Thread: Immigration debate hits amnesty hurdle

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Immigration debate hits amnesty hurdle
Lawmakers far apart on what to do about illegal immigrants already in U.S.
By Juan Castillo
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, March 05, 2006

Without illegal immigrants, Mark Krikorian believes, the United States could be a country where more Americans — including single moms, people with disabilities and ex-cons — fill low-skilled jobs. Public schools and hospitals wouldn't strain so hard caring for people who aren't supposed to be here in the first place.

Even urban sprawl would lessen, said Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, which advocates tougher enforcement of immigration laws.

But asked to consider the same hypothetical — a United States suddenly devoid of illegal immigrants — Austin immigration attorney Dan Kowalski sees a plummeting Hispanic population, prices rising along with labor costs, and taxes going up to secure the border and to monitor workplaces for illegal hiring.

Americans become more suspicious and less trusting, more likely to report a neighbor to authorities merely for looking like an illegal immigrant. "It won't be as free or as open. It won't be what we think of us as America," said Kowalski, the editor of Bender's Immigration Bulletin.

Between these seemingly irreconcilable views, a compromise on changes to immigration law must be forged.

The prospects for meaningful changes — or any changes at all — in the nation's dysfunctional immigration policy increas- ingly hinge on the question of what to do about the estimated 11 million people already in the country illegally.

No one in Congress questions the need for more security. But President Bush and several key Republicans favor pairing tougher border and workplace enforcement with some program affording temporary legal status to guest workers. Opponents are adamant that lawbreakers be given no legal toehold to stay in the country, a mistake they feel has been made before.

Faced with the same dilemma 20 years ago, Congress and President Reagan set up the nation's most extensive program ever allowing illegal immigrants already here to become legal permanent residents while trying to choke off job opportunities for those who might be tempted to follow.

That effort failed to stem the tide of illegal immigrants, and its legacy now haunts efforts by President Bush and Congress to work out a new strategy.

With terrorism fears and drug trafficking fueling anew concerns over border security, the notion of any sort of "amnesty" for illegal immigrants has become the largest stumbling block to compromise.

The U.S. Senate later this month is likely to endorse a strategy similar to Bush's: beefing up border and workplace enforcement while allowing some illegal immigrants to stay legally as temporary workers.

That would set the stage for an impasse with the U.S. House, which already has approved a bill ignoring a guest worker program, which critics argue is merely a diluted amnesty that rewards lawbreakers.

Led by conservative Republicans, the House on Dec. 1 instead approved only tougher enforcement measures bent on keeping undocumented immigrants out of the country and, if they manage to get through, from getting jobs.

There may be no politically viable middle ground. "It's that legalization that's the sticking point. Nothing will reach the president's desk," Krikorian predicted.


Though more money and hardware is being poured into border security than ever before, 700,000 illegal immigrants enter the country each year, adding to an undocumented population estimated at 11 million people, 1.4 million in Texas.

Six million are believed to hold jobs.

"We see millions of hardworking men and women condemned to fear and insecurity in a massive, undocumented economy," Bush has said.

The Austin area's foreign-born population, legal and illegal, surged nearly 600 percent, to about 153,000 people, from 1980 to 2000, and advocates for immigrants often say Austin is built on the backs of immigrant labor.

Immigrants easily make up 75 percent of the area's residential construction work force, said Harry Savio, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Austin.

For more than two years, Bush has called for change that acknowledges the country's need for foreign labor.

But opponents such as U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, say the country shouldn't reward illegal behavior or encourage more of it. They believe that aggressively enforcing immigration laws will prompt those here illegally to return home and deter others from coming.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who authored the House legislation, recently held out the possibility that the House might consider some form of guest worker program but told The Washington Times that Americans will not stand for a program "that amounts to an amnesty."

The word itself has become politically charged, and even its meaning is disputed.

Bush consistently asserts that temporarily legalizing workers isn't amnesty because it doesn't create a path to automatic citizenship.

"Any time illegal immigrants are legalized and allowed to remain in this country, it amounts to amnesty," Smith counters.

More than just an argument over semantics, however, the amnesty debate questions whether Americans are willing to tolerate or forgive illegal immigration.


Americans hold complex views about illegal immigration, polls show, on the one hand considering it a pressing national problem, on the other wanting more than just a punitive strategy.

A recent Time Magazine/SRBI poll found most people favoring tougher border enforcement and penalties for hiring illegal immigrants.

Yet, 73 percent also approve of the president's proposed guest worker program and allowing illegal immigrants to gain citizenship under certain circumstances.

Americans do not like rewarding or encouraging illegal behavior, said Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow with the conservative Manhattan Institute, who advocates guest worker legislation. But some favor giving immigrants legal status if they can earn it.

"That's what the debate should be about: Do they get a second chance?" Jacoby continued. "And what are the hoops they have to jump through?"

Instead, the House strategy seeks to force illegal immigrants "to gradually fade away and deport themselves," Kowalski said, and poses a more profound question. "Do you really want to integrate the people who are already here into society, or do you really want them to leave?"

But Sensenbrenner believes his bill reflects the balance most Americans want to strike. "This is going to be a question of whether the Senate listens to the people, or whether the Senate listens to special-interest groups that want to keep (low-paid) illegal aliens in the United States for economic reasons," he said.


Under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, 2.7 million illegal immigrants ultimately became permanent residents in what came to be known as amnesty.

But a companion effort to crack down on employers hiring illegal workers was rarely enforced.

"The mistake (in 1986) was being blind to the need for a continuing flow of workers into the economy," said Doris Meissner with the Migration Policy Institute, who headed the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the Clinton administration.

Others say the mistake was that permanent legalization encouraged millions more to come. "I really think it's a magnet to future illegal immigration," said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R.-Texas. If competing visions are to be reconciled, Bush must persuade Congress that a guest worker program is not a free pass, said Kowalski, adding "What Sen. (John) McCain has been saying all along is that paying a fine and going through background checks and jumping through a lot of hoops is not an amnesty."

McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., are sponsoring a bill, favored by immigrant advocates, that allows guest workers to apply for permanent residence after fulfilling certain eligibility requirements.

Another proposal by Cornyn and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., requires guest workers to return home at the end of their stints. They also want 10,000 more Border Patrol agents, 10,000 new detention beds over five years, 10,000 agents to investigate employers who hire illegal workers, and $5 billion over five years for technology and infrastructure to stop illegal border crossings.

Workers come to earn considerably more money and provide for their families, said Cornyn, chairman of the Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship subcommittee. "We have a right to insist they do so according to our laws, but I think we also ought to have realistic laws that have a legal mechanism to provide some relief to employers who need the work force that they can't get relying solely on Americans."

I am sure Bender also seems himself having to get a different job. Hey Bender, you can work for the Justice Department deporting illegal aliens!!