Senate Immigration Reform Compromise Unrealistic

The Chicago Tribune's Frank James reports that the great Senate immigration reform is full of smoke and mirrors.

According to James, the stillborn reform proposal contains provisions that immigration experts and lawmakers, say are highly unrealistic. James writes that get tough provisions were added merely to placate "tough-on-immigration senators" even though those get tough measures are impractical at best:

Roughly 12 million illegal immigrants would have to pass background checks before receiving immigration papers under the bill. But a federal government bureaucracy already struggling with its workload would perform the checks, and experts say these new demands would overwhelm the system.

In addition, undocumented immigrants who have been in the United States for two to five years, no matter where they live, would have to travel back to a port-of-entry on the U.S. border, such as El Paso, Texas, and go back across the border to apply for guest-worker status. Upon performing this so-called touchback, these several million immigrants could immediately return to their U.S. homes.

To experts who have followed the immigration debate, these examples demonstrate that lawmakers have tossed practical considerations aside to craft a compromise that could pass the Senate. The result is a bill that seems as much an exercise in legislative expediency as an attempt to reform the nation's broken immigration system.

James provides several examples of the touchback idea being ridiculed:

Cammarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank:

It's not meaningful. ... It doesn't pass the straight-face test.

Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association:

It's completely optics, it really is. [. . .] It's kind of like the act of crossing over the border and going out cleanses them and turning around 2 feet over the border and coming back gives them this new status.

Senator Dick Durbin:

I don't quite understand what that move is unless it is for the travel agents of America.

The background checks are a more serious problem. The Citizenship and Immigration Services is already dealing with a large backlog of immigration applications requiring background checks and is dependent on the FBI for criminal checks. The FBI can sometimes take months to complete a background check. You can imagine the impact of adding 12 million applications to the existing backlog of 2 million.

Officials have been known to pressure Citizenship and Immigration Services to speed up the processing of applications. The pressure gets results. In testimony before a House International Relations subcommittee, Michael Maxwell, a former director of the Citizenship and Immigration Services' Office of Security and Investigations, stated that to eliminate its backlog "agency employees often weren't waiting for background checks to be completed before approving immigration applications." He also testified about incentives the agency used:

"I was told as recently as three weeks ago," Maxwell said in written testimony, "that district offices and service centers are holding competitions and offering a variety of rewards, including cash bonuses, time off, movie tickets and gift certificates, to employees . . . with the fastest processing times. The quality of processing is not a factor; only the quantity of closed applications matters."

If the goal of the Senate is to get tough, then instead of the touchback proposal the senators could incorporate provisions of the legislation introduced by Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona. The Cornyn-Kyl legislation allows foreigners to work in the United States when there are no native employees available. Illegal aliens would have to leave the country before being eligible to apply for temporary jobs.

Cornyn-Kyl would also create an unlimited number of a new two-year visa for temporary laborers when no U.S. residents are available, impose severe penalties for employers who hire illegal workers , create a tamper-proof Social Security card, and require workers to have minimum health coverage provided by their home country, their employer or themselves.

There is not a lot to say about the Citizenship and Immigration Services' placing quantity over quality. If that is the way that agency reviews applications we are better off saving the money and skipping the review.

We need a real immigration reform. Not smoke and mirrors labeled reform. As I have posted before, real immigration reform would eliminate incentives for illegal immigration, provide the foriegn workers we need. Such a proposal would have the following features:

A guest worker program admitting two million foreign workers a year. Why so many? In fiscal year 2004 1.1 catch them all. No illegal alien in the U.S. would be allowed to participate. Illegal aliens must return to their home country before being allowed to participate. There must also be provisions, perhaps bonds posted by employers, to ensure guest workers return to their country of origin.

Enactment of the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act passed by the House last December.

Prohibit state and local governments from providing government services to illegal aliens.

Prohibit local governments from enacting "sanctuary" programs for illegal aliens, preventing their employees from inquiring about or reporting an illegal alien's status.

Detain and deport all illegal aliens when discovered. No one seriously contemplates a program to search out and detain illegal aliens, but when discovered they should not be released.

We are a nation of immigrants. The Congress owes us real immigration reform so we can continue to be a nation of immigrants, not illegal aliens.