Thread: For those immigration bills, the trouble's in the fine print

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Promises, Promises
For those immigration bills, the trouble's in the fine print
By Angie C. Marek

Posted Sunday, August 6, 2006

To understand the difficulties of getting an immigration bill just right, look no further than the Basic Pilot. To make sure workers are legal, the voluntary electronic program takes information like Social Security numbers, names, and birthdates from employers and checks it against federal records. The get-tough House version of an immigration bill would require that every U.S. firm use an enhanced version of the program within two years; the more moderate Senate version aims for compliance in 18 months. But one official from the Department of Homeland Security told U.S. News last week that both timetables may be unrealistic. And DHS policy chief Stewart Baker suggested in a speech that such a program be phased in over six years.

It was hoped that this sort of minutiae--not to mention the big issues separating the House and Senate versions of the bill--would have been worked out by now in a conference committee. But contentious legislation rarely goes according to plan. So the House, during its August recess, will hold 19 hearings on immigration, one as far afield from the border crisis as Concord, N.H. Meanwhile, the president last week took his third trip to the southern border since April. Cynics would say it's mostly about politics. And experts say the politics are obscuring the important differences between the two bills--and the implementation obstacles that either one would face.

The bills are certainly different beasts. The House bill would make it a federal crime to be in the United States illegally; it provides no path for guest workers to come to the states. The Senate measure would build 370 miles of fence at the border but would also allow some 10 million of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country to eventually legalize their status if they pay back taxes and undergo a background check.

Many say the feasibility of the House proposal depends on how much work the justice system could absorb. If charged as felons, millions of illegal immigrants could wind up with jail time, appeals, and state-funded indigent attorneys provided under law. "It's an unbelievable strain," says Marshall Fitz of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, "on every prison and court in this country."

DHS and the Bush administration endorse the Senate's path-to-legalization approach but worry that the Senate bill won't work. "We may be setting ourselves [up] to repeat the failures of 1986," Baker said last week, referring to that year's Immigration Reform and Control Act. The Simpson-Mazzoli law provided a path to citizenship for those already here but is widely viewed as a failure because its threatened sanctions against employers didn't stop the hiring of illegals or stem their flow from other countries. DHS wants tools neither bill offers--like the right to put a lien on property of employers that won't cough up fines for hiring illegal workers--to make sanctions stick.

Sifting. The biggest potential problem is crucial to the Senate approach: accurately identifying who's already here. The Senate would sift the current population of illegal immigrants into three categories, depending on how long they had lived in the country; only those here more than five years could apply for guest-worker status without leaving U.S. soil. When officials tried to determine who'd been in the country at least five years for the amnesty established by the 1986 law, fraud was rampant. Deborah Meyers of the Migration Policy Institute says it's likely the three-tiered Senate proposal would be "unworkable." U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS agency that would do the sorting, has had a raft of administrative problems of its own, and the more than 15,000-person agency would need to swell by up to 25,000 to handle the new workload.

In July, Rep. Mike Pence and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republicans, floated another set of immigration proposals that took cues from both the House and Senate bills. Their proposal would depend on private companies to set up screening centers in other countries, taking some of the burden off DHS. But their approach would require that all 12 million illegal immigrants go home briefly before returning to the United States as guest workers. That might be tough, too. Just as tough as getting the House and the Senate to agree. Or getting any sort of immigration reform to actually work.

Everyone keeps talking about how far apart the house and senate immigration bills are. Do you think that was done on purpose?

Personally I don't see why there has to be a comprehensive bill. By 'comprehensive' it gets too involved, too expensive and unenforceable. Why not do the border endorcement first? I know it probably won't ever be totally secured but we know it could be a lot better with more serious fencing and agents. Tackle the issue a step at a time. Second, address the issue of employers who hire illegals. Employers are the main magnet anyway.

I don't see the house and senate ever agreeing on a comprehensive bill. And a bill that is over 700 pgs has to be too full of who-know-what in it. Taking it in steps seems more sensible to me.