Issues: Immigration

1/16/2007

The U.S. immigration system is broken. Comprehensive reform of the U.S. immigration system is needed to create an orderly, fair, and administratively feasible process for admitting new immigrants, regularizing the status of immigrants already in the country, providing a path to citizenship, respecting the basic human rights of all immigrants, and assisting communities and regions that receive large numbers of new immigrants.

Comprehensive immigration reform legislation should include the following elements:

• An orderly, equitable, and efficient system for admitting new immigrants legally, incorporating respect for civil and human rights;

• A fair and reasonable path to permanent residency and citizenship for all immigrants, whether they arrived initially as immigrants or temporary workers, or whether they have been living and working here without legal documentation;

• Support for families divided by immigration laws and realities; and

• Enforcement of fair labor laws and health and safety standards in the workplace, regardless of the immigration status of the workers.

The goal of new legislation should be to articulate and apply a social, economic, and human rights policy rather than a national security policy. In recent debates, because the individuals responsible for the attacks in 2001 were apparently admitted to the United States under our immigration system, U.S. government leaders have tended to characterize U.S. immigration policy as a national security problem. As a result, according to immigration researchers at Princeton, the border between the U.S. and Mexico is now “perhaps the most militarized frontier between two nations at peace anywhere in the world.” The increased militarization has not reduced the number of people crossing the border, but has diverted the flow of new migrants to less populated areas and made the return of immigrants to Mexico less likely -- with the predictable result that the number of undocumented workers in the U.S. has increased dramatically.

The failure has had a huge impact on local communities in every state – not just border states – that have received large numbers of immigrants in the past several years. Government policy should not exclude immigrants from social programs and educational programs for which they would otherwise be eligible, and should support programs to mitigate the social, economic, and environmental impact on communities and regions where immigrants concentrate. Denying benefits to immigrants creates pressures in these communities and may impose an unfair burden on state and local governments.

A new immigration policy should establish an orderly, equitable, and efficient system that unites willing workers with willing employers, respects the rights of all immigrants and workers, and provides a rational and fair path to citizenship.