Five myths about the immigration ‘line'

By Daniel M. Kowalski, Published: February 1

Daniel M. Kowalski is a senior fellow at the Institute for Justice and Journalism and the editor of Bender’s Immigration Bulletin. He practices citizenship and visa law in Austin at the Fowler Law Firm.

by Daniel M. Kowalski - The “line” of people seeking American citizenship or legal status has become an integral part of our immigration debate. In a speech Tuesday, President Obama said that undocumented immigrants should go to “the back of the line” behind those who are going through the process legally. The immigration reform blueprint presented a day earlier by a group of senators contained the same requirement. But misinformation about this line abounds.

1. There is one line.

The federal government has issued more than 1 million green cards per year, on average, for the past five years. But there are several lines — which one immigrants end up in depends on whether they have a job or family in the United States.

There are four family-based categories for many relatives, called “preferences,” and five based on employment. The number of green cards issued through each is limited by country of origin, but there is no cap for “immediate relatives” — spouses of U.S. citizens, U.S. citizens’ unmarried children under age 21 and parents of adult U.S. citizens over 21.

Immigrants and their lawyers track their “place in line” in the State Department’s monthly Visa Bulletin, which lists cut-off dates for each preference and country. For example, the February 2013 bulletin lists EB-1 “priority workers” — superstars in their fields, such as rock stars and neurosurgeons — as “current,” meaning they are likely to wait just the four to six months it takes to prepare visa paperwork and schedule a consular interview.

2. Anyone can get in line.

Most of the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants would love to get in line if they could. They remain without papers because they don’t fit into any visa preference or because the wait is just too long. Without a relative to petition for them under a family-based preference or a job that fits into an employment-based category, there’s no line to enter.

Millions of low-wage service, industrial, manufacturing and construction jobs are filled by unauthorized workers who don’t qualify for visas because the Labor Department won’t certify a shortage of “U.S. workers” — citizens, green-card holders, refugees and others with work authorization — in those occupations. The department claims there are plenty of U.S. workers available, but talk to the owner of a landscaping company who spends thousands of dollars annually on lawyers to secure temporary H-2B visas for gardeners, and she’ll tell you that she can’t get American workers to apply for the jobs or stick with them. (One could argue that the prevailing wage for landscapers — roughly $12 per hour now in Central Texas — is the problem.)

3. Once you are in line, the wait is not too long.

In some visa categories, the wait can be decades. If the line is too long, would-be immigrants might break the law by, for example, sneaking over borders or overstaying student visas. People can’t be expected to wait decades for permission to work or live near their loved ones.

The Visa Bulletin provides a rough prediction of how long the wait will be in any given line. However, the fixed number of visas for each preference, plus increasing demand, ensure that the lines only get longer. For example, one family-based preference — for brothers and sisters of adult U.S. citizens — for immigrants from the Philippines is stuck at June 1, 1989. That means that a Filipino U.S. citizen trying to get her sister legal status would have had to file her petition on or before June 1, 1989, for the petition to be heard today. Based on monthly calculations of supply and demand, the visa office moves this cutoff date forward only a few days per month. The waiting period could be 30 years or more for these Filipino siblings.

4. If you broke the law, it’s only fair that you go to the back of the line.

If the line is relatively short and an immigrant has not lived long in the United States, that might be fair. But if, as Obama has pointed out, an immigrant was brought here illegally as a child, faces a decades-long wait and knows no other country, what’s fair about going “home” to a nation she doesn’t remember to wait for permission to return?

Our immigration policy runs counter to our national ethos of civil and human rights. Over the past century, we have come to believe that discrimination on the basis of race, gender, faith and sexual orientation — things that cannot be changed or that we cannot demand be changed — is morally wrong. Yet the Immigration and Nationality Act, by setting quotas on how many people can come from certain countries, is another form of discrimination.

5. There’s no way to make the line shorter.

For more than 100 years, our country had no numerical visa quotas. Every limit we have put on the number of green cards has been arbitrary, driven by fear more than facts. In 1882, for example, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred almost all Chinese from immigration or naturalization. This shameful, race-based law was not repealed until 1943.

In 1921, Congress enacted the first quotas based on the racist conclusions of the Dillingham Commission Report, limiting admission of immigrants to a fixed percentage of the foreign-born from each country who were already in the United States as of 1910. Later, the date was pushed back to 1890. This formula favored those of British descent and discriminated against Southern and Eastern Europeans. These quotas were not abolished until 1965.

For comprehensive immigration reform to work, Congress will have to substantially increase the number of green cards available each year in every visa preference. This may mean, for example, allowing a one-time surge of visas to wipe out the backlog, then doubling or tripling some quotas. If we keep our system as it is, we will be spending more on fences, drones, border guards, immigration courts and deportation officers.

Article from The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-immigration-line/2013/02/01/d30cf73e-6bb8-11e2-bd36-c0fe61a205f6_story.html

Transcript: Bipartisan Framework for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Jordan Fabian, January 28, 2013    abcnews.go.com

From Senators Chuck Schumer, John McCain, Dick Durbin, Lindsey Graham, Robert Menendez, Marco Rubio, Michael Bennet, and Jeff Flake

Introduction:

We recognize that our immigration system is broken. And while border security has improved significantly over the last two Administrations, we still don't have a functioning immigration system. This has created a situation where up to 11 million undocumented immigrants are living in the shadows. Our legislation acknowledges these realities by finally committing the resources needed to secure the border, modernize and streamline our current legal immigration system, while creating a tough but fair legalization program for individuals who are currently here. We will ensure that this is a successful permanent reform to our immigration system that will not need to be revisited.

Four Basic Legislative Pillars:

1. Create a tough but fair path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants currently living in the United States that is contingent upon securing our borders and tracking whether legal immigrants have left the country when required;

2. Reform our legal immigration system to better recognize the importance of characteristics that will help build the American economy and strengthen American families;

3. Create an effective employment verification system that will prevent identity theft and end the hiring of future unauthorized workers; and,

4. Establish an improved process for admitting future workers to serve our nation's workforce needs, while simultaneously protecting all workers.

1. Creating a Path to Citizenship for Unauthorized Immigrants Already Here that is Contingent Upon Securing the Border and Combating Visa Overstays

- Our legislation will provide a tough, fair, and practical roadmap to address the status of unauthorized immigrants in the United States that is contingent upon our success in securing our borders and addressing visa overstays.

- To fulfill the basic governmental function of securing our borders, we will continue the increased efforts of the Border Patrol by providing them with the latest technology, infrastructure, and personnel needed to prevent, detect, and apprehend every unauthorized entrant.

- Additionally, our legislation will increase the number of unmanned aerial vehicles and surveillance equipment, improve radio interoperability and increase the number of agents at and between ports of entry. The purpose is to substantially lower the number of successful illegal border crossings while continuing to facilitate commerce.

- We will strengthen prohibitions against racial profiling and inappropriate use of force, enhance the training of border patrol agents, increase oversight, and create a mechanism to ensure a meaningful opportunity for border communities to share input, including critiques.

- Our legislation will require the completion of an entry-exit system that tracks whether all persons entering the United States on temporary visas via airports and seaports have left the country as required by law.

- We recognize that Americans living along the Southwest border are key to recognizing and understanding when the border is truly secure. Our legislation will create a commission comprised of governors, attorneys general, and community leaders living along the Southwest border to monitor the progress of securing our border and to make a recommendation regarding when the bill's security measures outlined in the legislation are completed.

- While these security measures are being put into place, we will simultaneously require those who came or remained in the United States without our permission to register with the government. This will include passing a background check and settling their debt to society by paying a fine and back taxes, in order to earn probationary legal status, which will allow them to live and work legally in the United States. Individuals with a serious criminal background or others who pose a threat to our national security will be ineligible for legal status and subject to deportation. Illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes face immediate deportation.

- We will demonstrate our commitment to securing our borders and combating visa overstays by requiring our proposed enforcement measures be complete before any immigrant on probationary status can earn a green card.

- Current restrictions preventing non-immigrants from accessing federal public benefits will also apply to lawful probationary immigrants.

- Once the enforcement measures have been completed, individuals with probationary legal status will be required to go to the back of the line of prospective immigrants, pass an additional background check, pay taxes, learn English and civics, demonstrate a history of work in the United States, and current employment, among other requirements, in order to earn the opportunity to apply for lawful permanent residency. Those individuals who successfully complete these requirements can eventually earn a green card.

- Individuals who are present without lawful status - not including people within the two categories identified below - will only receive a green card after every individual who is already waiting in line for a green card, at the time this legislation is enacted, has received their green card. Our purpose is to ensure that no one who has violated America's immigration laws will receive preferential treatment as they relate to those individuals who have complied with the law.

- Our legislation also recognizes that the circumstances and the conduct of people without lawful status are not the same, and cannot be addressed identically.

For instance, individuals who entered the United States as minor children did not knowingly choose to violate any immigration laws. Consequently, under our proposal these individuals will not face the same requirements as other individuals in order to earn a path to citizenship.

Similarly, individuals who have been working without legal status in the United States agricultural industry have been performing very important and difficult work to maintain America's food supply while earning subsistence wages. Due to the utmost importance in our nation maintaining the safety of its food supply, agricultural workers who commit to the long term stability of our nation's agricultural industries will be treated differently than the rest of the undocumented population because of the role they play in ensuring that Americans have safe and secure agricultural products to sell and consume. These individuals will earn a path to citizenship through a different process under our new agricultural worker program.

2. Improving our Legal Immigration System and Attracting the World's Best and Brightest

- The development of a rational legal immigration system is essential to ensuring America's future economic prosperity. Our failure to act is perpetuating a broken system which sadly discourages the world's best and brightest citizens from coming to the United States and remaining in our country to contribute to our economy. This failure makes a legal path to entry in the United States insurmountably difficult for well-meaning immigrants. This unarguably discourages innovation and economic growth. It has also created substantial visa backlogs which force families to live apart, which incentivizes illegal immigration.

- Our new immigration system must be more focused on recognizing the important characteristics which will help build the American economy and strengthen American families. Additionally, we must reduce backlogs in the family and employment visa categories so that future immigrants view our future legal immigration system as the exclusive means for entry into the United States.

- The United States must do a better job of attracting and keeping the world's best and brightest. As such, our immigration proposal will award a green card to immigrants who have received a PhD or Master's degree in science, technology, engineering, or math from an American university. It makes no sense to educate the world's future innovators and entrepreneurs only to ultimately force them to leave our country at the moment they are most able to contribute to our economy.

3. Strong Employment Verification

- We recognize that undocumented immigrants come to the United States almost exclusively for jobs. As such, dramatically reducing future illegal immigration can only be achieved by developing a tough, fair, effective and mandatory employment verification system. An employment verification system must hold employers accountable for knowingly hiring undocumented workers and make it more difficult for unauthorized immigrants to falsify documents to obtain employment. Employers who knowingly hire unauthorized workers must face stiff fines and criminal penalties for egregious offenses.

- We believe the federal government must provide U.S. employers with a fast and reliable method to confirm whether new hires are legally authorized to work in the United States. This is essential to ensure the effective enforcement of immigration laws.

- Our proposal will create an effective employment verification system which prevents identity theft and ends the hiring of future unauthorized workers. We believe requiring prospective workers to demonstrate both legal status and identity, through non-forgeable electronic means prior to obtaining employment, is essential to an employee verification system; and,

- The employee verification system in our proposal will be crafted with procedural safeguards to protect American workers, prevent identity theft, and provide due process protections.

4. Admitting New Workers and Protecting Workers' Rights

- The overwhelming majority of the 327,000 illegal entrants apprehended by CBP in FY2011 were seeking employment in the United States. We recognize that to prevent future waves of illegal immigration a humane and effective system needs to be created for these immigrant workers to enter the country and find employment without seeking the aid of human traffickers or drug cartels.

- Our proposal will provide businesses with the ability to hire lower-skilled workers in a timely manner when Americans are unavailable or unwilling to fill those jobs.

Our legislation would:

- Allow employers to hire immigrants if it can be demonstrated that they were unsuccessful in recruiting an American to fill an open position and the hiring of an immigrant will not displace American workers;

- Create a workable program to meet the needs of America's agricultural industry, including dairy to find agricultural workers when American workers are not available to fill open positions;

- Allow more lower-skilled immigrants to come here when our economy is creating jobs, and fewer when our economy is not creating jobs;

- Protect workers by ensuring strong labor protections; and,

- Permit workers who have succeeded in the workplace and contributed to their communities over many years to earn green cards.

Article of ABC News-Univision:
http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/News/transcript-bipartisan-framework-comprehensive-immigration-reform/story?id=18330912

A Bold Outspoken Leader

My commentary for this coming week about a speech made by Richard Trumka in Cleveland. I believe it is significant because in the last national debate on immigration reform, the labor movement was missing in action. Now the President of the AFL-CIO is a major supporter of reform.

Blessings/Bendiciones,
Fidel "Butch" Montoya

A Bold Outspoken Leader
By Fidel "Butch" Montoya
El Semanario 6/23/2010

Last week, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke before the City Club of Cleveland, giving a major speech calling on union members from the economically hard hit rust-belt region to embrace comprehensive immigration reform.

Trumka acknowledged the economic predicament Cleveland union workers have endured due to the poor economy and great recession.

"Cleveland embodies both the consequences of our failed economic policies of the last three decades - and our hope for a different future. The economic crisis has hit hard here -116,000 lost jobs in the last decade in Cuyahoga County. Eighty-six thousand home foreclosures last year alone."

It was not only unusual for Trumka to give this speech supporting immigration reform in Cleveland in front of union members and business leaders, it demonstrated his exceptional leadership abilities to speak out on an issue he believes must be heard.

He criticized the low wage, high consumption society that imports more and more of what we consume and that it was time to embrace a new national strategy for a global economy.

But for our economy to change means acknowledging that the economic policies of the past have not worked and that it is going to take "world class workforce skills and workforce rights and trade policies that serve the interests of the American people."

Trumka made it clear that in order to have this national narrative about changing our economic strategy, a national introspective look at our personal opinions and political beliefs is necessary.

"Today I also want to talk to you about what may seem like a strange subject--immigration--because it is patently clear that we cannot talk about our national workforce strategy unless we face head-on our own contradictions, hypocrisy and history on immigration."

Trumka spoke of the bigotry and racism his family faced when they first came to this country. "My parents fled poverty and war from different corners of Europe. We were the last hired and first fired, the people who did the hardest and most dangerous work, the people whose pay got shorted because we didn't know the language and were afraid to complain."

He made the case that undocumented immigrants are facing the same intolerance his family faced years ago. Trumka said immigrant families who came to America to find their dream, are now biased of undocumented immigrants seeking the very same dream they wanted in America.

"And yet today I hear from working people who should know better, some in my own family - that those immigrants are taking our jobs, ruining our country. Haven't we been here before?

When I hear that kind of talk, I want to say, did an immigrant move your plant overseas? Did an immigrant take away your pension? Or cut your health care? Did an immigrant destroy American workers' right to organize? Or crash the financial system? Did immigrant workers write the trade laws that have done so much harm to Ohio?"

Trumka said the American Dream brought scores of people to this country, so that "all of us will have a fair portion of the good things in life. Time to be with our families. The chances for our children to get an education and the opportunity to make their own way in the world. Laws that protect us, not oppress us."

Trumka said it was time for immigration reform because employers like cheap labor, like workers who are afraid to organize, afraid to complain when they are mistreated or robbed of their wages and benefits. Borders that are "open enough to ensure an endless supply of socially and legally powerless cheap labor."

Outlining reasons for immigration reform, Trumka made it clear that as members of the union movement, it was time for workers to unite under a banner of fair wages, right to organize, right to work without fear of retaliation, and the right for a pathway that will allow undocumented immigrants to be part of our country from day one.

Trumka spoke passionately of how our country has turned to hate and dissension because of the lack of compelling moral leadership; allowing the voices of hate to feed the public's anger, pain and desperation. "We see today a dangerous drift toward a politics of hate."

Unless our leaders become advocates of change and push for a progressive perspective on the economy that respects workers, the voices of hate will only continue to breed and drag our country in the wrong direction.

Therein lays the problem. We need more leaders like Trumka who are not afraid to speak out to audiences who have used the undocumented immigrant as the scapegoat. The activists of hate have taken advantage of this economic recession to prey upon the anger, depression, and unemployment.

President Obama has not consistently called upon the "haters and racists" to put an end to their bigotry. There is no moral leadership from the President for comprehensive immigration reform. He has not even made comprehensive immigration reform a priority for his administration, much less articulating a political strategy pushing for legislation.

In fact, Obama has prioritized immigration enforcement concentrating on families, not those with criminal backgrounds.

Other politicians are missing in action as well when it comes to advocating for immigration reform or for calling an end to the hate and racism. Thank God, faith leaders have taken forceful steps to call upon the President for immigration reform and have condemned the unjust laws and hate in our country.

Richard Trumka has taken on a significant role as a leader and it was very bold for him to take his message into the heartland of the rust belt. As a strong American, he understands what is necessary so all can achieve the American Dream.

"We as a nation must be true to our better selves - employers must not make a buck on the backs of workers who live in fear of deportation, and workers must stand together in the workplace for good jobs, safe jobs, health care for all, and retirement security we can count on. And so when we talk about making the American Dream real, the labor movement stands for making it real for all of us who do the work of our country. All of us - no matter what we look like, who we choose to love, or where we come from. Surely there we can find common ground."

Our political leaders must change the dialogue and alter the national tone and narrative on comprehensive immigration reform. The voices of hate and dissension will only prey upon people who fail to realize undocumented immigrants only want what our immigrant families wanted and worked for, the American Dream.

http://www.elsemanario.net/
6/23/2010

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fidel "Butch" Montoya is Director of H. S. Power and Light Ministries - Latino Faith Initiative. He was the Vice President/News Director of KUSA - TV Channel 9 News from 1985-1990, and worked at the news station for 24 years. Montoya also served as Deputy Mayor of City and County of Denver from 1995-1999; as the Manager of Public Safety for the City and County of Denver from 1994-2000. Montoya was Licensed to preach in 1972. He serves on the Executive Council for the Hispanic Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~