Sinsinawa
Spectrum
A Congregation News Magazine
A Need for Comprehensive Immigration Reform in the U.S.
by Tere Auad, OP
During the past 20 years, the world has developed in numerous ways. We have gone through great changes politically, culturally, scientifically, and technologically. We are able to communicate instantaneously with one another. The United States leads these changes, is supporting two wars, and is in a tremendous economic and health crisis, but since 1990 its immigration and naturalization system has been stagnant. The sad thing is that, because of an outdated immigration system, 12 million undocumented immigrants are in limbo in this country while the government spends billions to patch the problem. The Immigration Policy Center gives five points to highlight areas where the immigration system is broken and needs immediate repairs for comprehensive immigration reform.
Family-based immigration backlogs mean that family members remain separated for long periods of time. Immigrants eligible to apply for family-based visas must wait for years, even decades, to reunite with their family members. As a result, the process of applying for naturalization, legal permanent residency, and other immigration benefits has become a perpetually underfunded operation subject to chronic backlogs and delays. Yet the application fees continue to increase, which may prevent or delay an immigrant’s opportunity to naturalize.
The employment-based visa system is not responsive to employers’ labor needs. Each year there are 140,000 employment-based green cards available to qualified immigrants. The number was set years ago by Congress without regard to real labor market needs and has not been updated to conform to current economic realities.
Millions of unauthorized workers and other immigrants, many of whom have U.S.-citizen families, reside in the United States with no means to become legal residents. Moreover, the lack of flexibility and discretion in existing immigration law further weakens the chance to obtain legal status. Efforts to penalize behavior such as overstaying a visa or working without authorization often produce unintended and illogical results. Many U.S. citizens are shocked to find that their immigrant spouse is not eligible for legal status because of noncriminal immigration violations, such as overstaying a visa (even when it happened many years in the past).
Unscrupulous employers who hire unauthorized workers in order to maximize profits are lowering wages and working conditions for ALL workers. Lack of legal status makes unauthorized workers extremely vulnerable to abuse by unscrupulous employers and at the same time jeopardizes the competitiveness of those employers who try to follow the law. Unauthorized workers often endure low wages and poor, even dangerous, working conditions because they have few labor protections and are often fearful of asserting their rights, joining an organizing campaign, or complaining about poor workplace conditions. Immigrant workers are often victims of wage theft by employers who pay less than minimum wage or do not pay them at all. This is bad for all U.S. workers. When vulnerable, unauthorized workers are willing to accept substandard wages and working conditions, it undermines U.S. workers in many industries and makes it difficult for law-abiding employers to compete with those employers who hire unauthorized workers in order to make a bigger profit.
Inadequate infrastructure causes delays in the integration of immigrants who want to become U.S. citizens. Most Americans agree that immigrants should integrate into American culture, learn English, and become U.S. citizens. Immigrant integration benefits everyone because it enables immigrants to realize their full potential, contribute more to the U.S. economy, and develop deeper community ties. However, the United States has no comprehensive integration strategy.
According to the Immigration Policy Center, since 1992, the annual budget of the U.S. Border Patrol has increased by 714 percent; from $326.2 million in fiscal year (FY) 1992 to $2.7 billion in FY 2009. At the same time, the number of border patrol agents stationed along the southwest border has grown by 390 percent, from 3,555 in FY 1992 to 17,415 in FY 2009. The border patrol has also increased its technological resources, ranging from fences and cameras to sensors and aircraft. Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003, the budget of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the parent agency of the border patrol within DHS, has increased by 92 percent, from $6 billion in FY 2003 to $11.3 billion in FY 2009. The budget of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the DHS interior- enforcement counterpart to CBP, has increased by 82 percent, from $3.3 billion in FY 2003 to $5.9 billion in FY 2009. Despite all this additional spending, the number of immigrants entering the United States without authorization has not decreased as a result of additional enforcement.
According to the Immigration Policy Center, because of increased enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border and the heightened risks of crossing the border, many unauthorized immigrants cannot survive the trip alone and rely on professional smugglers. Since the 1990s, migrants have paid enormous sums to smugglers to assist them and their family members in crossing the border. Smugglers charge over $5,000 to take people across the U.S.-Mexico border. Often, migrants are indebted to the smugglers for years after they arrive in the United States, sometimes working as indentured servants until their debts are paid. Smugglers have also turned to kidnapping the loved ones of immigrants in order to extort additional money from their cargo. Human smugglers think nothing of engaging in hostage-taking and extortion to generate more profit for their illegal activities.
Interior immigration enforcement measures are resulting in an enforcement culture that criminalizes immigration violations and results in mistakes and civil rights violations. Immigration enforcement has consistently focused on identifying individuals for deportation and then deporting them. One measure of our immigration-enforcement priorities is the ICE detention system. According to the Immigration Policy Center, ICE operates the largest detention and supervised-release program in the country. A total of 378,582 immigrants from 221 countries were in custody or supervised by ICE in FY 2008. Activities in 2009 remain at a similar level. On Sept. 1, 2009, ICE had 31,075 immigrants in detention at more than 300 facilities throughout the United States and its territories.
The enforcement-only model has pushed immigrants further underground, undermining community safety and national security. Unauthorized immigrants are often reluctant to report crimes they have witnessed or been victims of because they fear they may be deported as a result of coming forward. For more information, visit www.immigrationpolicy.org on the web.
On Dec. 15, 2009, Congressman Luis Gutierrez of Illinois presented a bill to Congress about comprehensive immigration reform. This bill is the first of many to come, and it is very broad, which means it will be debated for a long time in Congress while our tax dollars will continue to be spent on a system that does not work.