Immigration dilemma fault of Congress, Reyes says
By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times



Some blame undocumented immigrants for the current immigration conundrum. Others blame the employers who offer them jobs. U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes has another culprit: the U.S. Congress.
"If you've been on the (U.S. Rep. Tom) Tancredo-(CNN anchor) Lou Dobbs-'Broken Borders' camp, you hear, 'How dare these immigrants who are here illegally ask for anything?' That side is missing a fundamental part of the problem, which is Congress. People have been blaming the symptoms instead of the disease, which is Congress. This particular buck stopped right square in the middle of Congress. We have failed," Reyes, D-Texas, said during an interview with the El Paso Times last week.

Reyes said that Congress failed to fund the employer enforcement part of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act and failed to prioritize border security. Congress and the administration also failed to provide ways for immigrants to get jobs legally. These failures, he said, encouraged more men, women and children to migrate to the United States illegally.

The congressman, who spoke on "Lou Dobbs Tonight" last Thursday about the need for 10,000 additional Border Patrol agents, said that immigration reform should have three components -- border security, a guest-worker program and legalization for some of the millions of undocumented immigrants who live in the United States.

Short of that, Reyes said the country was better off with no new legislation at all.

Senators were confident late last month that they could agree on a comprehensive bill by Memorial Day and that immigration reform, which has failed to materialize for several years now, could see the light of day by the end of the year.

A bipartisan compromise that included a guest worker program, legalization and border security seemed possible, but collapsed last month when the Democratic leadership pulled out, fearing that Republican amendments would turn the bill upside down. Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, both Republicans, opposed the compromise.

The House already passed its version of immigration reform, HR 4437, also called the Sensenbrenner bill after its sponsor, U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner,

R-Wis. That bill contains no legalization and no guest-worker program. Reyes, who voted against the bill, said that version of immigration reform has no chance of becoming law because of controversial elements such as a border wall and the criminalization of undocumented immigrants.

"I think what happened was that the issue (immigration) was hijacked by the increased (opinion) polling the Republicans were doing and the opportunity they thought they had by focusing solely on border security," Reyes said.

He called the bill "mean spirited" and not "serious legislation."

"It was criminalizing immigrants, which I thought was outrageous, and required immediate incarceration, which I thought was foolish because we don't have the space," he said. "The Senate took a broader, more responsible viewpoint."

After the Senate passes its bill, a committee will have to reconcile the two proposals.

Reyes credited the shift between the House approach and what appears to be a less punitive approach by the Senate partly to the pro-immigrant rallies that swept the nation these past two months.

But he said he felt that as rallies and boycotts continued last week, "we're losing focus on the issue. The issue is immigration reform, not the boycotts."

Reyes also opposed the Republican version of the guest-worker program, which would have undocumented immigrants leave the United States to apply for the program back in their home countries.

"They are envisioning immigrants leaving in an exodus, perhaps finding an illegal immigrant Moses to lead them out of the country," Reyes said, derisively. "It's patently unfair, undemocratic that to the people who are in this country, who work, who have children fighting in Iraq, we say, 'You have to leave.'"