Thread: Competing bills attempt to address illegal immigration

Competing bills attempt to address illegal immigration
By LEAH RAE

THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: August 23, 2005)



PORT CHESTER

In a church basement each Wednesday, Gloria Roman gives immigration advice from an altar. People lay their lives out in front of her, and in most cases, she finds they would need some kind of miracle to become legal U.S. residents.

A Mexican woman wheels in a stroller carrying her daughter, a U.S. citizen. Caught at the border twice, the young mother was supposed to stay out of the country for 20 years.

A landscaper holds a brown suitcase full of immigration documents. He is a legal resident sponsoring his wife and three children but needs to prove they will be supported financially.

A housekeeper from Peru comes in while her son is at day camp, and asks how she can obtain residency for the two of them. The prospects are bleak.

Roman, a paralegal with Catholic Charities, said that most of the people she sees during office hours in Port Chester, Haverstraw, Peekskill and Brewster have no way to legalize their status under current regulations. So they slip back under the radar, returning to households that may be a combination of U.S. citizens, legal residents and undocumented immigrants.

"It's difficult to see cases like this," Roman says. "You do whatever you can."

Congress has been politically paralyzed on what to do about the 10.3 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., but now there are two competing bills on the table. Both have huge ramifications, and the differences reflect the main debate: One would offer work visas to the undocumented, with a path to permanent residency. The other would require undocumented residents to return to their home countries to apply, and then return again once their work term is up.

White House support is considered critical to any reform, but so far, President Bush hasn't been specific about what he wants. Bush did propose new "guest worker" visas but avoided any controversial details.

Meanwhile, the circumstances of undocumented people and their families are far more complicated than the debate tends to acknowledge. They are more than cogs in the economic machine.

"We import workers,'' said Graciela Heymann of the Westchester Hispanic Coalition, echoing a comment heard at an immigration conference. "We get people."

Limited options
Eva Escalante, who came to Roman for advice, is one of 10 brothers and sisters whose father is a mechanical engineer in Lima, Peru. She said her two oldest siblings, a brother and sister, went to Argentina to find work. The two youngest, herself and a sister, came to the United States.

Escalante arrived on a six-month tourist visa in 2001 and later began working for a Connecticut couple as a nanny and housekeeper.

"The economic situation (in Peru) is very bad," she said. "From here, one way or another, I can support myself and my child, and at the same time send something every month so that my parents can live decently."

With time off while her employers were on vacation, she came to Our Lady of the Rosary. She said she had approached her employers about sponsoring her for a green card, partly out of concern for her 11-year-old son: She didn't want any doors to close on him the way they seemed to be closing on her.

One of the biggest barriers to people like Escalante is a combination of two rules. One requires green-card applicants to complete the process in their home countries. The other penalizes those who have lived in the United States unlawfully by barring them, once they have left, from re-entering for three or 10 years, depending on how long they spent in the country illegally. Those who were undocumented for more than a year must wait 10 years to return.

Rather than leave and face the separation, they stay put.

"It has put families in a bind, and we have seen that problem surface," said Mario Russell, senior immigration attorney with Catholic Charities. Waivers are granted based on hardship, but it's an "enormous gamble," he said.

Many immigrants avoided the problem through a provision that allowed eligible people to pay a $1,000 penalty rather than return home during the final step, as long as they had started the application process before April 30, 2001. More recent applicants don't qualify.

There are other hurdles to a green card; one is proof of sufficient income or support from another person. That's the hurdle that Rogelio Partida, a landscaper, was trying to get over in his effort to sponsor his wife and three children. His sister and her husband would agree to support them through their own income.

"We'd like to help them so that he has his family here with him," said his sister, Gema Mandujana. But because they have children of their own, they didn't meet the requirement, either.

No matter the odds, people constantly come forward to seek legal status. A 24-year-old Mexican woman, who declined to give her name, said that after two detentions at the border, she made it back to Port Chester "with the help of God." Her husband is a landscaper and legal resident who has lived in this country for 16 years, and they have a child who was born in the U.S.

Even without the order to stay outside the U.S. for 20 years, her status means that she would have to go back to Mexico and wait 10 years to rejoin her husband.

"So I can't do anything," she said after speaking with Roman. "I'll continue as I am."

If documents are difficult to get, jobs apparently are not. One indication is a job listing at Our Lady of the Rosary: a pasta cook in New Rochelle, waiters in Port Chester, a mechanic in Cos Cob, Conn., a bellperson at a Stamford hotel.

'Overwhelming problem'
A rising chorus of local officials say they're burdened by illegal immigration in the form of overcrowded housing and health-care subsidies. Terrorism is raising the stakes at all levels on matters of identification and travel.

In Idaho, one county filed a racketeering lawsuit against businesses that hire illegal immigrants. In New Hampshire, two local police chiefs tried to use trespass charges against undocumented residents. In some places, including Danbury, Conn., leaders proposed training police as immigration agents.

Port Chester Mayor Gerald Logan said illegal immigration was behind the problem of overcrowded housing where occupants don't pay a fair share of school taxes. His evidence on the cost of illegal immigration is anecdotal.

"Believe me, it is such an overwhelming problem here, I don't know where you would begin to try to put some numbers to this issue," he said.

The sheer number of foreign-born residents of the United States is at an all-time high, more than 35 million. But proportionately, the immigrant population is smaller than in the early 1900s.

"People think all you have to do is go to the post office and sign up," said Nadia Marin, a Long Island advocate for Latino immigrants, who was speaking at a meeting of the Rockland Immigration Coalition in Spring Valley. "People don't realize it's almost impossible, when somebody wants to, to get legal status."

Hard-line opponents say any form of legalization amounts to a "reward" for lawbreakers, and argue for increased enforcement at the border and within the country. A study by the Center for American Progress put the cost of rounding up and deporting 10 million immigrants at $41 billion a year â€â€

Port Chester Mayor Gerald Logan said illegal immigration was behind the problem of overcrowded housing where occupants don't pay a fair share of school taxes. His evidence on the cost of illegal immigration is anecdotal.

Anecdotal?
When you have 20 or 30 people living in a one family house, the dullest of morons can quickly deduce that they are not paying for their fair share of
expenses. I just cannot believe these whiny open borders types.

"We import workers,'' said Graciela Heymann of the Westchester Hispanic Coalition, echoing a comment heard at an immigration conference. "We get people."

Oh, now they aren't illegal or undocumented. Now they are "imported workers." The only problem is that they "imported" themselves.

Escalante arrived on a six-month tourist visa in 2001 and later began working for a Connecticut couple as a nanny and housekeeper.

Conveniently overstayed her visa. No sympathy here.