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This week, the Senate
will resume consideration of S. 1639, the amended and renumbered version
of S. 1348, the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration
Reform Act of 2007. The National Immigration Law Center (NILC)
regretfully opposes this bill as currently written because we believe
that Congress can and should do better.
The complex Senate
proposal includes essential one-time programs, such as backlog
reduction for many families with close relatives now languishing in
untenable immigration backlogs, the DREAM Act, AgJOBS and, although
flawed and precarious, a path to quasi-legal status for most
undocumented immigrants. But unfortunately it combines these
long-sought, one-time relief provisions with devastating changes in the
permanent immigration laws that are almost uniformly
ill-considered and punitive towards immigrants.
If enacted, these
permanent changes would soon recreate the current large undocumented
immigrant population — but make its members even more vulnerable than
they are now. The permanent changes also would leave most other future
immigrants marginalized, with fewer attachments to the nation, fewer
rights, and less ability to fully integrate into the political, social
and economic mainstream. They would move us away from the goals
and principles that immigrants and their allies have fought to achieve
since the beginning of the movement for comprehensive reform: family
unity, worker rights, immigrant integration, and a more realistic future
flow.
Among its flaws, S.
1639 would:
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Channel
undocumented immigrants into a precarious legal status, which would
leave them vulnerable to exploitation by employers, unable to unite
with their closest family members living abroad, and at constant
risk of losing their legal status regardless of how long they have
lived here, how much they have contributed to their communities, or
how deep their roots are here. Moreover, it is likely that a high
percentage of undocumented immigrants would never achieve permanent
residence under this program, given the high costs of maintaining
the status and its many other stringent requirements, such as
maintaining “continuous full-time employment” over many years.
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Create a convoluted
temporary worker program that would separate families, do little to
end the exploitation experienced by current temporary workers, and —
because it would not provide a path to permanent status — would
amount to an enticement to come and remain illegally.
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Create a new and
untested point system favoring well-educated elites with little
connection to the U.S. in place of our nation’s historic reliance on
immigration based on family and employment ties.
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Intensify
immigration enforcement on the border and in the interior in a
manner that would increase detentions, dramatically increase the
penalties for immigration violations (including a 10-year bar from
returning to the U.S. for overstaying a visa by even a single day),
increase state and local enforcement of immigration laws, increase
the missteps that can lead to deportation, and increase the
likelihood of erroneous deportations.
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Impose an
electronic employment eligibility verification system that would
require all workers to get confirmation from the government to work
and that would be built on the foundation of a much smaller
verification system — the Basic Pilot — that has been plagued by
problems, including inaccurate databases, flawed design and employer
misuse of the program.
-
Confiscate many
immigrants’ Social Security contributions by barring immigrants from
receiving credit for the work they performed and taxes they paid
into the system before they obtained employment authorization.
NILC has never before
opposed a bill that includes even the most moderate steps towards
legalization of undocumented immigrants. We have struggled internally
and consulted widely before doing so now, and we greatly respect the
many friends and allies who share our values and goals but have a
different point of view about how to approach this bill. They almost
uniformly agree with us that the current bill needs major surgery.
Some, however, are willing to support passage in the Senate to keep the
issue alive in Congress, in the hope that the needed improvements can be
won in the House or in the House-Senate Conference Committee. Others
believe that the status quo is so intolerable that this bill, even with
its harmful provisions, would be better than nothing. We will continue
to work closely with our friends to improve the bill as much as possible
so long as it remains alive.
But until and unless
such improvements are made, we cannot support this bill. We have
watched as it has become more and more punitive through the process to
date. This downward slide must be reversed, and we do not
believe that this is likely to happen in the House or in Conference
unless we first say no to a proposal that is as contrary to our basic
principles as this one.
For a more detailed
list and explanation of some of the most damaging provisions of S. 1639,
click here.
Josh Bernstein, Director
of Federal Policy
Joan Friedland, Immigration
Policy Director |
