Thread: Think Tank Lays Out Plan For Immigration Overhaul

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Think tank lays out plan for immigration overhaul
By CHRISTINA E. SANCHEZ



christina.sanchez@heraldtribune.com

Here's what immigration could look like in the years to come: Social Security cards are replaced with national ID cards that use fingerprints or eyeball scans to identify the cardholder; job applicants are run through a national database that spits out their immigration status; only three types of immigrants are allowed into the country -- temporary, provisional and permanent.

Those and a host of other changes are needed to overhaul an outdated and inefficient immigration system if the country is going to get a handle on its immigration problems, a respected Washington, D.C., think tank said in a report released Wednesday.

The report by the Independent Task Force on Immigration and America's Future, an arm of the Migration Policy Institute, says current immigration laws, which date back to the 1950s, need to be reformed to keep the country economically competitive with the rest of the world. Workers of all skill levels need to be brought into the fold legally to maintain that competitive edge, the report says.

The nonpartisan task force, made up of a cross-section of elected officials, businessmen and immigration experts, released 16 recommendations to stave the tide of illegal immigration. They presented the report to the White House and Congress on Wednesday.

Other suggestions include establishing a governing body in the executive branch to monitor and recommend changes to legal immigration levels to meet labor market needs; integrating the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States; and setting up a "smart border" that combines technology, equipment and personnel to keep illegal immigrants from crossing.

Comprehensive immigration reform must consider border security, employer accountability, labor enforcement, economics, family needs and integration, said Lee Hamilton, a former representative from Indiana and co-chair of the task force. The two bills proposed by the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate fail to do that, he said.

"You cannot cherry-pick in this process in order to have effective immigration policy," Hamilton said. "You cannot solve one element of it and think you've fixed the problem."

The report did not say how much the recommendations would cost or how they should be paid for.

As expected in the heated debate over immigration policy, the suggestions did not sit well with everyone.

Julia Aires, of the Sarasota-Manatee Human Rights Coalition, said she agrees with the recommendation to create a way for illegal immigrants to become U.S. citizens.

She felt uneasy, however, with the proposal to strengthen the president's oversight of immigration policy.

"That sets off all kinds of bells in my mind," Aires said. "What we are experiencing right now is an executive branch that is making decisions without having decisions from other government branches or the public."

Claude Miranda, interim director of the Tampa Bay chapter of the Minutemen Florida Corps, which advocates stricter immigration laws and better enforcement of existing ones, disagreed with the multi-policy approach to immigration reform. The border has to be closed before any meaningful immigration reform can take place, she said.

"Stop the bleeding first," Miranda said. "If you can do that and you can close the border to illegal immigrants, then you can work out everything else."

Miranda also does not favor letting the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants remain and would like to see their resources cut off to deter them from staying. He said illegal immigrants drain taxpayer dollars from much-needed social programs and law enforcement efforts.

"Unless you are an American citizen, you get no social programs, no health care, no welfare, no school. We need to cut off the incentives," he said.

Task force members will trek to cities across the country to present the report and work with legislators to turn the recommendations into law, although they acknowledge that could take a while.

"I would like to see these recommendations introduced into a single bill, even though I know this will not pass this year and probably not even next year," Hamilton said.

"The politics of this are tough."

I like the idea of cutting off social services to those parasites to encourage them to go back home. We cannot afford low income housing for American citizens in Dade County. This would also be good for the schools as there would be less students if illeglas were not allowed to go. The teacher shortage would be over and they would have to bring immigrants in to work as teachers. I live in north Dade County and the majority of the Hispanics and illegals are in the south part of the county. Yet my daughters graduating class had close to half if not slightly more graduates who were illegals. Now think how much that costs taxpayers.
Send them back as soon as possible.

Provisional immigration, more people are let into the country and are allowed to stay in the case that they decide to compete with us.