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 News from Around the Americas | May 2007 
US Immigration Bill Withers on the Vine
 Eli Clifton - Inter Press Service
| | People run beneath flags before starting a march marking the May 1 melee in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. Some immigrant rights groups worry that the immigration bill introduced in Congress last week will create an underclass of temporary guest workers. (Reed Saxon/AP) |
Washington - The immigration bill introduced in Congress last week is the first attempt at a wide-ranging compromise designed to give legal status to 12 million undocumented workers in the United States, but stiff opposition from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers has left an uphill battle for proponents of the legislation.
The bill, at its core, is a compromise between those who seek a more lenient immigration policy and amnesty for undocumented workers living in the United States, and lawmakers who want to see stricter enforcement of existing legislation.
These diverging interests would, presumably, be reconciled in a combination of tradeoffs which include a path to legal status for current undocumented workers, a new so-called "guest worker" programme, and expansive new enforcement provisions.
On Wednesday, the Senate voted to cut the number of temporary guest workers in half, from the proposed 400,000 a year - as sought by the White House - to 200,000. A final vote on the bill is expected in June.
The bill, a "grand bargain" between Republican and Democratic senators, has been touted by key negotiators Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Jon Kyl, a Republican from Arizona, as a compromise which they will band together to protect from amendments on the floor of the Senate.
"The bill isn't exactly the way I would have written it, but it is a strong compromise and the best chance we will have to finally fix this broken system," said Kennedy in a statement. "The price of inaction is too high."
Opposition to the bill has been intense on both the right and the left, with both sides claiming that the bill fails to take into account their concerns about immigration and gives away too much to the other side.
Opposition from the right has focused on the perceived "amnesty" being granted by the bill as a form of reward for people who have entered and/or stayed in the country illegally.
"I voted for amnesty more than 20 years ago. I believed at the time that by giving illegal aliens blanket citizenship, we would solve the problem. I was wrong. We've now got at least 12 million people illegal aliens thumbing their nose at our laws," said Republican Senator Chuck Grassley in a statement. "We found out that by rewarding illegality, we only get more illegality."
"Under the bill, all permanent resident applicants must apply from the back of the line, from their home country, pay higher fines than in last year's bill, pass a criminal background check and show a nearly perfect work history, English proficiency and familiarity with American civics," wrote Kyl in an op-ed on Sunday in the Arizona Republic. "Those with the best records would have the highest priority for a green card, but none could earn citizenship in less than 13 years."
On the left, strong opposition was voiced by both Democratic lawmakers and immigrants and civil liberties groups.
"This bill is completely unwieldy, unworkable and unrealistic," said the director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Caroline Fredrickson, in a press conference with journalists on Tuesday. "The way the (guest worker system in the bill) is structured, it will be very difficult for people to claim their rights."
Others have claimed the bill will create an underclass of temporary guest workers, who will be denied the ability to claim their rights and benefits and live at the mercy of the companies who bring them into the country.
"If you're going to bring in foreign workers, you need to afford them every single labour right and benefit that any other American receives," Deepa Fernandes, a radio journalist and author of "Targeted National Security and the Business of Immigration", told IPS. "(The guest worker programme) doesn't put people on a path to permanent status and locks workers into an indentured servitude type of situation."
nother critique of the legislation is that it would expand the scope of enforcement for immigration laws and increase the penalties for workers who enter the country illegally or overstay their visas and would require workers to return home for a year after each two-year work period.
"It's a law enforcement model of immigration," said Fernandes. "(It will require) a huge transfer of resources to further militarisation of the border and law enforcement."
Despite the bipartisan proponents of the bill, both parties see huge problems with supporting and passing a bill which is guaranteed to antagonise voters across the ideological spectrum.
Presidential hopeful John McCain, an Arizona Republican and a proponent of the bill, has come under fire from other Republicans, including campaign rival Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts.
On the left, Kennedy's high-profile support of the bill has been met with a lukewarm response from the Democratic Party with a number of senators and representatives expressing concern with the bill's harsh treatment of existing illegal immigrants and a guest worker system that falls short of providing full rights and benefits to workers.
Democratic Senator Harry Reid voiced his party's concerns with the lack of protection for immigrants' rights in the proposed legislation.
"The bill allows 400,000 low-skilled workers to come in for three two-year terms, but requires them to go home for a year in between. This is impractical both for the workers and for their American employers, who need a stable and reliable workforce," Reid said in a written statement.
"We must not create a law that guarantees a permanent underclass - people who are here to work in low-wage, low-skilled jobs - but do not have the chance to put down roots or benefit from the opportunities that American citizenship affords."
To Immigrants, US Reform Bill is Unrealistic
Amanda Paulson, Faye Bowers & Daniel B. Wood - The Christian Science Monitor
For the Senate reform plan to work as intended, illegal immigrants would need to embrace its rules - not opt for business as usual.
On any given day in the Home Depot parking lot in the San Fernando Valley, from 100 to 200 day laborers - almost all undocumented - show up hoping for work. Much of the talk Friday was of the new Senate immigration plan - particularly its proposal to let illegal immigrants step forward and start down the path to legalization and, eventually, US citizenship.
"This is unquestionably an opportunity to come out of the shadows and into the sunlight," says Jefe Rodriguez, a middle-age contractor who says he makes about $200 in a good week. "However, $5,000" - the price tag to apply for permanent residency - "is way too much money, mucho dinero. We don't have that kind of money."
This reaction - "yes, but ..." - is one sign that the reforms could fall short, even if they were to become law, because illegal immigrants themselves may prefer business as usual to a regimen of fees and journeys home. Their early reactions range from guarded optimism to good-humored laughter at the idea that the plan, as laid out, could actually work.
Still, the view in Washington, where the Senate is to debate the bill this week, is that this fragile but bipartisan agreement represents a significant step toward finding common ground on a issue that has divided the country in recent years. The legislation is not without its critics, generating criticism from hard-liners on both sides of the immigration debate, but it is lauded by many as an imperfect compromise.
significant concern outside the Beltway is that the requirements of the proposed bill may prove too burdensome. Many immigrants can't conceive of how to scrape together the fines and fees necessary to enroll in the program, or distrust the requirement that the head of household return to his or her country of origin.
Still, some activists see it both as a good starting point and an opportunity for many immigrants to find security.
"It's immature to say nothing is better than something imperfect," says Emma Lozano, president of Pueblo Sin Fronteras in Chicago. "How can you say that to someone who's life is in the balance, or who has already been separated from their family?"
Ms. Lozano is critical of many aspects of the legislation - the steep requirements to apply for legalization, the future shift away from a family-based visa policy to a skills-based one, the temporary worker program with no hope of permanency. But she says it's an important step forward that she hopes can be improved through negotiations, and a real achievement given Washington's current political climate.
s the details of the plan emerged last week, anti-immigration groups have been the most critical, calling the proposal a capitulation rather than a compromise, and denouncing the new "Z Visa" program and its eventual promise of a green card as amnesty.
"This is just an amnesty dressed up with some provisions to make it more appealing to skeptics," says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that supports immigration restrictions. In addition to the path to legalization for current undocumented immigrants, the proposal includes increases in legal immigration, he notes: "A compromise would be keeping one and getting rid of the other."
Pro-immigrant groups, meanwhile, have been more warily optimistic, hailing the agreement as an important achievement even as they lobby to alter some of the stricter measures, particularly the future changes that would shift preferences for visas from family connections to skills, education, and English language ability.
"That is an incredibly radical change, which undoes the basis of our legal immigration system," noted Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for the office of research, advocacy, and legislation at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group, in a press briefing.
Still, she and others praise the bill for providing both a path to citizenship as well as a plan to reduce the backlog of current family-based visa applications - an estimated 4 million applications from families who have been waiting as long as 22 years.
"Any deal will be criticized as amnesty by people who want to kill it, and some groups will fight anything that reduces family-based categories," says Deborah Meyers, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute. "But at the same time there are 12 million people here who would benefit now, plus millions of people in the backlogs, plus legal channels for future workers. You're talking about trade-offs for now versus later."
It's those workers themselves - far away from the difficult policy negotiations of the Senate floor and less aware of the political trade-offs that get a bill passed - who are in some ways the most skeptical. Even as they yearn for a way to earn legalization, and therefore security, many are inherently distrustful that a law that requires them to return to their native country would also guarantee them re-entry, and the $5,000 fine seems, to some, as out of reach as if it were $50,000.
"We would never be able to raise that kind of money to start the process," says Desmond, a girl who attends John Muir High School in Pasadena, Calif., and didn't want to give her last name, speaking through an interpreter. She has lived in America since kindergarten, with her uncle, grandmother, cousin, and aunts, and says she doesn't know any undocumented immigrants who could afford that amount. "Even more important, I would be scared that they are lying to us…. That they are just saying whatever they could to get all the illegal people and deport them."
In North Phoenix, where Salvador Reza runs a work center where some 85 to 110 immigrants wait in a graveled parking lot for employers to pick them up for landscaping, painting, and housecleaning jobs, Mr. Reza is somewhat more optimistic - he calls the proposal "a good start" - but is still skeptical.
In addition to the steep requirements for visa applications, he worries that adding more agents and infrastructure to the border control will further criminalize activity there.
"This will corrupt even more," Reza says. "It will create better networks of mafia that control it and become even more sophisticated."
nd some immigrants say the plan, if implemented as is, may simply encourage them to return to their home country for good.
"Work is slow right now," says Ramiro Ruiz, a young man from Chiapas who's worked in Phoenix for the past two years, mainly as a landscaper. And he misses his family. Paying $5,000, he says, is out of the question. "I will maybe stay here two years, three maximum."
Margarita Medina, who crossed the border 19 years ago and has since earned a resident alien card by marrying a resident, says she's horrified by the proposed requirements, particularly the trip back to a home country.
"For families, this is terrible," she says, as she fills out a citizenship application - her second - in a South Phoenix office. "I don't ever want to go back, and it would be so hard to break up families."
The fragile Senate bill, which already has some lawmakers distancing themselves from it, will likely face significant changes even if it survives and makes it through the House. It's a process that some immigrant advocates see as a chance to improve the bill's weaknesses, though retaining bipartisan support could be tough with more measures favorable to illegal immigrants.
"We understand the value of this being introduced and moving forward, but we really need to have these problems fixed," says Roslyn Gold, chief counsel for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. "If you have a program that the immigrants don't apply for, you don't have an effective program."
Amanda Paulson reported from Chicago, Faye Bowers from Phoenix, and Daniel B. Wood from Los Angeles. |
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