poll. And in a Kaiser Family Foundation survey in August, 2004, 42 percent said legal immigrants are good for the country, while only 23 percent said they are harmful. But they expressed negative attitudes about illegal immigrants by a margin of 54 percent to 18 percent.
2. The public generally believes that immigrants don’t displace American citizens from jobs. In a very typical result, the Pew poll found 65 percent saying immigrants take jobs Americans don’t want, rather than take jobs away from American citizens (24 percent).
3. On the other hand, the public does believe immigration depresses wages. In a December 2005 Gallup poll, by margins of 52 percent to 42 percent for legal immigrants and 60 percent to 32 percent for illegal immigrants, the public thought immigrants mostly hurt the economy by driving down wages for other workers rather than mostly helped the economy by providing low-cost labor.
4. The public overwhelmingly wants tougher action to keep illegal immigrants out of the country. In the Time poll cited above, 82 percent of the public says the United States isn’t doing enough to keep illegal immigrants from crossing into the country. That’s very consistent with other results from recent polls. And, in the most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 71 percent said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who favored tighter controls on illegal immigration.
5. But there is little enthusiasm for an enforcement approach that focuses exclusively on illegal immigrants themselves and removing them from the country, especially when posed against alternatives. In the Pew poll, only 27 percent said illegal immigrants already here should be required to return home, compared to 32 percent who said they should be allowed to stay permanently and 32 percent who said they should be granted temporary worker status. And, in the same poll, 49 percent said the best way to reduce illegal immigration from Mexico was to penalize employers, compared to 33 percent who chose increasing border patrols and 9 percent who favored building more fences.
6. The public is open to a guest worker program for illegal immigrants and to making it easier for them to obtain citizenship, but only if certain strict conditions are met. For example, if you just ask, with no further specifications, whether we should make it easier for illegal immigrants to become legal workers, as Quinnipiac University recently did, you get a negative response, 54 percent against/41 percent for. And you get an even more negative response on whether we should make it easier for illegal immigrants to become citizens, 62 percent against/32 percent for.
But that initial reaction turns around, if it sounds like helping illegal immigrants to get legal worker status or to become citizens isn’t a free lunch for those who broke the law. In the Time magazine poll, they described making it easier for illegal immigrants to become legal workers as “allowing illegal immigrants already working in the United States to register as guest workers for a fixed period of time, so the government could keep track of them.” That gets a 79 percent to 18 percent positive response.
Similarly, the Time poll framed making it easier for illegal immigrants to become citizens as “allowing illegal immigrants now in this country to earn U.S. citizenship if they learn to speak English, have a job and pay taxes.” That’s supported by the public by a very wide 78 percent to 21 percent margin.
Another example, also from the Time poll, posed the legal worker issue this way: “Two different approaches have been suggested to deal with illegal immigrants. Please tell me which comes closest to your views. (1) Make illegal immigration a crime and not allow anyone who entered the country illegally to work or stay in the United States under any circumstances. OR, (2) Allow illegal immigrants to get temporary work visas so the government can track them and allow them to earn permanent residence after six years if they learn English, pay a fine, pay any back taxes, and have no criminal record..” That produces a 72 percent to 25 percent majority for the second option.
To sum up, the public favors a tough, but not punitive, approach to the problem of containing illegal immigration and is willing to consider fairly generous approaches to the illegal immigrants already here, provided they feel expectations for these immigrants are high and that they will play by the rules. “Tough, but fair” is a reasonable summary of their position.
We shall see whether either political party is able to harness the “tough, but fair” public to their agenda on the very contentious immigration issue.
State Department Issues July Visa Bulletin: Family 1 and 2A Retrogress
DOS warns in its July 2006 Visa Bulletin of the retrogression of the cut-off date from April 22, 2001 to January 1, 2000 for Family 1 visas for all chargeability areas except Mexico (which advanced from January 1, 1992 to May 15, 1992) and the Philippines (which advanced from September 1, 1991 to September 22, 1991). The cut-off date has also retrogressed for Family 2A visas from April 22, 2001 to September 1, 1999 for all chargeability areas except Mexico (which advanced from July 22, 1999 to September 1, 1999). In addition, DOS cautions that immigrant visa number use is approaching the annual limits for the year and additional retrogression of cut-off dates are possible.
DHS Announces 12-Month Extension of TPS for El Salvadorans
DHS published a notice in the Federal Register today extending TPS for El Salvadorans from September 9, 2006 to September 9, 2007. In order to receive the extension, eligible aliens must re-register during the 60-day re-registration period which begins on July 3, 2006 and ends September 1, 2006. Re-registration is limited to El Salvadorans who registered under the initial designation or who late initial registered, timely re-registered under each subsequent extension of the designation, and maintained both continuous physical presence in the U.S. since March 9, 2001 and continuous residence in the U.S. since February 13, 2001.
The notice also states that certain aliens who have not previously applied for TPS may be eligible to apply under the late initial registration provisions. In addition, the notice automatically extends the validity of EADs issued under the TPS designation of El Salvador for 6 months until March 9, 2007, and explains how TPS beneficiaries and their employers may determine which EADs are automatically extended.
Immigration Reform Hits Snag
By Sara A. Carter
The Daily Bulletin , June 14, 2006
Washington -- House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s remarks on Tuesday quelled any hopes for a quick resolution to the debate on immigration reform in Congress, but most lawmakers and activists weren’t surprised by the stalemate.
Hastert said he wanted to take a ‘‘long look’’ at the Senate bill that would offer millions of illegal immigrants citizenship. That ‘‘long look,’’ House members said, means that nothing is going to happen.
‘‘I’m not surprised,’’ said Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who has publicly criticized the Senate bill. ‘‘You can’t compromise on this issue. I don’t think there is going to be a bill. In fact, I feel better about not having a bill than to have a bill that would offer amnesty.’’
Hastert said hearings on the Senate bill should be held before appointing anyone to a House-Senate committee to negotiate a compromise immigration bill. Later, he said he was unsure what the House’s next move would be.
House Majority Leader John Boehner agreed with Hastert.
‘‘I think we should know clearly what’s in the Senate bill,’’ Boehner said.
‘‘If people are serious about doing an immigration bill this year, it really needs to be finished before the August recess,’’ Boehner told a breakfast forum at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. ‘‘When we come back after the recess, we’re into September. It’s an election year – trying to do meaningful, substantive policy work at that point is going to be difficult.’’
Jo Maney, a spokeswoman for Rep. David Dreier, R-Glendora, said that the delay is to be expected and that reviewing the Senate bill is a process that takes time. Dreier, chairman of the House Rules Committee, said Friday that he would not support any legislation that grants amnesty to illegal immigrants.
Dreier was in session and could not be reached late Tuesday night.
‘‘The most important thing about this debate is that we do it right and that nothing is rushed for the sake of getting something done,’’ Maney said. ‘‘It is important to resolve the illegal immigration problem, but the emphasis must be on enhancing border security.’’
Jose Calderon, president of the Latino and Latina Roundtable and chairman of multicultural studies at Cal Poly Pomona, said he was not surprised by Hastert’s move. Calderon said that border enforcement is not a solution to the problem of illegal immigration.
‘‘I expected the House to not move on immigration reform after the Senate passed their version,’’ Calderon said. ‘‘The enforcement angle just does not work, and the growth of immigrants is continuing.
‘‘We need to look at a way to integrate them into society. ... This enforcement continues to come from the outlook of Sept. 11 and terrorism. But so far the threats have only come from the Canadian border, yet we don’t see the same kind of enforcement taking place on the Canadian border.’’
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, also scheduled a hearing for Monday to review provisions in the bill requiring employers to verify that their workers are legal.
Cornyn said he opposes a provision allowing workers to use up to 20 documents to verify they are legal workers.
Also, the Department of Homeland Security has raised concerns about how quickly it must have in place an electronic system that employers will use to verify their workers’ legal status, Cornyn’s spokesman Don Stewart said.
‘‘This will give us a chance to look at it in more detail,’’ Cornyn said.
Sending a bill that has already passed the Senate to hearings would be a highly unusual move and make completing a final bill before Congress goes on its summer recess in August far less likely.
Disagreement on procedural issue has kept negotiations from starting, but there were hopes that could be resolved this week.
The Senate bill that passed nearly three weeks ago offers most of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants an opportunity for citizenship, while offering millions more from outside the country a chance to apply for residency through a guest-worker program.
In mid-December, the House passed an enforcement-only bill. The bill did not include an avenue to citizenship for illegal immigrants, nor did it create a guest-worker program.
The day the Senate bill was approved, Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said waiting to negotiate a final bill would be ‘‘irresponsible.’’ Rep. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, echoed his comments a day later, saying voters should be able to assess when they go to the ballot box in November how their lawmakers did on the issue.
Rep. Lamar Smith, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said holding hearings on the Senate bill make ‘‘great sense.’’
The recent election victory of San Diego Republican Brian Bilbray, who made tough anti-immigration measures a centerpiece of his campaign, ‘‘changed a lot of people’s thinking on the issue,’’ he said. ‘‘It shows how politically advantageous it is to talk about the issue and what you would do and what the federal government should do.’’
Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., urged Hastert to drop any plans for hearings.
Flake sponsored an early version of the Senate bill with Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., who also called for the bill to move forward.
‘‘Only a small, vocal faction wants to stop a sensible guest-worker program and ignore the reality of the 11 million undocumented living in the country now,’’ Kolbe said in a statement. ‘‘We must not let any delays impede our progress toward solving this problem.’’
Catholic Charities USA Calls on Congress to Bridge Divisiveness and Work Together to Pass Comprehensive and Just Immigration Reform
6/14/2006
ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 14 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Rev. Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA, today pressed Congress to approve just, fair and comprehensive immigration reform, adding that how Congress fixes America's broken immigration system will say a great deal about who we are and what we value as a nation.
"Passage of these needed immigration reforms will require Congress to turn contentiousness into consensus, replace emotion with reason and bridge divisiveness with bipartisanship," Father Snyder wrote in a letter sent to all members of Congress.
Catholic Charities USA, whose members help more than half a million immigrants and refugees with legal services, language instruction, job training and placement, and social services, believes that any immigration bill approved by Congress must do a better job of protecting the nation's security and protecting the dignity of newcomers to this country.
In his letter to Congress, Snyder said that an enforcement- only bill that focuses solely on building barriers at the nation's borders is the wrong approach. Instead, he said, reform must be fair, just, and comprehensive. "It should protect U.S. security, put undocumented laborers and their families on the path to lawful permanent residence and citizenship, and create greater legal avenues for necessary workers to enter this country," he wrote.
Father Snyder warned that while Catholic Charities wants to see the broken immigration system fixed, it will not support a flawed bill. "If Congress passes a deeply flawed bill, we will ask President Bush to veto any legislation that does not meet his principled call for comprehensive and balanced immigration reform," wrote Father Snyder.
The House and Senate have passed two very different versions of immigration reform, and the two sides will need to find a compromise. But as this immigration debate continues, Catholic Charities USA called on Congress not to waste this opportunity to pass meaningful reform.
"You have an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of millions of people who are seeking the promise of a better tomorrow here in the United States," Father Snyder wrote. "You must seize this opportunity, turn away from those seeking only punishment and banishment, and instead offer hope and assistance to those who need it most."
The letter is online at http://www.catholiccharitiesusa.org/news/letters/. For more information on Catholic Charities USA's immigration reform agenda, visit http://www.catholiccharitiesusa.org.
ICE steps up fight against ID fraud
By Donna Leiwnand
The USA Today, June 8, 2006
Washington -- U.S. officials are beefing up efforts to stop immigration fraud partly out of concern that proposals before Congress could create a boon for document forgers.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has created 10 anti-fraud task forces across the nation in addition to the existing unit in Washington, D.C. The task forces have opened 250 probes since they began work in April, says Special Agent Scott Weber, chief of identity and benefit fraud for ICE.
The rising concern over immigration fraud comes as Congress considers a plan to give many of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants a chance to stay legally as guest workers or residents, depending on how long they have lived and worked here. A new law could increase demand for documentation among immigrants seeking to prove their length of residency.
Immigration fraud is 'a problem of epidemic proportions,' says ICE Assistant Secretary Julie Myers. 'There's no question it will be a tremendous increase in workload.'
On Wednesday, ICE agents arrested 27 people and shut down a Queens, N.Y.-based immigration agency called Help Preparers Professional Services. An indictment unsealed Wednesday alleges that the agency arranged more than 200 fake marriages and sold more than $1 million in bogus 'green cards,' marriage and birth certificates, bank letters and employment records.
Customers allegedly paid Beverly Mozer-Browne, 49, of Brooklyn, up to $16,000 to create fake documents and to move them through the immigration process, the indictment says. Agents also arrested Mozer-Browne's brother, Phillip Browne, 40, of Kissimmee, Fla., who as an adjudication officer for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services allegedly approved the applications. Attempts to reach them for comment were unsuccessful.
The amount and sophistication of immigration fraud is increasing, ICE officials say. ICE conducted 2,334 fraud probes in 2004 and 3,591 in 2005. Some of the most sophisticated operations are run by smuggling rings, Weber says.
'There's clearly an organized criminal element,' says Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Mackey in Denver. He prosecuted the leader of a Mexico-based document mill that had outlets across the USA and that he says had become increasingly adept.
'They produced very impressive Social Security cards, driver's licenses from all 50 states,' he says.
Groups that oppose the plan before Congress say it would not do enough to prevent fraud.
'Any guest-worker or amnesty program would lead to fraud on a scale unheard of in American history,' says Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank in Washington that supports tighter immigration controls. 'The likelihood is that demonstrating you've been here will be done by pay stub or utility bill or phone bill. ... If you think a driver's license is easy to forge, think how easy it would be to forge a telephone bill.'
Cecilia Muoz of the National Council of La Raza, a Washington-based civil rights organization, counters that a new law would remove the incentive for illegals to commit fraud. If the path to legal status is accessible and the penalties for fraud are stiff, undocumented workers will be motivated to go through the system, she says.
Immigration Scare-Tactics: Exaggerated Estimates of New Immigration Under S. 2611
The Immigration Policy Center's new report explains how the debate over S. 2611, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, has been clouded by grossly exaggerated estimates of the likely scale of future immigration under the bill. Some critics of S. 2611 have claimed that the bill would unleash a veritable flood of anywhere from 66 million to 217 million new immigrants into the United States over the next 20 years. In contrast to the dire predictions of some of the bill's opponents, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the U.S. population would grow by about 7.8 million over the next 10 years under S. 2611. This total takes into account undocumented immigrants who acquire legal status, guest workers, other immigrants who enter the country through family-based or employment-based channels, and any children born to immigrants after they arrive.
Download IPC policy brief at http://www.ailf.org/ipc/policybrief/policybrief_2006_scaretactics.shtml .
11,999,999 deportations to go — at what cost?
Desmoines Register
June 3, 2006
Everyone who wants to "round up" illegal immigrants and "send them home," should consider the case of Estephanie Izaquirre, who is sitting in the Polk County Jail today.
The 18-year-old parentless teenager came to the United States illegally from Honduras when she was 13. She was able to remain here by using a provision in the law allowing child immigrants to get a green card. She started to build a life. She made friends. Spent time with family, including an uncle who is a Des Moines school principal. She graduated from East High School in Des Moines this spring.
Then she turned 18. The next day, her attorney, Jim Benzoni, received an e-mail from an immigration official informing him the young woman should come to the office and "complete the paperwork." He thought that meant she was going to get a green card.
Izaquirre was thrilled.
When she showed up, a deportation officer arrested her.
The plan is to deport her to Honduras. Where she has no family. Where the person who was supposed to look after her pushed her into prostitution. Where people will not care "if she dies," Benzoni said.
If Iowans can't recognize the sheer inhumanity of what's going on here, they should note the sheer absurdity of the cost of "rounding up" people. Benzoni said the girl could spend months in the county jail. He estimated the process of getting her back to Honduras could cost as much as $5,000. Those are taxpayer dollars.
Multiply that by the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in this country.
That's $60 billion. And counting, since more illegal immigrants will come.
This case is also troubling because immigration officials essentially tricked the young woman into an arrest by sending such a vague e-mail message to her attorney. The e-mail came from Citizen and Immigration Services, the branch that helps people gain legal status and informs them of benefits. It didn't come from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which deported 167,000 people last year.
That sends a loud and clear message: U.S. immigration officials can't be trusted. They exist to deport, not help.
"Since the INS became the Department of Homeland Security, the attitude toward service versus enforcement has radically changed," Benzoni said. "The police-state attitude has become much more prevalent."
That feeds the fear immigrants already have of government officials. It forces them further underground. And it damages the reputation of a government agency that eventually will need to work with immigrants — if this country ever adopts a practical, humane and enforceable immigration policy.
A Post-Mortem On Fiscal 2007 H-1B Count
Jun. 2, 2006
Questions are pouring in asking how it could be that on May 25th USCIS indicated that there were as many as 12,000 H-1B quota numbers available, and on May 26th, there were none. As of Wednesday morning, June 1st, USCIS had just finished data-entering cases that were received on May 25th, and began data-entering cases received on May 26th. During the entry of May 26th cases, the cap was reached, making it appear that 12,000 cases arrived overnight.
The American Lawyer Association has inquired into this oddity, and it appears that the problem lies in the processing of filings by the USCIS at the Vermont Service Center (VSC). When the USCIS went to Bi-Specialization filing effective April 1, 2006, VSC was unable to handle the volume of cases it was receiving, because all I-129 case types were to be sent to the VSC, leading to data-entry and receipting backlogs from early on. VSC data-entry and receipting remained backlogged, leading to the lag between delivery of a petition to VSC and its entry into the system. As USCIS updated its cap-count reports, the volume of cases sent to VSC increased, further contributing to the backlog in data-entry and receipting. The cap count reports posted by USCIS failed to mention that not all cases received had been input into the system, and that thus the counts did not include all cases received as of the report dates. Ultimately, the combination of the existing backlog in data entry and the volume of new cases delivered last week made it appear that 12,000 cases arrived overnight.
Bush shuns Republicans' stand to return illegals
By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times, June 2, 2006
President Bush yesterday rejected House Republicans' stance that illegal aliens must return home, calling it 'wrong and unrealistic' and saying many will have to be allowed to stay.
Speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a block from the White House, Mr. Bush also directly challenged businesses to hire only legal workers, and said those that don't should be prepared to face increased fines. In addition, he said both the House and Senate will have to compromise, but said voters expect a bill and he said that bill should tackle both enforcement and a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens.
'The difficulty of this task is no excuse for avoiding it,' he said.
Mr. Bush was making his first in-depth comments since the Senate passed its broad immigration bill last week, setting up a showdown over immigration policy with the House, which passed an enforcement bill in December.
Last Friday, and again on Sunday, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he cannot accept any approach that allows illegal aliens to stay in the country with the government's approval.
'The words 'path to citizenship' is a buzzword for amnesty. We ought to be honest -- it is amnesty,' Mr. Sensenbrenner, a key House negotiator, said on NBC's 'Meet the Press' program. He contends that more enforcement against employers would make it hard for illegal aliens to get jobs, encouraging them to go home.
But Mr. Bush dismissed that argument.
'Listen, I appreciate the members are acting on deeply felt principles. I understand that. Yet I also believe that the approach they suggest is wrong and unrealistic,' he said.
He said his own plan to allow illegal aliens with 'a home, a family and a clean record' to stay is the 'rational middle ground' between amnesty and the House Republicans' approach.
The president plans to travel to New Mexico, Texas and Nebraska next week to stress his plans for border security and push lawmakers to pass a bill.
Mr. Bush drew praise yesterday from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a key Democrat on the issue. He said Mr. Bush was 'right on the mark' in telling Congress to get a broad bill done.
But Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, demanded the president do more to distance himself from the House bill.
Mr. Bush does differ with the Senate on one key provision -- the Senate bill creates a pre-immigrant visa, under which some illegal aliens and future foreign workers would be on a path to citizenship. While Mr. Bush supports that for illegal aliens, he has consistently opposed that for future workers.
'Temporary workers must return to their homes at the conclusion of their stay,' he said yesterday.
Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, praised that stance, saying a 'future temporary-worker plan must be just that: temporary.'
Senate immigration bill would raise H-1B limit
By Grant Gross
The Computer World, June 30, 2006
Flying mostly under the radar in a controversial immigration reform bill that passed the U.S. Senate last week was a provision that would raise the cap on the number of high-skilled foreign workers allowed into the U.S.
Some technology companies praised the wide-ranging immigration bill, which passed the Senate Thursday, because it would raise the cap on the hotly debated H-1B program, often used by U.S. technology companies to hire foreign IT workers. The bill would increase the annual H-1B cap from 65,000 to 115,000, but many Republicans in the House of Representatives have criticized other provisions in the bill, saying it's too soft on illegal immigration.
In passing the bill, the Senate took a 'critical step forward in its important work to ensure that our nation remains the global leader in technology innovation,' said Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp.'s chairman and chief software architect, in a statement. Gates and other technology leaders have called for a higher cap on H-1B visas, saying many companies cannot find enough U.S. workers with specialized tech skills.
The number of applications for H-1Bs for the federal government's fiscal year 2006 hit the cap in August 2005, a month and a half before the fiscal year began.
But a group representing U.S. IT workers questioned the need for more H-1B visas. The program is full of abuses, with many companies not paying the required prevailing wage for H-1B workers, said Ron Hira, vice president for career activities at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA (IEEE-USA).
'The program is basically broken and can be easily manipulated,' Hira said. 'Until it's fixed, it makes no sense to increase the cap.'
In 2005, the U.S Office of Management and Budget said the H-1B program is 'vulnerable to fraud and abuse' because the U.S. Department of Labor has limited means to check the wages paid to H-1B workers, Hira noted.
IEEE-USA has also said out-of-work U.S. IT workers should get the first shot at vacant tech jobs at U.S. companies.
But the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), a trade group for technology vendors, praised the Senate for including the H-1B provisions in the larger immigration bill. The bill, which would allow illegal immigrants a way to gain U.S citizenship or legal status, is opposed by many Republican lawmakers, and its future is uncertain. Although the bill passed 62-36 in the Senate, a majority of the chamber's Republicans opposed it.
The H-1B provisions could be a 'bridge to compromise,' said Ralph Hellman, ITI's senior vice president for government relations. Many Republicans support the H-1B increases, and those provisions could be part of a compromise package, he said.
Hellman dismissed arguments that an H-1B increase isn't needed. Opponents of the cap increase 'don't have a very strong standing in Congress,' he said. 'Quite frankly, we don't think they have the facts correct.'
USCIS Reaches H-1B Cap
June 1, 2006
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it has received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to meet the congressionally mandated cap for fiscal year 2007 (FY 2007). The "final receipt date" for H-1B petitions subject to the FY 2007 annual cap was May 26, 2006. Affected H-1B petitions received on that date will be subject to the random selection process described below. H-1B petitions subject to the FY 2007 annual cap that are received by USCIS after the "final receipt date" will be rejected. Additional information regarding the specific number of H-1B petitions processed is available at: www.uscis.gov/graphics/services/tempbenefits/cap.htm.
Cap and Set Asides: Congress has established an annual fiscal year limitation of 65,000 on the number of available H-1B visas, commonly referred to as the "H-1B cap." Under the terms of the legislation implementing the United States-Chile and United States-Singapore Free Trade Agreements, 6,800 of the 65,000 available H-1B visas are annually set aside for the Chile/Singapore H-1B1 program. As a result of reserving 6,800 H-1B1 visas for FY 2007, the H-1B cap for that fiscal year is 58,200. However, USCIS has added back to the H-1B cap 6,100 unused FY 2006 H-1B1 visas, for a total of 64,300, as described below.
Unused Chile/Singapore visa numbers for a particular fiscal year are to be used within the first 45 days of the next fiscal year. As FY 2007 H-1B petitions are approved for start dates beginning no earlier than the first day of fiscal year 2007 and reasonable anticipated usage of approved H-1B petitions for any 45-day period exceeds 8,000, USCIS has incorporated its reasonable projection based on H-1B1 usage to date that 700 H-1B1 visa numbers will be used in FY 2006 into the FY 2007 H-1B cap count by adding the remaining 6,100 unused H-1B1 visas back into that count, resulting in a total cap of 64,300 FY 2007 H-1B visas approvable. Because unused H-1B1 visas for FY 2006 have been already allocated in this manner, there will be no additional later H-1B filing season to use these visas. The 6,800 visas reserved from the FY 2007 H-1B count for FY 2007 H-1B1 purposes are anticipated to be handled in a similar manner with respect to the FY 2008 H-1B cap count during calendar year 2007. This allocation of FY 2006 H-1B1 visas based upon reasonable projections of usage to the end of the fiscal year will not affect the availability of H-1B1 visas in any way; they will continue to be fully available, with any year-end difference between actual and projected usage expected to be minimal.
Cap Procedures: In accordance with the procedures announced in the Federal Register at 70 FR 23775 (May 5, 2005) (Allocation of Additional H-1B Visas Created by the H-1B Visa Reform Act of 2004) USCIS has implemented the following process for handling H-1B petitions subject to the FY 2007 cap:
• USCIS closely monitored FY 2007 H-1B filings and used projections to determine the date on which it received the number of petitions necessary to reach the Congressionally mandated cap.
• USCIS determined that the Congressionally mandated cap had been exceeded on May 26, 2006, the "final receipt date."
• USCIS will subject H-1B petitions received on the "final receipt date" to a computer-generated random selection process. This process will enable USCIS to apply the remaining number of available H-1B visas to petitions received on that day.
• Cap subject H-1B petitions that are not randomly selected in the process described above will be rejected and returned along with the filing fee(s).
• Petitioners may re-submit the petitions when H-1B visas become available for FY 2008.
• The earliest date for which a petitioner may file a petition requesting FY 2008 H-1B employment with an employment start date of October 1, 2007, is April 1, 2007.
Current H-1B Workers: Petitions filed on behalf of current H-1B workers do not count towards the Congressionally mandated H-1B cap. Accordingly, USCIS will continue to process petitions filed to:
• Extend the amount of time a current H-1B worker may remain in the United States.
• Change the terms of employment for current H-1B workers.
• Allow current H-1B workers to change employers.
• Allow current H-1B workers to work concurrently in a second H-1B position.
Cap-Exempt Petitions: As directed by the H-1B Visa Reform Act of 2004, the first 20,000 H-1B petitions filed on behalf of aliens with U.S.-earned masters’ or higher degrees will be exempt from any fiscal year cap on available H-1B visas. For FY 2007, USCIS has received approximately 5,830 exempt petitions.
USCIS also notes that petitions for new H-1B employment are exempt from the annual cap if the aliens will be employed at institutions of higher education or a related or affiliated nonprofit entities, or at nonprofit research organizations or governmental research organizations. Thus, petitions for these exempt H-1B categories may be filed for work dates starting in FY 2006 or 2007.
H-1B in General: U.S. businesses utilize the H-1B program to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialized fields, such as scientists, engineers, or computer programmers. As part of the H-1B program, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Labor (DOL) require U.S. employers to meet specific labor conditions to ensure that American workers are not adversely impacted, while the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division safeguards the treatment and compensation of H-1B workers.
– USCIS –
H-1B Cap May Be Imminent
May 30, 2006
As of 5/25/06, 49,034 H-1B numbers (out of a pool of 61,000) had been used for fiscal year 2007. That was a usage of approximately 4,000 in two days--double the rate of usage in the weeks before. As the cap nears, it is reasonable to expect that the rate of usage will continue to climb. Therefore, it is generally believed that the H-1B cap for fiscal 2007 will be reached very shortly.
Critics Say Senate Bill Diminishes Due Process for Immigrants
By Amy Goldstein
The Washington Post, May 26, 2006
The legislation approved by the Senate yesterday would offer many illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship. But advocates of expanded immigration rights complain that 'hidden traps' woven through the bill's 300 pages erode significant due-process protections for all foreign-born people living in the United States.
A coalition of civil rights, religious and legal groups says the legislation would make it easier for the government to detain or deport immigrants -- whether in the country legally or not -- while making it more difficult for them to prove they deserve asylum or naturalization.
One provision would add to the list of acts considered 'aggravated felonies' under immigration law -- automatic grounds for removal from the country. The rewritten list would include carrying fraudulent documents. According to immigration and civil rights lawyers, that change could prompt the government to expel people who use such documents to escape oppressive regimes or those who have been working in the United States for years under false Social Security numbers.
Another change would give federal courts less latitude to review the cases of immigrants who have applied for asylum or citizenship and been turned down by immigration boards. Currently, U.S. circuit courts consider such appeals from scratch. Under the bill, courts could consider only whether the immigration agency had any reasonable grounds for its decision -- not whether its decision was correct.
The bill also would give Border Patrol officers new powers to jail and deport, without a judge's review, immigrants suspected of having recently crossed into the country illegally. Border officers would be allowed to make such decisions on their own for any foreigners, except Mexicans, they stop within 100 miles of the Mexican or Canadian line. The provision essentially would cement in law a controversial policy that the Department of Homeland Security has phased in during the past few years.
Critics predict that it would lead to racial profiling, and they complain that the enforcement area is so wide it would encompass several major cities, including San Diego, El Paso and Detroit.
The changes indicate that the bill is far more intricate than its public image as a measure that is relatively friendly to immigrants, particularly in comparison with an immigration measure passed by the House late last year.
The merits of the changes are a matter of intense debate.
'We had counted on senators taking the time to eliminate . . . the unwise and unsound provisions that strike due process,' said Timothy D. Sparapani, legislative counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union. 'And the Senate failed to do its job.'
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors low immigration, disagreed. 'The limits on what the other side calls 'due process' are actually essential if we are going to get control of the immigration system,' he said.
Krikorian said so many illegal immigrants are crossing into the country that the immigration and judicial systems do not have the capacity to review every case. 'We need to restrict the amount of access illegals have to the court system. There is nothing morally problematic about it. It's not a criminal matter. We are simply deciding whether they should stay in the country or be sent home,' he said.
Late yesterday afternoon, the Senate removed from the bill one provision that had alarmed immigration rights groups. An amendment sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) eliminated a section that would have made it more difficult for immigrants to avoid being deported while they are appealing asylum or other applications.
Still, Paul M. Igasaki, executive director of a coalition called the Rights Working Group, said that, on balance, the Senate measure represents 'a very serious deterioration of the rights of immigrants.'
In several instances, the Senate essentially embraced the due-process restrictions included in the House bill. In at least a few ways, however, senators included provisions that are stricter than those created by the House.
Nancy Morawetz, a law professor at New York University, said that in the Senate version legal residents would be counted as having committed an aggravated felony if they had been convicted repeatedly of driving under the influence of alcohol, even if the convictions happened years ago.
And only the Senate bill, Morawetz said, would create penalties for legal residents if they do not notify the government when they move. She said the requirement has existed for years, but many immigrants do not know they are supposed to file an address change and the federal government has done a poor job of keeping track.
Immigration Bill Passes Senate
May 26, 2006
The Senate yesterday approved an immigration bill that would ultimately allow approximately 10 million undocumented aliens to become citizens and it would substantially increase the annual flow of legal immigration. The leaders of both parties hailed the 62-36 passage as a historic success. Four Democrats joined 32 Republicans who voted against the bill. Three of the four Democrats who opposed the bill face voters in November.
The bill also includes approval for 370 miles of new fencing along the border, 500 miles of vehicle barriers and authorization of 3,000 new Border Patrol agents this year. An amendment which would have barred undocumented aliens from collecting Social Security benefits for past illegal work was rejected.
The White House yesterday predicted that the chamber's Republicans will give in. White House press secretary Tony Snow said House Republicans will want to pass border security badly enough to back down because there is a 'heavier political price for failing to act, than for acting.' House Majority Leader John A. Boehner acknowledged there were 'two very separate and distinct directions that we're going,' but said he still thinks they can reach an agreement with the Senate.
USCIS Posts Updated Fiscal Year 07 H1-B Cap Usage Figures
May 18, 2006
USCIS has updated its website with the figures for H-1B usage for fiscal year 2007 as of May 12, 2006. Since it began accepting applications on April 1, USCIS has approved 6,033 H-1B beneficiaries with an additional 28,775 applications pending, for a total of 34,808 applications either granted or pending. In this same period, USCIS has approved 1,392 H-1B Advanced Degree beneficiaries with 3,246 applications pending, for a total of 4,638 applications either granted or pending. The respective caps are 58,200 for H-1B visas (with an additional 6,800 set aside for the H-1B1 program until October 1, 2006) and 20,000 for H-1B Advanced Degree visas. USCIS estimates the number of beneficiary applications needed to reach the cap, with an allowance for denials and revocations, at 61,000 for H-1Bs and 21,000 for H-1B Advanced Degrees. Periodic updates on new usage counts are available on our website: www.AmericanVisas.com
On the Brink of Immigration Policy Regression
The Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law
Peter Schey
May 15,20065
The big picture
On May 11, following private negotiations between Senate Republican leader Bill Frist and Democratic leader Harry Reid, they announced that the impasse on Senate action on immigration “reform” had been broken. Mr. Frist and Mr. Reid said they hoped to schedule a vote before Memorial Day.
Republicans will offer and likely win a range of restrictionist amendments to the Senate compromise crafted by Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Mel Martinez (R-FL), and Democrats will be allowed to select a number of members for a Conference Committee that will later meet to resolve differences between the House and Senate bills.
One day later, the White House announced that President Bush would open the next push for “immigration reform” with a nation-wide address. Tonight President Bush announced he was assigning some 6,000 National Guardsmen to the border, supports massive new enforcement measures against immigrants, but supports some form of legalization for some number of the 12 million undocumented immigrants now living permanently in the U.S. The President said these are not contradictory goals. The nation can be welcoming to immigrants while at the same time cracking down on them.
White House officials in a briefing for the New York Times were clear that “members of the House will like what they hear ...” NYT May 13 p. 1.
The New York Times succinctly identified the two major forces at play in the current push to move the Hagel-Martinez Senate bill forward to a House-Senate conference committee, and eventually a new law: The Senate bill “addresses both the demands to stem the inflow of undocumented workers across the border with Mexico and the desire of American employers to have reliable access to low-wage work force.”
The interests not on the table, and not any significant part of the Senate compromise, are the interest of the immigrant community in a broad and meaningful legalization process, the interest of unions and non-unionized workers in the protection of already vulnerable U.S. and foreign workers, or the interest of the country in a rational long-term immigration policy.
In a nutshell, what is wrong with the Senate compromise bill that the NY Times, the President, Karl Rove, and the Republican Senate leaders endorse?
The Senate compromise includes the right architecture for “immigration reform” from the standpoint of the two groups the compromise takes into account: The high tech sector of corporate America that has lobbied vigorously for and demanded “reliable access to low-wage work force,” and certain lower-tech sectors of corporate America that traditionally rely upon cheap undocumented labor.
However, a careful analysis of the Senate compromise shows that it does not, as presently drafted, come close to offering the right architecture for rational immigration reform from the standpoint of the immigrant communities, U.S. and immigrant workers, or those who support family reunification and fair treatment for immigrants. As presently drafted, among many other disastrous provisions, the Senate compromise --
1. Criminalizes undocumented immigrants by making illegal entry a “continuing” crime after the person’s entry; Section 206(a)(4): “(a), criminalizing ['illegal entry'] continues until the alien is discovered within the United States by an immigration officer." This is a covert way of criminalizing all immigrants who entered without inspection.
2. Prevents future legalization for undocumented immigrants who have used false names or security cards to obtain work; except for the small percentage eligible to apply for legalization, this provision will consign the vast majority of undocumented immigrants, including future entrants, to permanent underground status.
3. Will cause the separation of hundreds of thousands of mixed-status families through a multi-tiered legalization program and interior enforcement provisions blocking about 80% of all undocumented immigrants presently in the U.S. and all future entrants from ever legalizing their status.
4. Wipes out the ability of the courts to review arbitrary and illegal immigration policies that result in unlawful detentions and deportations, destroy labor campaigns to protect U.S. and foreign workers, or unlawfully separate families.
5. Permits indefinite detention of tens of thousands of immigrants, including those in removal proceedings and those ordered deported for whom “travel documents” cannot be obtained from their home countries.
6. Makes getting asylum more difficult for many asylum-seekers and offers no program for permanent resident status for several hundred thousand Central Americans who have been in the U.S. for many years under TPS, NACARA and ABC temporary status.
7. Forces immigrant in deportation proceedings to waive their right to “voluntary departure” if they wish to appeal an illegal deportation order or denial of asylum. Hagel-Martinez Compromise, § 211; this anti-due process proposal places immigrants in the absurd position of having to waive a legitimate appeal simply to preserve their right to seek voluntary departure so that they may legally immigrate in the future.
8. Expands the ability of the DHS to place immigrants, including those convicted of “aggravated felonies,” in “expedited removal” proceedings. An expanded definition of “aggravated felony” includes crimes that are neither aggravated nor felonies. A long-term lawful permanent resident immigrant can be deported through the “expedited” process and without a formal due process hearing because he had three drunk driving misdemeanors twenty or more years ago; persons subject to “expedited removal” are provided no judicial review.
9. Encourages local police to become involved in enforcing the immigration laws (Hagel-Martinez Compromise, § 229), a proposal that will significantly decrease the willingness of immigrants to report violent crimes and cooperate with prosecutions aimed at putting violent criminals behind bars.
10. Permits the arrest and deportation of immigrants who have committed no crimes if an immigration officer has “reason to believe” that the person is or was either a "member” of a “gang.” Hagel-
Martinez, §§ 206(a)(1)-(2). Thousands of young immigrants, mostly from Central America, who have committed no crimes, will nevertheless face detention and deportation under this proposal.
11. Drastically increases the militarization and criminalization of the U.S.-Mexico border, an approach that has already destroyed border communities, caused thousands of immigrant deaths, turned immigrant smugglers into hardened violent criminals (the only ones willing to risk the heavy jail sentences now associated with smuggling offenses), and increased robberies and rapes of migrants entering without inspection.
What does the Senate compromise offer in return for these draconian measures?
1. About 9 million immigrants will be excluded from “tier one” of the Senate legalization plan -- Under the Senate compromise about 2-3 million undocumented immigrants with at least five years residence will be rewarded with a twilight-zone temporary status for up to eight more years--during six of which they must be employed--BEFORE they qualify for permanent resident status. In 1986 experts and the INS estimated an undocumented population of over 6 million, of which only 1.6 million (about 25%) qualified for legalization based upon five years residence in the country. The Senate compromise is less generous than the 1986 IRCA legalization program, and it is therefore optimistic to assume that even 25% of the 12 million undocumented now in the country will be eligible for the first tier legalization of the Senate compromise.
The plan encourages labor law violations and discourages organizing -- The “legalization” program will adversely impact on the exercise of labor rights by immigrant workers because participation in any labor strikes, or involuntary termination because of something like sexual harassment, will delay the worker’s eligibility for legalization.
The plan delays democratic participation for about 16 years -- For about the next 16 years, immigrants granted legalization will work and pay taxes before they are ever allowed to cast their first vote in a democratic election. The legalization application period will take about one year, applicants will wait in temporary resident status for up to eight years, they must hold permanent resident status for five years, they may then apply for citizenship, a process that generally takes another two years, for a total of a 16-year wait to vote. It would be difficult to structure a program better aimed at keeping people out of the political process for as long as possible.
Few immigrants will qualify for the second tier of the Senate compromise legalization. These immigrants must give up all of their legal rights to ever fight their deportation, will receive a temporary 3-year visa, and within that time must find an independent way to immigrate. The number who will have an independent ground to immigrate during this 3-year period is minimal. Likely less than 250,000 to 500,000 immigrants with 3-5 years residence will have an independent ground upon which to immigrate during the three years they are offered temporary visas.
Millions of immigrants will avoid the third tier (guest worker program) of the Senate bill as presently constructed -- Given the complete absence of a path to permanent status, and the need to surrender their anonymity, their required agreement to depart when their guest worker visas expire, and the relatively nominal increase in wages they may gain by converting from undocumented to guest worker status, the majority of undocumented immigrants will avoid this program. The program as presently drafted is designed to bring new immigrants into the country to perform cheap labor, not to entice millions of existing undocumented immigrants to come forward and surrender to authorities in return for a nominal, if any, increase in pay. Under the current version of the guest worker program, few if any CBOs, unions, churches, lawyers, or hometown associations will recommend that their members or clients apply for the program. It is, for most, a one-way ticket for eventual deportation.
The approximately 8-9 million immigrants who will not qualify under the Senate’s proposed legalization program will be driven deeper underground by the Senate bill’s interior enforcement provisisons, as will all future flows of undocumented immigrants. They will be on the run, have a range of federal and local police looking for them, face more severe penalties when caught, find virtually every avenue to legalization blocked even if they have the required family members or job offers here, and will therefore be more exploitable and exploited than immigrants already are today.
2. The Senate bill positively increases visa quotas for a temporary period, and this will certainly reduce massive visa backlogs. However, the temporary increase in quotas completely fails to address the fundamental problem caused by the present structure of “per-country quotas.” Countries like Mexico and the Philippines with high demand for visas based upon family reunification will continue to face disproportionately long delays. The Senate bill fails to address the extent to which the per-country visa quota law results in massive visa delays for countries which have high demand for visas based upon qualifying family relationships.
3. The Senate bill positively includes provisions of the DREAM Act which would allow certain undocumented students to legalize their status and attend college.
“Improving” versus “opposing” the Senate compromise
In the coming weeks advocacy efforts should be taken to “improve” the Senate compromise. However, to be realistic, it is far more likely that as the Senate bill moves forward, it will get substantially worse than it already is. Concerned organizations should therefore also clearly oppose the bill, while fully supporting the call for real immigration reform.
Several anti-immigrant Senators with close ties to Senate leader Frist plan on offering repressive amendments to the Senate bill. Proposed amendments will seek to block guest workers from ever obtaining lawful permanent resident status, block any immigrant from legalizing if he or she has a misdemeanor conviction, block legalization for any immigrant previously ordered deported or given voluntary departure who did not leave, and delay any legalization until the Secretary of DHS certifies that the border is sealed.
Once the discussion moves into a Conference Committee, the Senate compromise will be dovetailed with the violently anti-immigrant House bill. Republicans will control the outcome. It is obviously more likely than not that any bill reported out of a Conference Committee will be even worse than the already extremely harsh Senate bill. The President will weigh in with his vague view of the twin pillars of immigration reform: Massive increases in enforcement, combined with some type of an ill-defined legalization program.
Given the disastrous provisions in the Senate bill, and its meager legalization proposal, coalitions, unions and other concerned groups should oppose the Senate compromise as presently worded. Advocates and unions should sponsor community meetings and discuss the extreme anti-immigrant, anti-labor, and anti-human rights provisions of the Senate bill.
Reports regarding the major anti-immigrant provisions that permeate the Senate bill are now available from the web sites of (or by emailing) the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the AFL-CIO, the National Organization for Women, the Rights Working Group, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the ACLU, the National Immigration Law Center, or by emailing pschey@centerforhumanrights.org (for PDF reports prepared by CHRCL).
People did not march or boycott in favor of the Senate compromise
Whether in the no-boycott or pro-boycott coalition marches across the country in the past few months, no where among the hundreds of thousands of signs people carried was there a sign saying “support the Senate compromise” or “support Hagel-Martinez.”
Immigrants and concerned citizens marched for a rational and humane immigration reform program. They marched for legalization and labor rights and civil treatment for undocumented families, not a law that will only legalize about 20% of all undocumented workers, permit indefinite detention of many immigrants in the future, strip immigrants of court review, make getting asylum more difficult, ignore the plight of thousands of long-time resident Central Americans already in the DHS system in NACARA and TPS status, encourage local police to arrest suspected undocumented immigrants, further criminalize and militarize the border, discourage the exercise of workers’ rights by requiring six years of future labor before legalizing status, and make “illegal entry” a continuing crime, in effect criminalizing all undocumented people.
The people did not march in favor of Hagel-Martinez.
The basic pillars of real immigration reform
During this phase of the Senate debate, advocates for immigrant and worker rights should step up community forums and communications with members of the Senate and the media. We suggest that advocates, CBOs, coalitions, unions, religious groups and others –
Support full labor rights for all workers regardless of immigration status and strong penalties against employers who discriminate against and exploit immigrant workers. These are essential steps to protect U.S. workers.
Support a rolling legalization program rather than a “one-time” program re-enacted every twenty years. A two or three-year statute of limitations on illegal entry is the most realistic if not the only way to keep the undocumented population at low levels. A broad rolling legalization program is not a reward for illegal entry, it is an essential tool to protect the interests of U.S. workers by reducing the exploitability of immigrant workers.
Support immediate lawful permanent status for thousands of long-term resident Central Americans who have for many years already had temporary status under TPS, NACARA and ABC.
Support a legalization program that includes both immigrants who entered without inspection as well as those who violated their non-immigrant visas.
Support visa backlog reduction not only by increasing quotas, but more importantly by matching demand with visa availability on a per country basis so that nationals of countries with high demand (Mexico, Central America, Philippines, etc.) do not face much longer visa delays than people from low demand countries.
Support increased not decreased court review of unlawful and unconstitutional decisions regarding immigration policy.
Support efforts to better protect the rights of asylum seekers, unaccompanied minors, and trafficking victims.
Support the right of apprehended immigrants to be released on reasonable bail while awaiting the outcome of their removal proceedings or waiting for travel documents before being deported.
Support humane border enforcement using available technologies and enhanced border surveillance techniques without further criminalizing and militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border;
Support legislation to repeal the three and ten-year bars that make immigrants who have been in the U.S. for six months in undocumented status ineligible for visas without returning to their home countries for three years, and those who have been here for one year or more in undocumented status ineligible to receive visas without returning to their home countries for ten years.
Oppose the Senate compromise's cut-backs on the critical role the federal courts have played for over 100 years protecting the fundamental human and civil rights of immigrants from unlawful and unconstitutional policies adopted by Government agencies;
Oppose the Senate compromise that will result in the mass and indefinite detention of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have committed no serious crimes;
Oppose the Senate compromise that cuts off traditional avenues for immigrants to legalize their status through family relationships, asylum, or approved job offers;
Oppose any bill that includes a “guest worker” program without a mechanism for these workers to eventually apply for permanent resident status and full labor rights to prevent under-cutting U.S. workers;
Oppose any bill that increases the difficulties legitimate asylum seekers face in winning protection from return to countries where they face persecution;
Oppose any bill that further increases in the criminalization and militarization of the US-Mexico border, policies that have caused the deaths of thousands of immigrants crossing the border, substantially increased the dangers faced by border patrol officers, encouraged armed vigilantism, destroyed the infra-structure of border communities on both sides of the border, and done little to stop the flow of migrants.
Oppose any bill that criminalizes immigrants based upon their undocumented status.
"An immigration system that forces people into the shadows of our society, or leaves them prey to criminals is a system that needs to be changed," Bush said at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast last Friday. "I'm confident that we can change our immigration system in ways that secures our border, respects the rule of law, and, as importantly, upholds the decency of our country."
The President may be right. However, there is a wide chasm between what the President described in his Prayer Breakfast speech and what the present House and Senate bills offer.
Bush to Address Nation on Immigration
By David Stout
May 12, 2006
WASHINGTON, May 12 — President Bush will use a television address on Monday night to offer new proposals to spur passage of legislation that could put millions of illegal immigrants on the path to American citizenship, the White House said today.
Mr. Bush will speak from the Oval Office beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern time and is expected to propose new enforcement measures along the United States' border with Mexico, including the use of additional troops. The White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said the president would speak for about 20 minutes, and that television networks had been asked to carry the speech live.
"This is crunch time," Mr. Snow told reporters this morning.
National Guard troops have been deployed by border-state governors from time to time, in communications roles, fence-repair work and anti-drug enforcement as well as border surveillance. Guard troops are normally under state control, although they can be put under federal control in emergencies.
The Pentagon is also studying ways that regular active-duty troops might be used along the border, an idea that has been greeted enthusiastically by Governors Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Rick Perry of Texas. Military help is "basically what she has been asking for," Jeanine L'Ecuyer, Ms. Napolitano's spokeswoman, told The Associated Press.
Governor Perry's spokeswoman, Kathy Walt, told The A.P. that her boss liked the idea. "The assets are stretched thin, at least in Texas, because of the war on terror," she said.
...
Senators Agree to Revive Immigration Bill
By Suzanne Gamboa, Associated Press
May 11, 2006
WASHINGTON — Senate leaders reached a deal Thursday on reviving a broad immigration bill that could provide millions of illegal immigrants a chance to become American citizens and said they'll try to pass it before Memorial Day.
The agreement brokered by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., breaks a political stalemate that has lingered for weeks while immigrants and their supporters held rallies, boycotts and protests to push for action.
"We congratulate the Senate on reaching agreement and we look forward to passage of a bill prior to Memorial Day," said Dana Perino, deputy White House press secretary.
Key to the agreement is who will be negotiating a compromise with the House, which last December passed an enforcement-only bill that would subject the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States to felony charges as well as deportation.
Frist said the Senate will send 14 Republicans and 12 Democrats to negotiate with the House, with seven of the Republicans and five Democrats coming from the Judiciary Committee. The remaining seven Republicans will be chosen by Frist and remaining seven Democrats chosen by Reid.
At least one oppoenent of the compromise measure, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, will be among the remaining seven Republicans appointed to the committee, spokesman Don Stewart said.
Frist said a "considerable" number of amendments would be debated when the Senate begins debating the bill early next week.
It would be the most comprehensive rewrite of immigration laws since the so-called Simpson-Mazzoli bill some 20 years ago.
Reid acknowledged on the Senate floor Thursday morning that he "didn't get everything that I wanted" in the agreement, but said Frist didn't either. Reaching the agreement is "not easy with the political atmosphere," Reid said.
Reid had been taking some criticism for refusing to move forward on the bill after complaining that Republicans were trying to undermine it with amendments and insisting that Democrats be allowed to have a say in who serves on the conference committee.
Republicans, too, have had opposition from conservatives to the compromise proposal. These critics consider its path to citizenship provision for illegal immigrants and hundreds of thousands of future guest workers to be tantamount to "amnesty."
They've also had to contend with fallout from opposition to the House bill that triggered nationwide protests that drew hundreds of thousands in Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas and hundreds more in other cities and small communities.
Presidential and midyear politics have been a subtext to the immigration debate. Frist and Arizona Sen. John McCain, one of the architects of the legalization proposal, are prominent in speculation for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination.
The compromise bill the Senate will consider builds on legislation approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee 12-6, with four Republicans voting with Democrats to approve the measure.
That measure absorbed a bill drafted by McCain and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., that called for allowing illegal immigrants to work toward becoming legal permanent residents.
President Bush had helped accelerate progress on the bill after meeting with a bipartisan group of senators last month and stating clearer support for allowing illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.
"Business and labor, Democrats and Republicans, religious leaders and the American people strongly support our plan to strengthen borders, provide a path to earned citizenship for those undocumented workers who are here and put in place a realistic guest worker program for the future," Kennedy said.
Fischer Homes supervisors charged with harboring illegal aliens in worksite enforcement investigation
May 9, 2006 News Release
Office of Public Affairs
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
-- Four supervisors arrested on criminal charges and 76 illegal alien employees apprehended --
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Julie L. Myers, Assistant Secretary for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Amul R. Thapar, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, today announced the arrest of four construction supervisors of Fischer Homes Inc. and 76 illegal alien workers at Fischer Homes construction sites in Kentucky. Headquartered in Kentucky, Fischer Homes is a leading builder of homes in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. A coordinated investigation by ICE, the IRS-Criminal Investigation Division and local law enforcement agencies resulted in the arrest this morning of the four Fischer Homes construction site supervisors pursuant to criminal complaints issued in the Eastern District of Kentucky. Those arrested are:
• Timothy Copsy, a Fischer Homes construction manager
• Doug Witt, a Fischer Homes superintendent
• William Allison, a Fischer Homes superintendent
• Bill Ring, a Fischer Homes assistant superintendent
Each of the defendants is charged in a criminal complaint with aiding and abetting, harboring illegal aliens for commercial advantage or private financial gain. The maximum possible punishment for the crime charged is up to 10 years imprisonment, $250,000 or both. The defendants made their initial appearance this morning in federal court in Covington, Kentucky.
During the enforcement operation today, ICE agents also apprehended 76 illegal alien workers at three Fischer Homes construction sites in Hebron, Union and Florence, Kentucky. "Today's case is another tough step in our targeted and aggressive enforcement of our immigration laws within the interior of the United States," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "We will continue to bring criminal actions against employers who are consistently harboring illegal aliens. We will stop this type of illegal facilitation."
ICE Assistant Secretary Myers said, “ICE has no tolerance for corporate supervisors who harbor illegal aliens for their workforce and deny labor opportunities for legitimate American employees. This enforcement action demonstrates how we will use all our investigative tools to bring these individuals to justice, no matter how large or small the company.”
Assistant Secretary Myers and U.S. Attorney Thapar praised the collective efforts of the local and federal community who are giving their time, expertise, and full cooperation to this ongoing effort. A criminal complaint is an accusation only and that person is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.
I.C.E.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was established in March 2003 as the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. ICE is comprised of four integrated divisions that form a 21 st century law enforcement agency with broad responsibilities for a number of key homeland security priorities.
RECENT ICE WORKSITE ENFORCEMENT CASES
Today’s enforcement action is the latest in ICE’s ongoing efforts to target illegal employment practices through criminal investigations, prosecutions, and asset seizures. Last fiscal year, ICE worksite investigations resulted in 127 criminal convictions and a total of 1,145 arrests, up from 46 criminal convictions and 845 arrests the previous year. Below is a sample of ICE worksite enforcement cases brought in the past month.
• On May 2, 2006, Robert Porcisanu, the owner of an Indiana business that performed stucco-related services at construction sites in at least seven Midwest states was charged with money laundering, harboring illegal aliens, transporting illegal aliens, and false statements in connection with an illegal employment scheme. Porcisanu faces as many as 40 years in prison. ICE is also seeking the forfeiture of $1.4 million. His firm was allegedly able to undercut the bids of contractors to perform work at construction sites by taking advantage of cheap labor costs from the use of illegal alien employees.
• On April 19, 2006, ICE agents arrested seven current and former managers of IFCO Systems North America Inc, pursuant to criminal complaints in Albany, New York, charging them with harboring illegal aliens for financial gain. ICE agents also apprehended 1,187 of the firm’s illegal alien employees during search warrants and consent searches executed at more than 40 IFCO locations nationwide. The arrests were the result of a year-long investigation of IFCO, which determined that more than half of IFCO’s employees during 2005 had invalid or mismatched Social Security numbers. IFCO is the largest pallet services company in the United States, based in Houston, Texas.
• On April 14, 2006, the operators of Baltimore’s best-known sushi restaurants agreed to forfeit more than $1 million and pleaded guilty to criminal charges of conspiracy to commit alien harboring and money laundering in connection with an illegal alien employment scheme. The investigation found that the operators of the three Kawasaki restaurants in Baltimore exploited cheap, illegal labor to maximize profits in order to purchase new homes and luxury vehicles for themselves.
• On April 11, 2006, a federal indictment was unsealed in Ohio charging two temporary employment agencies and nine individuals with hiring and harboring illegal aliens; mail and wire fraud; and laundering approximately $5.3 million. The indictment alleged that HV Connect, Inc., and TN Job Service, Inc. provided hundreds of illegal alien employees to unwitting companies in Ohio by falsely representing that they were legal. The indictment also alleged that the owners of these agencies used the profits from this scheme build a new home and purchase jewelry for themselves.
SKIL Bill Introduced in Senate
On Tuesday, May 3, 2006, the "SKIL Bill" (Securing Knowledge Innovation and Leadership Bill) was introduced by Senator Cornyn (R-TX). Cosponsors on this legislation, assigned bill number S. 2691, were Senators Allard (R-CO), Allen (R-VA), Bennett (R-UT), Enzi (R-WY), and Lott (R-MS). The aim of the SKIL Bill is to reform both the H-1B visa and employment based (EB visa) green card processes. Many of the provisions in the SKIL Bill are duplicated in the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill currently on the Senate floor. Among the provisions in the SKIL Bill are the following:
Brownback Says Senate Will Address Immigration Reform Soon
By Alan Bjerga
The Wichita Eagle, May 3, 2006
Washington -- Sam Brownback said he expects the U.S. Senate to address immigration reform by Memorial Day, though little progress has been made toward a bill since early April.
'There have been no further negotiations to allow amendments' to the bill, said Brownback in a 15-minute news teleconference. The number of amendments that could be offered to a carefully crafted Senate compromise stalled the bill before Easter, after which nationwide demonstrations on immigration erupted.
Brownback, who supports legislation that would allow some currently illegal immigrants an eventual path to citizenship, attributed the recent surge in illegal immigration to economic factors.
'What you have is a very strong U.S. economy... and a very anemic growth rate taking place in Mexico and Central America,' he said. 'You have this magnet effect.'
Statement of Senator Patrick Leahy
Ranking Member, Judiciary Committee
Hearing On "Immigration: Economic Impacts"
April 25, 2006
President Bush is right when he says as legislators and leaders we cannot slavishly follow the ever shifting polls. It is too bad he has not always followed his own advice. When it comes to immigration reform, the Senate and the Congress must do the right thing, not just the currently popular thing. Immigration reform encompasses the need to secure our broken borders while preserving human dignity and human rights. I hope that the President will do more than just talk about what should be done and take action by encouraging his fellow Republicans in Congress to work with us to pass comprehensive, fair and humane immigration legislation.
A GOP Campaign Of Distortion
The bipartisan compromise being considered by the Senate strikes the right balance between enhanced security and realistic reform. It is a marked improvement from the punitive measure passed by the House.
Given President Bush's comments in favor of a comprehensive approach to immigration reform, I was surprised by published reports that the effort to include these harsh criminalization provisions in the bill introduced by Chairman Sensenbrenner in the House actually came from this Administration's Justice Department. Indeed, I take Chairman Sensenbrenner at his word, when he noted in House debate last December: "At the Administration's request, the base bill makes unlawful presence a crime . . . ." The Los Angeles Times reported on April 16 that an anonymous White House official confirmed this, as well.
I recently wrote to Attorney General Gonzales in an effort to get beyond the blame game and get to the facts regarding the origin of these criminalization provisions that have provoked so much outrage across the country. I hope that the Attorney General will be more forthcoming in responding to my request than he has been in the past. There is no reason he cannot help us get to the facts by sharing with us the communications he and others at the Justice Department and in the Bush Administration had with House Republicans as they determined to criminalize undocumented presence in the United States and humanitarian efforts to help those in need. Republicans may control the White House and both branches of Congress, but they do not enjoy a Republican-only lobbying privilege that protects such information between the Bush Administration and House Republican leadership.
If the Attorney General is forthright in his answer to my inquiry and provides the information and documents I request, we will know more about where these proposals came from and why they were so strenuously supported until Senator Durbin exposed the matter at our Judiciary Committee markups last month. Good sense and decency prevailed on March 27, when, in a bipartisan effort, our Committee stripped these provisions from the bill. I am encouraged that Senator Frist and Mr. Hastert have joined on a letter revisiting their earlier misguided notions to establish such new felonies as those contained in the House-passed bill and that were introduced by Senator Frist in his original proposal. We cannot backslide into criminalization of undocumented presence with oppressive collateral consequences for hardworking immigrants and their families.
I had hoped that progress on this matter was significant until I heard that Republican political operatives have paid for misleading radio ads on Spanish language stations seeking to blame Democrats for these provisions. This is not spin, it is downright distortion. These provisions were initiated and supported by the Bush Administration and congressional Republicans. Revealing the truth will put the lie to these partisan charges and false suggestions. The ads run by the Republican National Committee represent politics at its worst. This is an irresponsible and shameless example of putting base political interests over truthfulness, integrity and the security interests of the American people, and those behind it should be exposed. I hope we can get beyond this kind of rank partisanship and join together to enact historic legislation that will comprehensively address our immigration situation.
Ineffective Enforcement Requires Improved Security
I ask that a copy of my April 21 letter to the Attorney General be included in the record. I do hope that he will be responsive and provide the information and materials that will show the vicious and partisan Republican ad campaign for what it is.
Ineffective Enforcement Requires Improved Security
We need to be concerned about the security of our borders. I was among those who pushed for added enforcement along the Northern Border as well as our Southern Border over the last several years and have voted to provide the resources necessary to make those commitments a reality. It is the Bush-Cheney Administration that has been the impediment to the hiring and training of the additional Border Patrol agents we have sought to require legislatively.
For all its talk and swagger about security, the Bush-Cheney Administration has not lived up to its rhetoric in securing our borders. A report card issued by the 9/11 Commissioners in December 2005 evaluated this Administration's efforts on border security at a D - below average. Just last month we heard about nuclear material being successfully smuggled across our borders. This April, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employee, Michael Maxwell, testified before a House subcommittee about an astonishing culture of corruption, and misdirected priorities in the agency within the Department of Homeland Security charged with processing immigration applications. He testified about district offices that reward employees with bonuses, movie tickets and gift certificates for disposing of applications rapidly.
A Bipartisan and Comprehensive Solution
Despite the partisan bickering and idleness of this Administration, the Senate was able to forge a bipartisan coalition of its members to join around a proposal that was tough on security while being fair to the millions of immigrants who work and live in our country. The Senate made progress, and it was done the old-fashioned way - among Democrats and Republicans working to do what was right, not what was politically popular. Just before the Senate adjourned for recess earlier this month, we were focused on a solution to the problems posed by having millions of undocumented immigrants inside our borders.
Many of us believe that immigration reform needs to be comprehensive-- with strong enforcement and border security, matched with fair and effective steps to bring millions of hardworking people out of the shadows and provide them a path to earned citizenship and a full measure of America's promise. We were close to achieving that with a bipartisan compromise.
The bipartisan Committee bill and the outline of the Hagel-Martinez bill represent a balance of strong enforcement of our borders with fair reforms that honor human dignity and our American values. I continue to work for a bill and a law that is fair to all. We all agree that it will be tough on security, but it also has to acknowledge our American values and human dignity. The House-passed bill and the original Frist bill were overly punitive and did not include a path to earned citizenship.
American Traditions of Dignity and Fairness
Earlier this month, hundreds of thousands immigrants and citizens around the country rallied and spoke out for fairness. In peaceful petitions across the country on April 10 people took part in a National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice. Participants in those rallies acted in a great American democratic tradition.
I am sorry that Republican leaders in the House have remained so resistant to their calls for fair treatment, a way out of the shadows and a pathway to earned citizenship. I was disturbed to hear Republican legislators condemning Mayor Villaraigosa and California Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamente as affiliated to a "radical racist group." Just yesterday, Governor Schwarzenegger convened a news conference to report that California Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had received death threats over the immigration issue. Governor Schwarzenegger was right to say that "hate, racism and intolerance are never accepted in our public debates." A Member of the House of Representatives recently said that if the recent protestors "really want to honor America's values, they would stand up to lawbreakers and embrace an enforcement-first approach." In striking contrast, I have not seen congressional Republicans adopting that stance with respect to President Bush's violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act statute by a secret program for warrantless wiretapping of Americans.
A Promise For Real Reform That We Must Keep
I hope that the Republican leadership in the Congress will work with us to follow through on the promise of fair, comprehensive immigration reform. A bipartisan majority of the Senate has now voted consistent with moving forward on comprehensive immigration reform and has rejected the narrow and unrealistic enforcement-only approach. I hope the emergency supplemental appropriations legislation will not be manipulated into an enforcement-only effort that leaves millions in the shadows.
Our work on immigration reform is a defining moment in our history. We are writing laws that will determine people's lives and what it is that America stands for. I continue to urge the Senate to rise to the occasion and act as the conscience of the Nation. I continue to work on immigration reform so that the laws we enact will be in keeping with the best the Senate can offer the Nation and the best that America can offer to immigrants. I hope that our work will be something that would make my immigrant grandparents proud, and a product that will make our children and grandchildren proud. The question is still before us whether the Senate is committed to making real immigration reform.
I am concerned that the majority leader's announcement of a "breakthrough" two weeks ago is having the unintended effect of creating a false impression and false hopes. I commended him for changing his position over the course of the recent Senate debate. I am delighted that he and others who had been opposing comprehensive immigration reform with a path to earned citizenship re-evaluated their position and joined us in the effort.
But an announcement is easy, enacting a new law is not. We are still a long way from enacting fair, comprehensive and humane immigration reform. None has yet passed the Senate. None has passed the House. The cruelest joke of all would be to have raised expectations and false hopes by premature talk of a solution when none has yet been achieved. That promise needs to be fulfilled.
I urge everyone concerned about the lives of those who are undocumented to remain focused on enacting a law, and on what it will provide in its final form. It would be short-sighted to pass a bill that ends up serving as a false promise to those who yearn to be part of the promise of a better life that is America.
I am still hopeful that the Senate can pass legislation that is similar to the bill we reported from this Committee. That is why we are here today. I want to thank the experts who have come here today to share their views on the economic impact of immigration. I am committed to moving forward with a fair, humane, and realistic piece of legislation that will address immigration issues comprehensively.
Court Affirms INS Employee’s Conviction for Document Shredding
United States v. Salazar (9th Cir. April 10, 2006)
Defendant Salazar, a former INS employee and senior file room supervisor at the California Service Center, was convicted under 18 USC §§2(b) and 2071(a) for destroying and causing others to destroy documents filed and deposited with the INS at the California Service Center in Laguna Niguel. Specifically, he was convicted of: (1) having willfully and unlawfully caused the destruction of foreign passports, marriage and birth certificates, and INS applications on March 14 and 15, 2002; and (2) having willfully and unlawfully caused the destruction of INS forms-797, INS receipt notices, INS rejection notices, and return mail on April 3 and 4, 2002.
Defendant was convicted after, as part of an effort to reduce the filing backlog at the CSC, he and other members of the Operations Team shredded an estimated 90,000 INS documents. The shredding took place between January and April 2002.
On appeal to the Ninth Circuit, Defendant argued that there was insufficient evidence to support a reasonable inference that he willfully and unlawfully destroyed the documents. The court of appeals rejected his argument and affirmed the conviction. The court found that there was sufficient evidence in the record to establish that Defendant intentionally destroyed the documents and that Defendant knew his actions were unlawful.
USCIS on Immigration Security Checks - How the Process Works
April 25, 2006
Background
All applicants for a U.S. immigration benefit are subject to criminal and national security background checks to ensure they are eligible for that benefit. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Federal agency that oversees immigration benefits, performs checks on every applicant, regardless of ethnicity, national origin or religion.
Since 2002, USCIS has increased the number and scope of relevant background checks, processing millions of security checks without incident. However, in some cases, USCIS customers and immigrant advocates have expressed frustration over delays in processing applications, noting that individual customers have waited a year or longer for the completion of their adjudication pending the outcome of security checks. While the percentage of applicants who find their cases delayed by pending background checks is relatively small, USCIS recognizes that for those affected individuals, the additional delay and uncertainty can cause great anxiety. Although USCIS cannot guarantee the prompt resolution of every case, we can assure the public that applicants are not singled out based on race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin.
USCIS strives to balance the need for timely, fair and accurate service with the need to ensure a high level of integrity in the decision-making process. This fact sheet outlines the framework of the immigration security check process, explaining its necessity, as well as factors contributing to delays in resolving pending cases.
Why USCIS Conducts Security Checks
USCIS conducts security checks for all cases involving a petition or application for an immigration service or benefit. This is done both to enhance national security and ensure the integrity of the immigration process. USCIS is responsible for ensuring that our immigration system is not used as a vehicle to harm our nation or its citizens by screening out people who seek immigration benefits improperly or fraudulently. These security checks have yielded information about applicants involved in violent crimes, sex crimes, crimes against children, drug trafficking and individuals with known links to terrorism. These investigations require time, resources, and patience and USCIS recognizes that the process is slower for some customers than they would like. Because of that, USCIS is working closely with the FBI and other agencies to speed the background check process. However, USCIS will never grant an immigration service or benefit before the required security checks are completed regardless of how long those checks take.
How Immigration Security Checks Work
To ensure that immigration benefits are given only to eligible applicants, USCIS adopted background security check procedures that address a wide range of possible risk factors. Different kinds of applications undergo different levels of scrutiny. USCIS normally uses the following three background check mechanisms but maintains the authority to conduct other background investigations as necessary:
• The Interagency Border Inspection System (IBIS) Name Check - IBIS is a multiagency effort with a central system that combines information from multiple agencies, databases and system interfaces to compile data relating to national security risks, public safety issues and other law enforcement concerns. USCIS can quickly check information from these multiple government agencies to determine if the information in the system affects the adjudication of the case. Results of an IBIS check are usually available immediately. In some cases, information found during an IBIS check will require further investigation. The IBIS check is not deemed completed until all eligibility issues arising from the initial system response are resolved.
• FBI Fingerprint Check - FBI fingerprint checks are conducted for many applications. The FBI fingerprint check provides information relating to criminal background within the United States. Generally, the FBI forwards responses to USCIS within 24-48 hours. If there is a record match, the FBI forwards an electronic copy of the criminal history (RAP sheet) to USCIS. At that point, a USCIS adjudicator reviews the information to determine what effect it may have on eligibility for the benefit. Although the vast majority of inquiries yield no record or match, about 10 percent do uncover criminal history (including immigration violations). In cases involving arrests or charges without disposition, USCIS requires the applicant to provide court certified evidence of the disposition. Customers with prior arrests should provide complete information and certified disposition records at the time of filing to avoid adjudication delays or denial resulting from misrepresentation about criminal history. Even expunged or vacated convictions must be reported for immigration purposes.
• FBI Name Checks - FBI name checks are also required for many applications. The FBI name check is totally different from the FBI fingerprint check. The records maintained in the FBI name check process consist of administrative, applicant, criminal, personnel and other files compiled by law enforcement. Initial responses to this check generally take about two weeks. In about 80 percent of the cases, no match is found. Of the remaining 20 percent, most are resolved within six months. Less than one percent of cases subject to an FBI name check remain pending longer than six months. Some of these cases involve complex, highly sensitive information and cannot be resolved quickly. Even after FBI has provided an initial response to USCIS concerning a match, the name check is not complete until full information is obtained and eligibility issues arising from it are resolved.
For most applicants, the process outlined above allows USCIS to quickly determine if there are criminal or security related issues in the applicant’s background that affect eligibility for immigration benefits. Most cases proceed forward without incident. However, due to both the sheer volume of security checks USCIS conducts, and the need to ensure that each applicant is thoroughly screened, some delays on individual applications are inevitable. Background checks may still be considered pending when either the FBI or relevant agency has not provided the final response to the background check or when the FBI or agency has provided a response, but the response requires further investigation or review by the agency or USCIS. Resolving pending cases is time-consuming and labor-intensive; some cases legitimately take months or even several years to resolve. Every USCIS District Office performs regular reviews of the pending caseload to determine when cases have cleared and are ready to be decided. USCIS does not share information about the records match or the nature or status of any investigation with applicants or their representatives.
Verification system critical to reform. List tells who can work
By Laura Wides Munoz
The Associated Press, April 13, 2006
Miami (AP) -- At the heart of any immigration bill that makes it through the heated congressional debates is likely to be a computerized system that could help employers determine instantly whether someone can legally work in this country.
A voluntary version of the Internet-based system has been up and running on an experimental basis since 1996 and includes more than 5,000 companies nationwide. Democrats and Republicans alike — including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — have included expanded versions in every bill under serious consideration.
Budget expands program
President Bush's budget request calls for adding $115 million to the program's current budget of $20 million to make it mandatory across the country. The spending also includes a system that will eventually check the immigration status of applicants for driver's licenses and other benefits.
Immigration expert Kevin Jernegan, who wrote a report last year on the pilot program for the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, called such a system central to immigration reform. Under a 1986 federal law, employers can be punished for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, but very few are penalized.
'Right now there's a loophole, because you have to show that employers knowingly hired an illegal worker, and how do you prove that without a reliable system?' Jernegan said.
Under the pilot program, employers can check the applicant's picture ID and Social Security card or work permit against federal databases with a few clicks of a mouse.
The system is linked to companies' records so employers cannot add employees to the payroll — be they janitors or CEOs — until the check is completed.
Department of Homeland Security employees conduct manual searches for applicants who are not automatically given the OK. Those still not cleared can contact the government to sort out the problem.
Alsco, a company that supplies uniforms and linens to the government, is among the businesses participating.
Tony Brown, head of human resources for Alsco's western Florida division, said before the company joined the program in 2004, staff members wasted a lot of time trying to verify the status of employees.
The pilot program allows his staff to verify the status of most prospective employees within minutes.
In the past two years, he said, his office ran 431 inquiries, 17 of which were flagged. Nearly half of those flagged eventually were cleared and hired.
Brown said the use of the program — which requires the company to post a sign alerting applicants it may run their names through Homeland Security databases — has been accompanied by a slight decrease in applications.
'Once they see that you're about to put that through the program, they will say, 'Just stop' or that they want to withdraw their application,' he said.
Privacy violations?
The idea of such a program has long been tossed around. But businesses and civil rights groups argued that it would be too cumbersome for employers and would violate the privacy of American citizens and legal immigrants. And some employers resent such screening, saying they need illegal immigrants to fill out their work forces.
Former Immigration Commissioner Doris Meissner said that sentiment is changing. When Congress first passed a law in 1986 holding employers responsible for checking whether their employees were documented, Americans were much more wary of any kind of electronic registration, she said.
'But now people use credit cards over the Internet and do banking online. Americans are much more accustomed with the things that would be needed today for the program,' she said. Also, she said the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have affected what kind of scrutiny Americans are willing to undergo.
A key challenge
The key challenge remains how to expand the pilot program to cover the country's roughly 7 million employers.
The government contracts out the initial screening to Computer Sciences Corp., which charges up to 52 cents per inquiry. Five government staffers conduct the follow-up manual checks, with about 40 others pulled in as needed.
In the past six months, the program ran 662,000 inquiries, with 21,000 requiring a second manual check, said Gerry Ratliff, who heads Homeland Security's status verification office.
If the program becomes mandatory, employers nationwide will probably run an estimated 57 million new hires a year through the system, she said.
Ratliff said her department is gearing up for an expansion. The department estimated it will need only 34 more status verifiers.
Some experts say that will not be nearly enough to run the program and enforce it. They worry that a lack of staff could hurt legal immigrants, whose visa status often changes faster than Homeland Security can update its databases and whose double surnames can trip up the system.
ANALYSIS OF THE "COMPROMISE" IMMIGRATION REFORM PROPOSAL UNDER CONSIDERATION BY THE U.S. SENATE
Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law
256 S. Occidental Blvd.
Los Angeles, Ca. 90057
[The Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law is a public interest legal services and advocacy organization that has represented over one million undocumented immigrants in major class action cases, currently represents several hundred thousand immigrants in class action cases, and provides technical support to hundreds of community-based organizations and legal services providers assisting immigrant communities throughout the United States. The Center recently concluded settlements with the DHS and DOJ regarding the rights of over 100,000 immigrants under the amnesty program enacted in 1986. To obtain a pdf or paper copy of this report please email Peter Schey, President CHRCL, pschey@centerforhumanrights.org]
(APRIL 10, 2006)
CONTENTS
1. DETENTION AND DEPORTATION FOR MINOR CRIMINAL OFFENSES WILL SEPARATE FAMILIES OR CAUSE PEOPLE TO LIVE IN UNDOCUMENTED STATUS FOR INCONSEQUENTIAL CONVICTIONS
2. DETENTION OF IMMIGRANTS WITHOUT ADEQUATE OR ANY RECOURSE TO RELEASE ON BAIL
3. BLOCKING TRADITIONAL AVENUES LEADING TO LEGALIZATION OF STATUS WILL VASTLY INCREASE THE UNDOCUMENTED POPULATION DURING THE NEXT DECADE
4. RESTRICTIONS ON FEDERAL COURTS' ABILITY TO REVIEW UNLAWFUL REMOVAL ORDERS WILL RESULT IN NUMEROUS IMPROPER DEPORTATIONS
5. NEW LIMITS ON JUDICIAL REVIEW OF DENIALS OF CITIZENSHIP WILL LEAVE QUALIFIED APPLICANTS WITHOUT A REMEDY
6. WIPING OUT VOLUNTARY DEPARTURE FOR MANY IMMIGRANTS WILL MAKE THEM DEPORTABLE AND INELIGIBLE FOR FUTURE VISAS
7. FURTHER RESTRICTING IMMIGRANTS' ABILITY TO BRING MOTIONS TO REOPEN THEIR DEPORTATION CASES WILL LEAVE IMMIGRANTS IN UNDOCUMENTED STATUS DESPITE THEIR ELIGIBILITY FOR VISAS
8. EXPANDED USE OF SECRET EVIDENCE AGAINST IMMIGRANTS WILL UNDERMINE THE RELIABILITY OF DEPORTATION DECISIONS
9. EXPANDED USE OF "EXPEDITED PROCEEDINGS" TO DEPORT IMMIGRANTS WITHOUT FAIR HEARINGS
10. NEW IMMIGRATION PENALTIES FOR U.S. CITIZENS WILL KEEP THEIR FAMILIES IN UNDOCUMENTED STATUS.
11. AUTHORIZING STATE AND LOCAL ENFORCEMENT OF IMMIGRATION LAWS WILL SUBSTANTIALLY DISCOURAGE REPORTING AND COOPERATION BY IMMIGRANTS, LEAVING VIOLENT CRIMINALS ON THE STREETS INSTEAD OF IN PRISONS.
12. MAKING IT MORE DIFFICULT FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS FLEEING PERSECUTION TO OBTAIN PROTECTION IN THE U.S.
13. DEPORTATION OF SUSPECTED GANG MEMBERS WHO HAVE NEITHER COMMITTED NOR BEEN CONVICTED OF ANY CRIME.
14. CONCLUSIONS
A summary of positions the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law recommends for and against various aspects of national immigration reform appears in the Conclusions section of this report, along with a brief overview of the status of the debate in Congress as of April 7, 2006.
1. Detention and deportation for minor criminal offenses will separate families or cause people to live in undocumented status for inconsequential convictions
Thousands of lawful permanent residents immigrants, including many with U.S. citizen children, will face detention and deportation for largely petty criminal offenses, including minor offenses committed long ago. The compromise position redefines the term "aggravated felony"-convictions which make lawful immigrants deportable and intending immigrants ineligible for visas--to include new crimes that are neither felonies nor aggravated. The expanded definition of an "aggravated felony" will also block thousands of undocumented immigrants with U.S. citizen and lawful resident family members from legalization their status.
The expanded definition of an "aggravated felony" will apply retroactively to recent convictions as well as those that took place decades ago, regardless of the immigrant's subsequent rehabilitation or productivity while living in this country, or support of U.S. citizen children.
Retroactive application of the proposed law violates fundamental principles of fairness given that many individuals relied upon the law that was in effect at the time they entered guilty pleas in their cases. The majority of defendants in criminal cases eventually waive their rights to proceed to trial and have their guilt proven beyond a reasonable doubt, instead reaching agreements to enter guilty pleas often to lesser charges. Thousands of immigrants over many years have entered such pleas when they were not considered "aggravated felonies" and did not render the immigrants subject to deportation. The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that "[t]he presumption against retroactive legislation is deeply rooted in our jurisprudence, and embodies a legal doctrine centuries older than our Republic. Elementary considerations of fairness dictate that individuals should have an opportunity to know what the law is and to conform their conduct accordingly; settled expectations should not be lightly disrupted." INS v. St. Cyr 533 U.S. 289 (2001).
In reality, the vast majority of lawful residents and intending immigrants barred from legal status because of minor convictions will remain in the country in undocumented status rather than depart and separate from their family members (or jobs that support their families). They will add to the size of the undocumented population, work in underground jobs, and indefinitely live in extreme poverty, all because of inconsequential and often stale convictions that have no rational connection to the national security or safety of local communities. This will hardly lower the number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., or make the country any more secure.
2. Detention of immigrants without adequate or any recourse to release on bail
Except for Cubans willing to denounce Fidel Castro, tens of thousands of immigrants in formal removal proceedings may be detained while hopelessly backlogged and under-funded immigration judges process their cases. The U.S. will have to construct new detention centers for immigrants, usually placed in remote areas of the country where building and operational costs are lower. Because they lack adequate access to counsel in these remote detention sites, tens of thousands of immigrants, unfamiliar with their rights, will clog the immigration courts each year with a wide range of hand-written petitions and appeals seeking release or legal status.
Likely thousands of immigrants who would otherwise be working and contributing something of value to society, and supporting their families while their removal proceedings are pending, will instead be languishing in detention centers that the likes of Halliburton will make handsome profits building and operating. Cost to the U.S. taxpayers will certainly run into the hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
At the same time as detention of immigrants will expand, the right of those immigrants to challenge the legality of their detention in the courts will be restricted. This is a recipe for mass sweeps in ethnic--mainly Latino--neighborhoods, mass arrests and detentions, and virtually no access to the courts to challenge illegal detentions.
Thousands of detained immigrants may also join the ranks of the Guantanamo prisoners of war, facing indefinite detention if third countries refuse to accept them. Section 202 of the Frist bill and section 202 of the Specter bill are intended to override the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Zadvydas v. Davis by allowing for indefinite and possibly permanent detention. These sections allow indefinite detentions by (1) modifying the starting point for calculating the 90-day removal period; (2) permitting the Secretary of the DHS to detain individuals, who are inadmissible or deportable for criminal offenses, beyond the 90-day removal period "without any limitations" and (3) authorizing the Secretary to indefinitely renew certifications that an individual is a "threat" to public health or safety, the determination of which may be based on "secret evidence."
Citizens will pay for this policy in ways not even yet imagined. Businesses whose employees are detained will pass on to their customers the added costs of replacing those workers. Detainees' U.S. citizen children will be eligible for government social service programs they otherwise would never have needed. As indefinite detentions lead to old age of migrant detainees that third countries refused to accept, the taxpayers will pick up the costs of elder medical care and eventually burials.
Since even with major increases in detention the vast majority of undocumented immigrants will still never be apprehended or detained, the detention policy will hardly serve as a deterrent to encourage undocumented migrants to leave the country or to discourage new ones from coming.
3. Blocking traditional avenues leading to legalization of status will increase the undocumented population during the next decade
What the compromise position being considered by the Senate offers with its right hand--a reduction in the size of the undocumented population through a legalization program that may benefit several million immigrants--it takes away with the left hand by blocking avenues to legal status for millions of other immigrants.
When traditional avenues for legalization are cut-off-for example for immigrants filling jobs U.S. workers refuse to accept and for those with U.S. citizen and permanent resident families-immigrants don't hold garage sales and quietly slip out of the country. They simply remain in order to be with their families, or to work so that they may support their families, and swell the size of the undocumented population.
The Senate compromise will make millions of immigrants now and in growing numbers in the future ineligible to convert from undocumented to documented status for a range of reasons, including, for example, their use of false social security numbers to obtain employment. Similarly, immigrants who misrepresented their status on employer I-9 forms to obtain employment will be ineligible for visas. As mentioned above, thousands of immigrants with minor convictions will become ineligible for visas. For the first time in the nation's history, U.S. citizens with certain types of convictions will be precluded from petitioning to legalize the status of their spouses or children. Immigrants denied voluntary departure under the Senate compromise will become subject to formal deportation orders making them ineligible for visas in the future.
When Congress passes laws effectively cutting off traditional avenues to legal status for undocumented immigrants, it contributes to the size of the undocumented population because very few immigrants leave the country simply because their path to legalization has been blocked. As social conservative family-values oriented elected officials should understand, the drive to remain with one's family, or on a job that helps to support one's family, is too powerful to be undone by a person having to endure the exploitation and mistreatment that accompanies undocumented status.
The result of blocking traditional routes to legalization is therefore unquestionably to inexorably increase the size of the undocumented population.
4. Restrictions on federal courts' ability to review unlawful removal orders will result in numerous improper deportations
The fundamental problem with unfairness in removal proceedings˘entirely ignored by the immigration reform compromise˘has its roots in the Department of Justice immigration court system itself. Currently about 215 immigration judges hear approximately 300,00 removal cases per year. See Letter from Hon. Richard Posner to Hon. Richard Durbin (March 15, 2006). This caseload makes it virtually impossible for immigration judges to avoid frequent errors in deportation orders. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), comprised of about 11 judges, also has an unmanageable caseload of some 43,000 appeals per year. Id. In the past few years this massive caseload, combined with the limited resources made available to the BIA, has caused the Board to affirm immigration judges' deportation orders with one-line decisions that avoid any explanation how or why the decision was reached.
Judicial review of removal orders made by immigration judges is particularly important given the high number of erroneous decisions issued by these judges and the one-sentence decisions affirming these decisions often issued by the Board of Immigration Appeals. Recently, immigration judges have been under fire regarding their poor decision-making. In a 2005 decision a federal appeals court noted that about 40% of all deportation orders reviewed by the appeals court were overturned on appeal. See Benslimane v. Gonzales, 430 F.3d 828 (7th Cir. 2005)..
Supporters of the Senate's compromise version of immigration reform simply ignore the catastrophe immigrants face in obtaining fair removal proceedings, and instead offer proposals that will even further strip immigrants of the right to fair removal proceedings and accurate deportation decisions.
Section 701 of the Specter bill and section 501 of the Frist bill would remove jurisdiction of the Federal Circuit Courts of Appeals over possibly unlawful deportation orders by consolidating all such appeals before one court in Washington DC, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter withdrew Title VII Immigration Litigation Reform of the draft Chairman's Mark. Chairman Specter held hearings on April 3, 2006 to further examine the topic of immigration litigation reform. Because some form of these provisions may well be included in any final Senate bill, the sections of Title VII are included in this analysis.
The Federal Circuit court was established in 1982 with the merger of the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and the appellate division of the United States Court of Claims. The Federal Circuit is unique among the thirteen federal Circuit Courts of Appeals in that its jurisiction and experience is generally limited to cases involving international trade, government contracts, patents and trademarks, certain money claims against the United States government, and federal personnel claims.
Consolidating appeals from throughout the nation in the Federal Circuit court in Washington DC will in many cases limit immigrant's access to judicial review of erroneous deportation decisions. As the Brennan Center for Justice points out in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Specter and Senator Leahy: "A failure to confront the questions on how to get to an immigration court to have one≠s claim heard, or who will be admitted to practice before such a court, will result in a court that is dangerously disengaged from the wider community and claimants, who cannot get a fair hearing because they literally cannot get to court." See Letter from the Brennan Center for Justice to Hon. Arlen Specter and Hon. Patrick Leahy (March 1, 2006).
Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals notes in a letter to Senator Durbin that consolidating appeals in the Federal Circuit would "disserve the judiciary and the immigrant community because the Federal Circuit primarily reviews patent appeals and therefore does not have immigration law expertise. Immigration appeals often also involve questions of constitutional law, criminal law, and specialized administrative law, areas in which the Federal Circuit has little experience."
Another practical concern is whether one court will have the capacity to adequately manage the caseload of appeals. According to Judge Posner, nearly 1,500 cases are filed annually with the Federal Circuit. These cases are divided among 12 judges approximately totaling 125 cases per judge. The number of appeals for review of deportation orders filed annually is more than 12,000. If these appeals are consolidated in the Federal Circuit, each judge will be responsible for their original 125 cases plus an additional 1,000 immigration appeals. This unmanageable caseload will hinder the court's ability to provide genuine judicial review and will undermine immigrants' rights to due process.
To even further limit the right to judicial review of erroneous deportation orders, Section 707 of the Specter bill and section 507 of the Frist bill, establish a screening process for appeals of Board decisions under which appeals of removal orders will be referred to a single judge on the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. Only if the immigrant appealing a deportation order establishes a "prima facie" case that the appeal should be granted, will the single judge screening the appeal issue a "certificate of reviewability," which will allow the appeal to proceed before a three-judge panel. If the screening judge judge declines to issue a certificate of reviewability or fails to issue such certificate within the 60-day allotted time period, the appeal is simply dismissed. The Senate compromise offers no further appeal of the screening judge's decision to block the appeal from going forward or from the judge's failure to issue a certificate within 60 days.
Given the large number of appeals filed annually by immigrants seeking judicial review of deportation orders, and the small number of judges who serve on the Federal Circuit, judges assigned to screen immigrants' appeals will at most have a few minutes to review each case and decide whether to allow the appeal to proceed or not. Asylum cases often involving life and death matters, and appeals involving the permanent separation of families from their US citizen children or spouses, will therefore be decided by judges with little or no experience in federal immigration laws, forced to make their decisions in a matter of minutes. "[W]orkload pressures will prevent the judges from giving more than cursory attention to the petitions. This streamlining process will not provide meaningful judicial review and will likely lead to the summary dismissal and denial of appeals that actually have merit." See Letter from Judicial Conference of the United States to Hon. Arlen Specter (March 31, 2006).
This new process also will, for the first time in U.S. law, waive the Government≠s obligation to file with the appeals court a response to a petition to review a removal order, which may in turn eliminate any possibility of settling such appeals. "The immigration agency's current obligation to respond to all petitions before the federal courts often brings to light claims that inarticulate and/or pro se plaintiffs have not identified and prompts settlement offers without need for court intervention." See Letter from the Brennan Center for Justice (March 1, 2006).
5. New Limits on Judicial Review of denials of citizenship will leave qualified applicants without a remedy
Section 204 of the Frist bill (and section 609 of the Sensenbrenner bill) strip the federal courts of jurisdiction to review a DHS decision in citizenship applications whether "an alien (1) is a person of good moral character; (2) understands and is attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States; or (3) is well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States."
Because these standards are subject to varying interpretation--whether an applicant has "good moral character," or "understands and is attached to" the Constitution˘judicial review of erroneous or arbitrary decisions by immigration officials is crucial. Such review is even more critical in cases in which immigration officials claim to rely upon "secret evidence" to deny citizenship to long-term resident immigrants.
Making appeals of denials on such grounds beyond review by any federal court invites abuses of discretion and unlawful denials masked by a finding of "bad moral character," or perhaps based upon secret evidence the applicant has never even seen.
Section 204(d) of the Specter bill retains judicial review of the above-mentioned DHS discretionary determinations. This section imposes a 120-day time limit on seeking federal court review and it allows the court to determine whether there was substantial evidence in the administrative record and findings of the DHS to indicate that the individual possesses good moral character, is attached to the principles of the Constitution, and is well disposed to the good order of the United States.
However, Section 204(g)S limits federal district court review when the Government delays in adjudicating a naturalization application. An individual may seek review in a federal court when the DHS fails to adjudicate the application within a 180-day time period beginning on the date on which the agency states that it has completed all examinations and interviews. However, the DHS makes the determination as to when it has completed all examinations and interviews, and unlawful delays in completing such examinations therefore becomes non-reviewable by the federal courts. The Senate bills give DHS the power to define the terms "examinations" and "interviews." This in turn gives the agency the power to determine when these stages are complete and when the 180-day to make a citizenship decisions expires. See Letter from Lenni Bension and Stephen Yale-Loehr to Senator Arlen Specter (March 16, 2006).
In addition, unlike current law that in delay cases permit the federal court to actually grant citizenship, the Senate compromise limits the federal courts to review and then remand cases to the DHS, presumably with instructions to issue citizenship in cases in which all examinations and interviews have been completed. See, e.g., United States v. Hovsepian, 359 F.2d 1144, 1160 (9th Cir. 2003) ("Congress intended to vest power to decide languishing naturalization applications in the district court alone, unless the court chooses to �remand the matter' to the INS, with the court's instructions").
By effectively wiping out judicial review of citizenship applications, and barring the federal courts from granting or denying such applications, a process no federal courts have complained about, the Senate compromise position will likely cause thousands of citizenship cases erroneously denied to avoid judicial review every year. The result will not only be to deny full integration into society of long-term lawful resident immigrants, but to limit their ability to legalize immediate family members. This is turn, as with many of the other compromise positions discussed above, will swell the ranks of the undocumented population.
6. Wiping out Voluntary Departure for many immigrants will make them deportable and ineligible for future visas
Historically the immigration laws have included a provision permitting immigration judges to grant undocumented immigrants "voluntary departure" in lieu of formal "deportation" from the country. Generally to obtain voluntary departure the immigrant must show that he or she is a person of good moral character, has no serious criminal convictions, and can afford to pay his or her way out of the country. Such voluntary departure is usually granted to qualifying immigrants for a period of 30 to 60 days, after which, unless the voluntary departure period is extended, a formal order of deportation goes into effect.
Obtaining voluntary departure is critically important to immigrants who have available to them avenues to legalize their status through close family members or Government-approved job offers. While voluntary departure orders generally do not block an immigrant's ability to lawfully immigrate in the future or be granted a visa based upon an already pending application, the entry of a formal deportation order for the most part renders immigrants ineligible for visas. If such immigrants do not depart the country, they add to the population of undocumented permanent residents. Preserving voluntary departure opportunities is therefore yet another significant tool in controlling the size of the undocumented population. As with so many other provisions, the Senate compromise will add to the size of the undocumented population by cutting back on voluntary departure eligibility.
This result is accomplished by barring the courts from reinstating, enjoining, delaying, staying, or tolling any period of voluntary departure. These proposals reverse current policy and the decisions of the appellate courts that in many cases extend voluntary departure upon the filing of timely appeals or motions to reopen cases. See for example In re A-M-, 23 I. & N. Dec. 737, 743 (BIA 2005) (stating "recent statutory and regulatory changes have not altered the basic principle∑that the timely filing of an appeal with the Board stays the execution of the decision of the Immigration Judge during the pendency of the appeal and tolls the running of the time authorized by the Immigration Judge for voluntary departure"); Matter of Chouliaris, 161 I. & N. Dec. 168 (BIA 1977). See also Azarte v. Ashcroft, 394 F.3d 1278, 1289 (9th Cir. 2005) ("in cases in which a motion to reopen is filed within the voluntary departure period and a stay of removal or voluntary departure is requested, the voluntary departure period is tolled during the period the BIA is considering the motion"); Kanivets v. Gonzales, 424 F.3d 330 (3d Cir. 2005) (holding that "the pre-IIRIRA voluntary departure provision requires that aliens be afforded a reasonable opportunity to receive a ruling on the merits of a timely-filed motion to reopen").
To make matters worse, the Senate bills modify the law to require that an immigrant effectively waive his or her right to appeal an erroneous deportation order as a condition of applying for voluntary departure. This anti-due process proposal places immigrants in the absurd position of having to waive a legitimate appeal simply to preserve their right to seek voluntary departure so that they may legally immigrate in the future.
In summary, the voluntary departure provisions of the Senate compromise will remove judicial review of voluntary departure decisions, encourage erroneous and arbitrary decision-making, and force immigrants to elect between a legitimate appeal of an erroneous deportation order versus preserving their right to voluntary departure. Most people denied voluntary departure will likely remain in or return to the U.S. in undocumented status since they will be ineligible for visas despite having qualifying family members or job offers in the U.S. Again, the Senate compromise takes away with one hand what it grants with the other through a possible legalization program.
7. Further restricting immigrants' ability to bring Motions to Reopen their deportation cases will leave immigrants in undocumented status despite their eligibility for visas
Section 508 of the Frist bill and section 708 of the Specter bill (as well as section 212 of the Sensenbrenner House bill) state that decisions to grant or deny motions to reopen or motions to reconsider deportation and other immigration decisions are in the discretion of the Attorney General and his or her subordinate officers. Further, there shall be no review by the federal courts of decisions that are to be made in the discretion of the Attorney General's subordinate officers.
Preserving judicial review of erroneous decisions by immigration judges or the Board of Immigration Appeals in response to motions to reopen or reconsider cases is critically important to immigrants who have a way to legalize their status but can only do so if they are able to get an old removal hearing reopened.
Most such cases involve immigrants with old orders of deportation who qualify to legalize their status through U.S. citizen or lawful resident immediate family members or job offers approved by the Department of Labor. While such immigrants may be approved for the issuance of visas by the DHS, because they have old deportation orders, they are required to bring their requests for adjustment of status before the immigration judges or the Board of Immigration Appeals. They do so by filing a motion to reopen their old deportation cases.
Immigration judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals not infrequently deny motions to reopen cases for improper legal reasons or abuse their discretion by failing to take into account relevant evidence, or considering irrelevant evidence, or by not properly weighing the evidence of record. The enormous backlogs facing immigration judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals, and pressure to make decisions as rapidly as possible to reduce such backlogs, certainly contribute to these errors.
Without the ability to have these decisions reviewed by a federal court, immigrants with erroneous denials of their motions to reopen will be left with no remedy whatsoever to legalize their status, despite their underlying eligibility to do so based upon already approved visa petitions filed by their family members or employers.
8. Expanded use of secret evidence against immigrants will undermine the reliability of deportation decisions
Section 204 of the Frist bill and section 204 of the Specter bill, (and section 609 of the Sensenbrenner bill) expand the "Terrorist Bars" and allow for the expanded use of "secret evidence," inviting violations of individuals' fundamental rights and the principle of government accountability.
When the government uses secret evidence to make decisions in immigration and deportation proceedings, the immigrant has no opportunity to confront and dispute the evidence, or test its reliability.
The use of secret evidence coupled with the bills' limitation on judicial review will undermine the due process rights of immigrants and the fundamental fairness of immigration proceedings.
9. Expanded use of "expedited proceedings" to deport immigrants without fair hearings
The Senate bills expand expedited removal by making individuals convicted of an "aggravated felony," a firearm offense, and offenses related to espionage and treason subject to expedited removal. As discussed above, under an expanded definition of "aggravated felony," a long-term immigrant could be exiled from the U.S. through the "expedited" process and without a formal due process hearing because he had three drunk driving misdemeanor guilty pleas twenty years earlier.
Immigrants placed in "expedited removal" proceedings face deportation whether or not they would otherwise possess a right to apply for relief from removal based upon their many years of residence or family relationships.
Persons subject to "expedited removal" are provided no meaningful judicial review. Thus, individuals wrongly placed in "expedited removal" proceedings or wrongly ordered deported in such proceedings will likely never have an effective means to challenge adverse Government decisions, regardless of their legality or illegality.
10. New immigration penalties for U.S. citizens will keep their families in undocumented status.
The Specter mark and S. 2454 would for the first time in the nation's history limit the right of U.S. citizens to petition to obtain visas and lawful residence for their immediate relatives, including spouses or minor children, if the U.S. citizen has been convicted of certain "aggravated felonies."
While the Congress characterizes these aggravated felonies as "serious sexual offenses," in reality the provisions include misdemeanors with no jail sentences.
Enforcing this proposal will require a criminal background check on all U.S. citizens who petition to immigrate their family members. These background checks will be a massive drain on scarce law enforcement resources and drastically delay the processing of already badly back-logged family visa applications.
The new restriction will also force immediate relatives of U.S. citizens who permanently reside in the U.S. to remain in undocumented status for the rest of their lives, or be separated from their loved ones. Most will remain with their families in the U.S., contributing to the size of the underground undocumented population.
11. Authorizing and encouraging State and local enforcement of immigration laws.
Specter's mark and S. 2454 would give local and state police the authority to assist the federal government in enforcing federal immigration laws.
Many state and local law enforcement authorities oppose this measure because it would destroy community policing, divert time and attention from local safety priorities, and discourage immigrants from coming forward to report crimes and cooperate in their investigation and prosecution.
Another provision in the bill will lessen the utility of an important federal database, the National Crime Immigration Center (NCIC) database. By expanding the types and numbers of people who would be entered into the NCIC to include those with civil violations of immigration law, this provision will make it more difficult for the police to use NCIC as a tool to enforce criminal laws.
12. Making it more difficult for asylum seekers fleeing persecution to obtain protection in the U.S.
There are numerous ways in which the Senate compromise will disadvantage immigrants fleeing persecution from obtaining asylum in the United States.
Document fraud provisions included in the compromise plan will adversely impact on many asylum seekers who obtain or use false documents precisely to escape persecution or to enter third countries to seek protection from persecution. The restrictions on judicial review of deportation decisions discussed elsewhere in this report will weigh most heavily on asylum seekers who often have only been saved from deportation back to countries where they faced persecution through appellate decisions of the federal courts.
Even more troubling are proposals that would in many cases prevent the federal courts from granting even a temporary postponement of deportation while a court reviews an immigrant's appeal of a deportation order and denial of asylum. The proposal will allow thousands of asylum seekers to be deported to countries where they may be persecuted while their appeals of denials of asylum remain pending before the federal courts. This position likely violates due process of law as well as international obligations of the United States under the United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. It also is horrible public policy.
Finally, like tens or hundreds of thousand of other immigrants, many asylum seekers will face mandatory detention while seeking to appeal denials of asylum and indefinite detention if they are ultimately denied asylum but no third country is prepared to accept them. It hardly seems to serve the national interest to require the widespread detention of asylum seekers and indefinite detention of those denied asylum whose home countries often refuse to take them back.
13. Deportation of suspected gang members who have neither committed nor been convicted of any crime.
Immigrants who have never committed crimes or been convicted of any crimes nevertheless face deportation and denied future immigration benefits if an immigration officer has "reason to believe" that the person is or was either a "member" of a "gang," or participated in "activities" that promoted a "gang."
This proposal leaves wide discretion with immigration officers to determine what groups qualify as gangs, whether an immigrant was actually a "member," or whether the immigrant intentionally participated in an activity to somehow promote a gang. Thousands of young immigrants, mostly from Central America, who have committed no crimes, will nevertheless face detention and deportation under this proposal.
Many such youth may have had only brief membership in a gang long ago. Or may have joined a gang solely to participate in its lawful activities. Or may have eventually rejected gang life or even participated in programs to end gang violence.
When word spreads on the streets that once a gang member always a gang member in the eyes of the federal law, gangs may be strengthened not weakened as gang leaders convince their members that there is no point in leaving the gang in order to obtain immigration status.
Studies unquestionably show that youth gang membership is caused in major part by poverty. Many immigrant gang members are the children of immigrants who were unable to legalize their status and pull themselves out of extreme poverty thanks to current immigration policies and backlogs. Now their children will face detention and deportation, ineligibility for visas, and consigned to living out their lives in this country, unless apprehended, in undocumented status.
14. Conclusions
The Senate debate on immigration ended a few days ago with Senators disagreeing on the process to deal with the so-called "Hagel/Martinez compromise" that many Senators and the White House endorsed in principle. The Senate compromise includes a legalization program in exchange for massive new border and interior enforcement measures that will undoubtedly cause widespread arrests, detentions, and confrontations in Latino and ethnic communities throughout the country.
The Senate compromise will leave millions of immigrants in undocumented status, greatly increase the size of the undocumented population in the next few years by blocking traditional avenues of legalization, and drastically cut-back on the legal and human rights of immigrants residing and working in the United States.
Mostly opponents of the compromise have offered about 400 amendments, the majority of which would further restrict the legalization provisions of the compromise and further cut-back on the human and civil rights of immigrants. Negotiations between the Democrats and Republicans broke down over how many amendments the full Senate would be permitted to consider. Minority Leader Reid unsuccessfully pushed for an agreement that would have limited each party to three proposed amendments on the floor of the Senate. Republican Senators insisted on the ability to introduce 20 to 30 amendments. Senators recessed for two weeks with Republicans and Democrats trading accusations and blame for the impasse.
From the standpoint of the immigrant community, and the interest of the country in rational and humane immigration reform, the Congressional impasse may be a blessing.
The House bill would move immigration policy into the stone age. Slashing away at traditional paths to lawful status while offering no legalization program at all, the House bill, if ever enacted, would inevitably and substantially expand the size of the undocumented population. Its proposal for a Berlin wall along the U.S.-Mexico border is a 16th Century response to a 21st Century problem. People fleeing hunger and poverty, or political persecution, or seeking to unite with their families, will figure out ways to get over, under, and through any great walls that Rep. Sensenbrenner may dream up.
The Senate compromise will have much the same result, although it would temporarily reduce the size of the undocumented population by offering a legalization program to several million immigrants. But the Senate's draconian cut-backs on the due process rights of immigrants, and blocking of historical paths to lawful status, will also soon result in increases in the size of the undocumented population, enforcement sweeps in minority communities, mass and indefinite detentions of immigrants, further criminalization of the border and border communities, and mass deportations of immigrants with no realistic access to judicial review to determine if they are being lawfully deported.
It is unclear whether the immigration debate will be placed back on the Senate's agenda when lawmakers return on April 24th. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) wants the Senate Judiciary Committee to promptly reconvene and again address the issue of immigration reform when Senators return from their recess. What Senate majority leader Frist does next will probably be dictated more by his presidential ambitions than anything having to do with rational long-term immigration reform.
Had President Bush addressed immigration reform as an important national issue early in his presidency, when he still really had some "political capital" to spend, he may have had the authority that it takes to push Congress to address the subject in a serious way. Its likely too late for that now. As much as the country needs to revise its immigration policies, the interests of the nation and the immigrant communities may now be best served by a Senate impasse, as long as the public keeps up the pressure for reform so that the matter is revisited and this time seriously addressed in the next Congress.
During the next two weeks we urge community-based organizations, religious groups, unions, community leaders and others to continue and expand the show of strength exhibited in recent mass demonstrations in cities throughout the country, and to continue communications by way of letters, visits, and phone calls to their Senators or their aides. We also urge local groups to hold public forums on what real immigration reform might look like.
We recommend that all concerned people and organizations:
We recommend that all concerned individuals and organizations:
"An immigration system that forces people into the shadows of our society, or leaves them prey to criminals is a system that needs to be changed," Bush said at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast last Friday. "I'm confident that we can change our immigration system in ways that secures our border, respects the rule of law, and, as importantly, upholds the decency of our country."
The President may be right. However, the last major legalization program was achieved in 1986 after careful study, hearings throughout the country, consideration of demographic and economic data on migration, consideration of a range of views held by migration experts, and public consultations with representatives of business, unions, religious groups, immigrant communities, law enforcement, and others. No such deliberative process has taken place with regards to the present Congressional proposals. Bills have been whipped out of elected officials back pockets, there have been virtually no hearings of any substance, and absurd deadlines have been set by Congressional leaders for the production of a new "comprehensive" law. If the result of this ineptitude is an impasse, the country is probably better off revisiting immigration reform in a serious way after the November elections.
We welcome comments on the positions set forth in this report. PDF versions are also available. Forward comments or requests for PDF or paper copies to pschey@centerforhumanrights.org.
Why the Immigration Deal Flopped
TIME Magazine, April 10, 2006
Talk about cold feet. Less than 24 hours after the leaders of the Senate’s Democratic and Republican families had announced a marriage of convenience on immigration reform, Minority Leader Harry Reid ditched his Republican counterpart Bill Frist at the altar Friday, blocking the bi-partisan bill he had backed the day before. Stunned Senators headed to their home states for a two-week Easter recess, furious over the break-up. “It's a war,” said Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter. Even members of Reid's own party, most notably Senator Ted Kennedy, who had worked for five years on an effective amnesty for the country's millions of illegal immigrants, was said to be furious.
Disappointed members of both parties say it was Reid's election-year ambitions that ultimately doomed the immigration bill. The Democrats have a legitimate chance to take back control of the Senate in November, and for a life-long politician like Reid, few things are more important than the opportunity to lead the world's greatest deliberative body, his critics say. A victory for Bill Frist on an issue as nationally charged as immigration would not help the Democrats come election day. "It's not gone forward because there's a political advantage for the Democrats not to have an immigration bill," Specter said.
But it's not that simple. After all, Reid had been ready to walk down the aisle Thursday night, largely because the compromise he, Frist and 63 other Senators had embraced was as close to perfect as any bill the Democrats could hope for. It followed Ted Kennedy's plan to put most of the country's 12 million illegal immigrants (except for the estimated one million or so who have been in the U.S. for less than two years) on an eventual path to citizenship and open up a massive new legal immigration system for low-wage workers; at the same time, it would have removed many of the draconian penalties that were in a bill passed by the House last December.
In retrospect, however, it may have been too perfect. After initially signing on, Reid decided he might be walking into a trap. Some Republicans wanted to vote on amendments that Reid believed would have essentially picked apart the compromise plan; under one of them, for instance, the Department of Homeland Security would have had to certify that the border was secure before any illegal immigrants could be made legal.
What's more, even if he could defeat the amendments, any bill the Senate passed would have to go into a conference committee with the House — which wants to build a wall along much of the U.S.-Mexico border, criminalize all illegal immigrants in the U.S., and dramatically increase the penalties against those who help them, from businesses to churches. Looking several moves ahead in a game of legislative chess, Reid feared that the conference would produce something that looked more like the House bill, which currently has no amnesty provisions for making current illegals citizens, than the Senate version.
Granted, when such a watered down bill came back to the Senate, Reid could still block it by filibustering. But in a election year, Reid knew that could be political suicide, forcing fellow Democrats to vote against a bill Republicans would portray as securing America's broken borders. Those Democrats who were around in the last mid-term election are still smarting from the votes they cast against the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, an issue Republicans cashed in handily at the polls. Giving Frist another National Security vote to beat the Democrats with, they feared, was a sure fire way to let Republicans maintain control of the Senate this fall.
Reid had tried to get some kind of guarantee from Frist that Republican Senators would support only the Senate version in conference, and over the last 24 hours, Sen. John McCain worked to sign colleagues on for just such an assurance. Frist's chief of staff, Eric Ueland, tried to be reassuring. “The Senate will defend the Senate position,” he said. But Reid wanted more than that. “We have no safety net here,” says a top Reid aide, “The Republicans have the President, the Senate and the House.” In negotiations that lasted all night, Reid's staff insisted on a say in the make-up of the conference committee, but Frist wouldn't budge. “No majority leader is going to sign away the power of the office or turn a weaker majority leader's gavel over to his successors,” Ueland said Friday.
In the end, Reid chose the only other way to avoid the potential trap, which was to walk away from the deal.Yet that deal is not completely dead. Specter vowed Friday that he would take the compromise up in committee first thing on his return to Washington and would send it to the Senate floor a week later.
Frist has not said whether he will bring it back to the floor for a vote, but two things could affect that decision. Serious pressure from the White House to get a deal — pressure that so far, despite the President's occasional public statements, has been virtually non-existent — could move Republicans forward. Or a backlash against the massive protests planned by pro-immigration groups in coming days could make them dig in their heels. The Senate's dealmakers —John McCain, Ted Kennedy, Chuck Hagel, Mel Martinez, Barack Obama and others — say they will continue their weekly meetings in search of a compromise. For now though, as Kennedy put it in what amounted to a major understatement, “politics got in front of policy.”
Senate Immigration Debate Stalls
Apr. 7, 2006
The Senate debate on immigration appears to have ended-at least for now-with Senators unable to reach agreement on how to proceed on the so-called "Hagel/Martinez compromise." That compromise agreement, reached just 24 hours ago, would have made changes to the provisions of the Senate Judiciary Committee's bill that provided a path to citizenship for the undocumented population and a temporary guestworker program for future flows. Those changes had apparently rendered the bill acceptable to certain Republicans who had opposed the initial Committee-passed version.
While there seemed to be a consensus on substance, the deal apparently broke down over process. Senate Majority Leader Frist and Minority Leader Reid tried to agree on a plan that would have limited the consideration of amendments to 3 from each party, but Senator Frist was unable to deliver that deal, reportedly due to opposition from Senator Sessions and others who opposed the compromise. Those Senators insisted on being able to offer 20 or 30 or more of the 400 amendments they had filed to date.
Senator Reid also had requested that Senator Frist provide assurances that all members of the Senate Judiciary Committee be appointed as Senate conferees on the bill in the hope that they would be able to prevent House conferees from gutting the legislation's legalization provisions.
Republicans defeated the attempt to invoke cloture, or limit debate, on the Hagel/Martinez compromise proposal by a vote of 38-60. Even those Republicans who supported the underlying substance of the compromise voted against the cloture motion because they felt their colleagues should have been allowed to bring amendments to the floor for a vote. Democrats then blocked Republican efforts to end debate and proceed to a vote on the underlying Frist border security bill (S. 2454) on a 36-62 vote (36 Senators voted in favor of proceeding with the enforcement-only bill).
The Senate now leaves for a two-week recess, and it remains to be seen whether immigration reform will be placed back on the Senate's agenda when lawmakers return on April 24th. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) reportedly stated that his committee would take the issue back up shortly after the Senate's return. We encourage you to meet with your Senators in their district offices during the next two weeks and urge them to support a bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform bill that provides a path to permanent status for the current undocumented population. There will be much "finger pointing" about who is to blame for the impasse. At the end of the day, it is clear that neither party alone has the votes necessary to pass comprehensive immigration reform, and the bipartisan agreements that were needed to get the work done were not possible given the combination of opposition and complicated Senate procedural rules that require "Unanimous Consent" for certain things to happen.
Senate Judiciary Committee Continues Markup of Immigration Reform Legislation
The Senate Judiciary Committee continued its consideration March 15th of draft legislation on comprehensive immigration reform sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter. The Committee officially took up the bill, known as the “Chairman’s Mark,” on March 2 but has made very slow progress to date.
The following is a very brief summary of the amendments that were addressed during today’s session.
1. The Committee passed by a voice vote a compromise amendment by Feingold that would preserve some level of judicial review over naturalization applications.
2. A Specter 2nd degree amendment to a Sessions amendment on evading inspection passed.
3. A Leahy amendment on security-related issues passed by voice vote.
4. A Kennedy amendment to ameliorate the Mark’s retroactive provisions was debated and deferred.
5. A Feinstein amendment to modify the provisions of the Mark relating to border security was deferred for future action.
6. A Durbin amendment to strike the Mark’s criminalization of unlawful status was once again deferred for future consideration. Feinstein attempted to offer a 2nd degree amendment that would provide aliens with a 60-day grace period for visa overstays before they are subject to criminal prosecution under INA § 275(a), but Specter would not allow it since Durbin’s underlying amendment was set aside.
7. A Durbin amendment to ameliorate the Mark’s smuggling provision so as not to criminalize humanitarian assistance was once again debated and deferred. Kyl spoke in opposition to the amendment. Cornyn had a second degree that Hatch thought was insufficient. Hatch, Schumer and Biden spoke in opposition to Cornyn’s 2nd degree. Cornyn was not convincing, but Kyl did some damage.
8. A Sessions amendment to affirm the inherent authority of state and local law enforcement personnel to enforce federal civil immigration laws during the normal course of carrying out their duties was discussed. Specter offered a 2nd degree that would limit the inherent authority of states and localities to the enforcement of the criminal provisions of the immigration laws. Sessions would only support the 2nd degree if the provisions of the Mark criminalizing unlawful presence remain intact. Thus, if the Durbin amendment to strike those provisions passes, Sessions wants to revisit the Specter 2nd degree. Specter’s 2nd degree passed by voice vote.
9. A Sessions amendment that would require the Secretary of Homeland Security to provide information to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) related to aliens who may have violated certain immigration laws passed by a voice vote. The broadly worded amendment would encompass visa overstayers, other civil violators, and even members of vulnerable populations such as asylum-seekers who are improperly documented but seeking relief. Leahy and Kennedy voted against the amendment and Leahy spoke in opposition to overloading the NCIC database with individuals who do not belong in it. A Specter 2nd degree amendment that would provide a procedure for requesting removal from the database and modify the group of individuals included in it passed by voice vote.
10. A Sessions amendment that would require at least one law enforcement agency in each state to enter into a § 287(g) cooperative enforcement agreement to enforce immigration laws against alien smugglers was considered. Sessions accepted a Coburn 2nd degree amendment that would clarify: (1) that such agreements would be purely voluntary, and (2) that the §287(g) enforcement authority would not be limited to alien smuggling. There was no quorum to vote on these, however, and they were set aside.
Part way through the markup, Specter attempted to jump to a debate on the issue of the undocumented population, noting that he has reiterated to Senate Majority Leader Frist that he (Specter) opposes bringing immigration reform to the Senate Floor before the Senate Judiciary Committee had completed its consideration of the Chairman’s Mark. Biden and Kennedy voiced their support of Specter’s desire to complete work in Committee. Kennedy added, “this issue is NOT going away, like some other issues,” and urged deferral of the Title VI discussion until tomorrow (Title VI contains the provisions dealing with the undocumented population). He added that we need to deal with ALL aspects of reform to have real, lasting border security—going forward with any of these components alone will fail.
Durbin said that, to defeat the House bill (H.R. 4437), the Committee needs to pass a strong bipartisan bill with the support of about 12 members. He feels the Committee should do an extra markup session on a day when there is no other Senate business. “We need to watch the House,” noted Durbin, adding: “They have a bill we need to fight at all costs. We need bipartisan support out of this Committee.”
Brownback stated that the Committee has started a process to create broad bipartisan support for good policy, and that this is the most significant legislation of the year. “We have serious problems with immigrant numbers,” he said. “We can’t live with these and need to change them. McCain/Kennedy would deal with this. How do we get the Mark to deal with these numbers? We need a way NOT to end up here again after 10 years. We can’t move too quickly.”
Cornyn described the process as akin to “digging out of a big hole,” noting that with enforcement done first, other issues would get simpler. He believes we need to impose circularity---not permanent immigration.
Coburn said that, like it or not, we have to deal with issue of the undocumented population. He urged the Committee to split the bill in two and do enforcement first, and work to reach consensus on other parts later in the year. “No one in the country trusts us on this issue because we haven’t enforced our existing laws,” he said.
Feinstein stated her concerns about the process, and also spoke out against comprehensive immigration reform and in favor of her more limited agricultural pilot program idea. She said she had met with Senator Craig (the sponsor of AgJobs) yesterday to see if they could work out their differences but there has been no resolution yet. She also expressed much frustration with Frist’s artificial timeline. She indicated her opposition to the House bill, and said that consensus was needed in the Committee (she believes the Committee has come to some consensus on the enforcement pieces but little else). She urged Specter to go back to Frist and ask for more time.
Sessions said we need to focus on enforcement now, and then have a national discussion later on the other elements of immigration reform. He believes Congress needs to focus on enforcement to build credibility with the public. “I’m not prepared to repeat 1986,” he said. “We should slow down.”
Specter repeatedly voiced his concern about “line-jumping,” arguing that the McCain/Kennedy bill would “leap frog” the current undocumented population over individuals who have been waiting in the backlogs. He also said that he’d prefer it if the legislation contained a path to citizenship but, as Chair, was trying to balance both sides.
In other hurdles to the Judiciary Committee’s completion of work on the bill, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Grassley, who is also a member of the Judiciary Committee, argued that the Finance Committee should have jurisdiction over the provisions of the Mark relating to the Social Security Act, adding that the IRS has raised serious concerns about some of these amendments. However, several other senators argued for consideration of these provisions in the Judiciary Committee. It is also possible that Grassley could exercise the Finance Committee’s authority by managing those amendments during floor debate.
The Committee disbanded about noon, due to a number of votes on the Senate Floor and the attendant low probability of maintaining a voting quorum in the Committee.