Immigration debate has shifted from reform to enforcement
Sun, Jun. 08, 2008reprint print email
BY ANDRES VIGLUCCI
aviglucci@MiamiHerald.com
Immigration was going to be one of the issues of the 2008 presidential election season. It has not so far turned out to be the potboiler many expected.

But it's still simmering away below the surface.

Last year's collapse of immigration reform in Congress made legalization -- and those who supported it -- politically radioactive, even as several presidential candidates competed to float the most unsparing of crackdowns on illegal immigrants.

Every one of those tough-on-illegals candidates is long gone. The two still standing -- Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain -- have backed a path to legalization for the undocumented.

But antilegalization sentiment, while by itself insufficient to carry anyone to the White House, has proven potent enough to stifle any real debate in Congress or on the campaign trail about reform for a system virtually everyone agrees badly needs repair.

McCain, chastened after losing his early GOP front-runner status amid fiery opposition to legalization among conservatives, now says he would focus on enforcement first as president. Few expect that Obama, if elected, would attempt any broad reforms early in his term, because an uproar over immigration could imperil other, more urgent pieces of his agenda.

The upshot: The emphasis in U.S. immigration policy has now decisively shifted to enforcement -- stopping illegal immigrants at a hardened, semimilitarized U.S.-Mexico border; rounding them up at home and at work; penalizing some of those who employ them. Legalization of the country's guess-timated 12 million undocumented migrants is clearly off the table for the near future.

INITIATIVES AT WORK

The nitty-gritty details are being worked out in the obscure realm of federal administrative fixes. There, the Bush administration and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff have looked to beef up enforcement largely within existing laws and resources, though some initiatives date to the aftermath of 9/11. At the same time, legislatures in Arizona and other immigrant-heavy states have passed local laws clamping down on employment of illegal immigrants, formerly an exclusively federal prerogative.

Much of the DHS approach is controversial, including: waiving dozens of environmental rules to speed up construction of hundreds of miles of fencing at the southern border; expanding the teams of agents who track down immigrants with deportation orders; and increasing fines on and criminal prosecution of employers who hire illegal immigrants, as well as the workers themselves.

One administration plan would require electronic verification of the right to work for everyone in the United States, both legal immigrants and native-born citizens.

Legalization advocates say draconian enforcement without resolution of the status of millions of undocumented people is neither good policy nor representative of the positive views on immigration held by a majority of Americans, according to several surveys.

Says Jim Harper, of the Libertarian, pro-immigration Cato Institute: ``There is a loud, aggressive group out there on immigration, but it's not representative of the majority. Most Americans don't feel that way.''

Even immigration advocates acknowledge that some measures are overdue, including better border security.

But several of DHS' major initiatives have been plagued by high cost, delays and well-publicized technical glitches, in particular those depending on untested or error-prone technology. That includes ''virtual'' or electronic border barriers and E-Verify, an experimental federal electronic status-verification system that critics say depends on databases riddled with mistakes.

E-Verify, for the moment a voluntary pilot program used by around 54,000 employers, is among the most controversial. A least two pending Congressional bills would require all American citizens and legal residents seeking jobs to get government clearance to work through the Web-based system.

A related administration initiative, temporarily halted by a federal court pending litigation, would require all people starting new jobs, including U.S. citizens whose legal status the government can't verify, to clear up any error within a short span of time or lose their jobs.

Critics warn that frequent errors in federal databases would mean thousands could be kept from working, and possibly lose their jobs.

At the same time, the administration is seeking to ease rules on importing some temporary workers, to address concerns over a possible shortage of farmworkers resulting from the crackdowns on those working here illegally.

THE STRATEGY DEBATE

All these initiatives, including some mandated by Congress, hew to the parameters set by last year's fierce debates: First, toughen enforcement and ''take control'' of the Mexican border, then worry about broad reform later.

''The main reason comprehensive immigration reform failed was because of the lack of public confidence in the government's commitment on the enforcement side,'' Chertoff said at a Christian Science Monitor roundtable in February. ``So I feel that we have to kind of establish that degree of commitment and build that credibility before we go back and do it again.''

No one quite knows what ''taking control'' of the border means -- in other words, how a mission accomplished would be defined -- or how long it would take. But it won't be simple.

''They're doing some real stuff. That's where the public outrage has really made a difference,'' said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports sharp reductions in legal and illegal immigration. ``All of these things take time, no matter how committed an administration is. And this administration is not that committed.''

That means broad reform must wait, he said. A lot of people, in particular advocates of legalization, he said, ``are underestimating how long and complicated it is to create infrastructure of enforcement when you never had one. It's not one or two years.''

The aggressive thrust represents a victory for those who have long advocated a hard line on illegal immigrants: Make things as difficult as possible for the undocumented, and some will leave on their own.

But advocates for immigrants say better enforcement alone will not solve the illegal immigration problem. Million of immigrants are not going to ''self-deport,'' and reliable estimates suggest the undocumented population is still growing, one prominent advocate says.

''It's hard not to conclude the motivation is showy public relations,'' said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a group favoring broad legalization. ``Everybody agrees we want to end illegal immigration, but how can you do it if you don't adjust the status of the 12 million here illegally? Their solution is mass self-deportation, which is not a solution.

``We say change the law, enforce it effectively and make people here legal.''

SIGNS OF SUCCESS?

It's difficult to know what effect, if any, the initiatives have had to date. Chertoff and some of those favoring immigration restrictions, citing anecdotal evidence and a 25 percent drop in arrests at the southern border, say some illegal immigrants appear to be leaving, while fewer are attempting to cross.

Skeptics say the reason may be the tanking U.S. economy as much as tightened enforcement.

But Chertoff himself has made it clear the administration doesn't think reform should end at enforcement. Legalization must come sooner or later, or the country risks serious economic disruptions, he said.

''I think, in the end, you're going to have to have comprehensive immigration reform, because otherwise you're fighting very hard against the laws of economics, and that's always a very, very difficult battle to win,'' Chertoff said. ``But I think in the short term we're going to have to build our credibility, and that's what we're going to do.''





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