Two Sides of the Same Coin
The Connection Between Legal and Illegal Immigration

February 2006

By James R. Edwards, Jr.

http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/back106.html
(for full story go to site)

Recommendations

As the data show, mass legal and illegal immigration are closely tied. The following recommendations would help remedy the problems that presently derive from legal and illegal immigration being two sides of the same coin.

Reduce legal immigration. If illegal immigration is to be curbed or stopped, then legal immigration must decrease. The volume of aliens enticed to immigrate, under the law or against the law, is too great. The system is too open-ended, creating countless opportunities for fraud and abuse.

Overall legal immigration quotas should be halved, at least. The statutory capitation is supposed to be about 700,000; about 300,000 a year more closely resembles America's historical average.

About 200,000 to 300,000 immigrants a year must be set with a "hard" cap; no one should be exempt from the cap. The maximum level should include refugees and asylees, as well as immigrants and their nuclear family members. Every fifth year should be a sabbatical year, in which no new immigrant visas are accepted or processed. Rather, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security should use this respite to ensure immigrant accountability and to ferret out fraud and abuse.

Set better immigrant priorities. Building upon the recommendations of the Jordan Commission, extended family immigrant visa categories should be eliminated: U.S. citizens' adult children, married or unmarried; U.S. citizens' adult brothers and sisters; and grown children of lawful permanent residents. The visa lottery should go, too, an action taken by a large bipartisan majority of the U.S. House of Representatives in December 2005 when it passed an amendment by Rep. Robert Goodlatte to H.R. 4437 (See also Rep. Goodlatte's H.R. 1219.).

Moreover, a new immigrant priority selection system should emphasize an individual's qualifications.48 The needs of the U.S. economy should have foremost priority for immigrant selection. Further, in order to qualify for an immigrant visa, an individual should have to merit a certain number of points under a modified point system. A would-be immigrant (except for minor children), in order to gain points, must have attained no less than a high school education (with higher education winning him more points), be proficient in the English language, be literate, possess demonstrable, verifiable in-demand job skills or superior talent, and have at least some minimum amount of financial assets satisfactory to ensure self-support.

Before any immigrant visa is issued, an immigrant or sponsor should have to show proof of purchase for the immigrant of generous health insurance, an adequate amount of disability and life insurance, and automobile insurance, if he owns a vehicle or expects to drive. The only family reunification considerations should be rejoining husband and wife, and parents with their minor children.

Ensure allegiance to America. To ensure that an immigrant has the right motives in seeking to immigrate, that his intent is to leave his native land, culture, and extended family behind once and for all, and to become an American (that is, to live up to the American ideal of immigration), the egregious Supreme Court ruling that allowed dual citizenship and dual nationality should be overturned, by constitutional amendment if necessary.49 Dual citizenship and dual nationality provide foreigners a vested interest in two nations. Such split loyalties to sovereign nations is unfair to each nation and to fellow citizens. Dual citizenship grants immigrants an unfair, privileged status not available to native-born Americans. It undermines one's ability to fully commit to his new homeland. It devalues the naturalization oath, in which one's words swear full allegiance to the United States.

Reduce unrealistic expectations. Higher standards for and more realistic expectations among potential immigrants would reduce the problems associated with technical eligibility for an immigrant visa based solely on a distant relation. This could be advanced in a number of ways.

Parents of naturalized immigrants should not be eligible for an immigrant visa. Rather, elderly parents should be limited to renewable nonimmigrant visas of moderate duration, as in Rep. Tom Tancredo's H.R. 3700. Parents' sponsors should be required to prove income of at least the median U.S. income for a household the size of the sponsor's, including the prospective long-term visitor parents.

In addition, the sponsor must prove that he has secured a generous health care insurance policy for the parent or parents he seeks to bring to the United States, paid in full for the duration of the initial visa term. Parents' nonimmigrant visa renewal should require proof that the sponsor and the parents have abided by the terms of binding affidavits of support and visas, respectively, and that health insurance is prepaid in full for the next visa term.

Similarly, the spouses and minor children of LPRs could gain admission into the country as nonimmigrants and at the full expense and on the full responsibility of the sponsoring immigrant (similar to the approach in H.R. 3700). This should include health and other insurance, as well as median or higher household income. Immediate family members of LPRs could qualify for immigrant visas once the sponsor naturalizes.

The law should specify that spouse only means heterosexual husband and wife, not homosexual couples married or otherwise or other cohabitating combinations.

Insofar as family reunification remains a priority in U.S. immigration policy, the nuclear family of an immigrant who himself possesses skills, education, and English proficiency should be the extent of it. That is, a decision to immigrate to the United States should bear the full expectation that the immigrant is making a fundamental break from his homeland, extended family, and native culture. And it should only provide for the unity of husband, wife, and minor children.

The only hope or expectation of reunifying with relatives beyond their own nuclear family units should be to return to them. "Family reunification," especially of entire family trees, should not imply a single direction toward the United States.

When an adult leaves his native land to emigrate to America, he or she makes a decision to be separated from brothers or sisters, parents, and adult children. We realize that this is a difficult decision in many cases, but ultimately, it is a decision that the immigrant has made.50 (emphasis added)

Ensure nonimmigrant compliance and return. Nonimmigrants should be required to maintain stronger ties to their home country. Except for those here for longer terms, such as citizens' parents and LPRs' immediate family as outlined above, nonimmigrants must understand that their visit to the United States is intentionally temporary, and that their admission is based on strict terms and conditions.

Noncompliance with temporary visa terms should be dealt with severely. Overstaying an expired visa should carry criminal penalties. The law should treat visa overstayers the same as those who sneak across the border. With up to half of illegal immigration attributable to visa overstays, no defensible distinction can any longer be made between these two circumstances of illegality. Too much willful lawbreaking takes place, with temporary visas simply a means to permanent immigration -- and being an intending immigrant is reason to deny someone a visa.

Most nonimmigrants (such as students, H-1B workers, L-1 intracompany transfers, etc.) should not be accompanied by dependents. Half a nonimmigrant's time should be spent in the home country, and visa terms should be no longer than one year. For instance, if a work visa allows six months in the United States, the next six months should be in the home country. Time in the United States on a typical nonimmigrant visa should be matched by an equal period out of the country.

Nor should nonimmigrants be allowed to adjust status to another nonimmigrant category or to immigrant within the United States. Adjustment of status should become something that only takes place abroad, and only following rigorous investigation and complete assurance that previous visa terms have been honored and that all requirements for the new visa are met.

"Birthright citizenship" should be eliminated.51 This would remove one more means of fraud and abuse from our immigration system. Ending the ability of illegal aliens or nonimmigrants to birth an automatic U.S. citizen baby here would take away an important means of gaming the system.

Enlist foreign governments' cooperation. Immigration to the United States by a foreign nation's citizens may benefit that government, principally by monetary remittances. Some foreign governments, most notably Mexico, foster illegal immigration to unlawfully maximize those benefits. Such governments should be forced to curb illegal immigration.

Adopting a policy such as Rep. David Weldon's Truth in Immigration, or TRIM, Act (H.R. 4317) would effect such an incentive. This legislation would require an annual estimate of the illegal alien population using Census Bureau data, by nation of origin, and restrict a sending nation's legal immigration by a corresponding level. In combination with the recommended reductions in legal immigration, this approach would give foreign countries such as Mexico a huge incentive to keep their nationals from breaking America's immigration laws.

Other foreign policy tools, from foreign aid to trade agreements, should be conditioned on how thoroughly a foreign government cooperates in U.S. immigration enforcement and repatriation and, importantly, how well it produces real results in cutting illegal immigration from that nation.

Go slow on any guestworker plans. The global economy has become more integrated, and more corporations are adopting business models that involve international labor flows. Yet, such private interests should hardly be allowed to dictate public policy. While a new guestworker program may be conceivable in principle, it represents a tenuous course with respect to its immigration and other consequences. Foremost, policymakers must keep in mind (and remind their corporate constituents) that America is much more than a market; she is a nation, a society, a body politic.

The experience of guestworker programs, in the United States and elsewhere, has been fraught with unintended consequences. In many cases, such programs have resulted in permanent residents (legal and illegal), not guests at all. The economic consequences have proven detrimental to the most vulnerable native-born workers. The social consequences have proven harmful, even dangerous, as with insurgent radical Islam in the United States, Great Britain, France, and other parts of the West in recent times.

The risks of a massive new guestworker program should be fully considered before moving forward. The risks from hundreds of thousands more foreigners being processed for temporary visas by an already inept, outmanned, fraud-ridden immigration bureaucracy in the Departments of State and Homeland Security is folly. This bureaucracy could never handle the added workload. At a minimum, legal immigration levels, both permanent and temporary, should be scaled back by many more than the new program would admit for entry each year.

Enforce the law. Faithful enforcement of all our immigration laws must be fully achieved. This certainly must happen and be in place for several years before any guestworker program goes into effect. That is, every alien's background must be checked, every alien's eligibility for the immigration or other benefits for which he is applying must be confirmed before benefits are accorded, every case of suspected fraud (immigration fraud, benefits fraud, welfare fraud, marriage fraud, document fraud, identity fraud) involving an alien must be vigorously and routinely investigated, absconders, visa overstayers, and failed applicants must face the real likelihood of capture and prosecution, all this and more must become the norm. This is necessary, with or without a new guestworker program.

Illegal aliens should expect punishment, not reward, for lawbreaking; thus, steadily increasing the level of immigration enforcement to the point of routinization, as the 9/11 Commission recommended, is necessary and desirable. Since most illegal aliens present little national security risk, allowing their continued presence amidst continually building pressure and increasing likelihood of being caught will effect a gradual decrease of the illegal alien population by attrition, with little danger. The most promising solution for reducing the number of illegal aliens with the least impact on the economy -- attrition -- is the routine enforcement of all immigration laws.

Also, the law should make plain that immigration offenses relating to illegal presence (e.g., entry without inspection, visa overstay) constitute continuing offenses.

No more amnesties. America's experience with amnesties has shown that they only make things worse. Amnesties beget more illegal immigration. Even politicians' proposals of legalization prompt more illegal immigration. The only conceivable type of amnesty that could remotely be justified is a limited "exit amnesty." This would let illegal aliens leave the country, once and for all, without paying the full penalty due for their lawlessness (i.e., face criminal prosecution for immigration violations).

Conclusion
The data show that while legal immigration in the United States has increased since 1965 at an exorbitant rate, illegal immigration has risen right alongside it. Further, the actual levels of illegal immigration are masked by a series of amnesties -- the largest and most notorious one enacted in 1986 -- and the documented experience of many immigrants who fail to abide by the law and come to the United States unlawfully before their turn for a green card arrives, but whose ultimate legalization shows up on the legal immigration ledger.

Another compelling fact is that nations that send large numbers of immigrants to America tend also to send sizeable shares of the illegal alien population. Mexico is the most prominent example of this phenomenon. However, other Western Hemisphere countries number among the largest sources of both legal and illegal immigration.

Eastern Hemisphere nations that account for high levels of legal immigration -- China, the Philippines, India, Korea -- also are responsible for much of America's illegal immigration problem. Vietnam appears to be an exception, despite a post-Vietnam War spike in Vietnamese admissions.

Because of the inextricable link between legal and illegal immigration, there is no way to continue massive legal immigration and reduce illegal immigration. To cut illegal immigration, legal immigration must be curtailed. To assert otherwise attempts to maintain a fiction that is unsustainable, judging from fact and
experience.