Obama’s Immigration Account Is Overdue

Immigration reform had been one of Barack Obama’s campaign pledges in 2008, but he had in mind something quite different from what voters assumed. He has made no push for legislation, and his administration instead proceeded to deport 1.2 undocumented immigrants in the last three years, more than any president before him. But Obama has supported the DREAM Act and following its defeat in the Senate — and with the election approaching — signed an executive order just this summer deferring for two years any deportation action against those brought into the United States when children, an end-run around the legislature that was viewed by his opponents as blatantly political and even illegal.

But that was immigration lite. Now the bill has come due for Obama’s full-scale action: One can make the case that the 71% of Hispanics who voted for him — 5.4% of his total — forestalled the moving van pulling up to the White House come January. The share of Latinos that voted Republican dropped from the 40% who had voted for George W. Bush to 27% for Mitt Romney. It’s not all that surprising considering what Romney said while seeking his party’s nomination — that he would repeal the DREAM Act if enacted and encouraged “self-deportation” by illegal Latinos. The illegals can’t vote but those compadres legally in country were bound to take that as something of an ethnic slur and bestow their votes elsewhere.

What augurs well for immigration reform in Obama’s second term is not just that he owes it to those millions of supporters, but that the Republican Party realizes that it could face growing extinction if it doesn’t drop its combative stance against immigrants and instead cultivate that growing voting bloc. The Republican posture has determinedly been to erect border fences, enforce deportation laws, and resist any legislation that would create a path to citizenship for the estimated 11.5 million already here illegally. The party platform even institutionalized self-deportation as policy at the Tampa convention in August, ruling out “any forms of amnesty” and endorsing “humane procedures to encourage illegal aliens to return home voluntarily”.

George W. Bush was the exception, setting forth a broad plan for immigration reform that balanced heightened border enforcement with a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented. And it incorporated the provisions of the DREAM Act, which would have conferred legal residence to those who have been in the U.S. five years or more, and have completed two years of college education or served in the military.

To defeat it, foes hit upon the simplistic catchword “amnesty”, irrespective of the word’s definition, namely, a no-strings pardon for offenses. There were strings aplenty. Bush's path to citizenship was quite rigorous, calling for learning English, the payment of fines, and going to the back of the line behind those from other countries who followed the legal route to immigration, a process that can run to ten years. It is only fair, though, to acknowledge that many found granting residence or citizenship in any form to be deeply unsettling, viewing it as a reward to lawbreakers and an affront to those who patiently waited on line in their home countries. That 2007 bill failed in the Senate, with conservative Republicans breaking with Bush.

The inability of Congress across decades to come to a solution has had the effect of converting a problem of illegality into a humanitarian issue. Millions of Latinos who entered illegally have settled in, are part of their communities, have jobs, and have raised thoroughly American kids.

Both the DREAM Act — thwarted in Congress repeatedly since its introduction in 2001 — and Obama’s executive order benefit those who were brought to the U.S. at a young age through no fault of their own and are otherwise penalized for what their parents did. Neither is a path to citizenship, but without this reprieve, these now grown people cannot find financial aid to attend college nor — if they do manage to get an education — legal employment or even a driver’s license.

Failure by Congress has led states to establish their own foreign policy, first the law passed by Arizona, with all but one provision since struck down by the Supreme Court, and then an even more severe law enacted by Alabama. It should be clear that some national path to legal status must be developed. Those who mindlessly advocate deportation of the millions need to realize that such a “final solution” is not only absurdly impractical, but that such harsh treatment has become outright immoral with the passage of time. By allowing the issue to languish interminably, Congress has only itself to blame.

As for those who seek legally to emigrate to the United States, our country’s policy is turned on its head. Two-thirds enter the country via our overly lenient family unification policy. One family member enters, then applies to bring in all other family members. Other countries base their quotas on skills and criteria pertaining to national needs.

One need look no further than Canada, which has a point system — so many points for technical skills, education level, work history, etc. Time cited a revealing example — a cluster of high-tech companies in Vancouver where the likes of Microsoft have set up research labs to tap a pool of skilled immigrants, almost all of them graduates of U.S. universities. Degrees awarded, we denied them visas and sent them packing — to just over the border, where “they will pay taxes, file patents, make inventions and hire people in Canada” instead of in the U.S. Well done, America.

In contrast, a mere 13% of those granted green cards are admitted to the U.S. on the basis of ability and experience. Despite the outcries of American industry and Silicon Valley, the one program that does bring in people for their skills — H1-B visas — is capped at a level that has been cut in half over the last decade. The ignorati in Congress say these interlopers are taking American jobs, failing to grasp that companies cannot find in the U.S. people qualified for those jobs. Demand runs so high that the annual limit is reached just days after the April 1 quota is posted.

The canard about taking jobs from Americans was put to the test in Alabama where tomato growers watched their crop rot on the vine as pickers fled for home. Americans hired to take their place typically quit after just one day in the fields.

Both for the millions of undocumented already here and for those applying legitimately to come here, everything to do with immigration is broken, perpetuated by wrong-headed members of Congress who refuse to be influenced by reality and who prevent any movement forward.