Immigration Bills Could Split Families

By Sean Garcia

Washington Office on Latin America

Immigration reform has been flooding the headlines for the past months, and the debate shows no signs of stopping. Politicians are making grand posturing statements, and migrants are getting trapped in the middle. Despite the national attention to this issue however, most people are unaware of the details in this debate — details that will have a significant impact on the workability of this legislation, and on communities around the country.

In December 2005, the House of Representatives passed HR 4437, known as the Sensenbrenner bill (for its sponsor Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI)). Though this bill is being discussed as an immigration bill, it takes an enforcement-only approach, meaning that it takes no steps to address the legal status of approximately 12 million undocumented workers currently living in the U.S. It also avoids any program to legalize and regularize future flows of migrants, commonly discussed as a guest worker program. The content of the bill instead proposes dramatic increases in the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, including:

• construction of over 700 miles of fencing, which would effectively seal off the border from the Pacific Ocean to the Arizona-New Mexico border. Despite the massive effort, 1300 miles of border would still be left open.
• hiring of thousands of extra Border Patrol agents, which would make the agency the largest law enforcement agency in the country.
• installation of high-technology tools like video surveillance, motion detectors, and biometric identification. While most Americans oppose this Orwellian approach in their own communities, legislators seem content to impose it on the 6 million U.S. residents of the border region.
• increase penalties against employers who hire undocumented workers, and make undocumented presence in the U.S. and providing assistance (humanitarian or otherwise) a federal felony punishable with jail time.

While the Senate has generally been seen to be taking a more moderate approach, including provisions to give undocumented workers access to legalization and to establish a guest worker program, the amendment process has made it a much more onerous bill. The Senate bill (S.2611) was passed in late May 2006. Its main provisions now include:

• legalization for some of the undocumented workers living in the U.S. However, the bill separates out migrants into three categories based on how long they have been in the country, rather than considering whether these individuals are contributing to U.S. society. It would likely give access to legal papers to only 8 million of the total 12 million undocumented workers in the country, excluding one-third of the population it aims to help.
• a guest worker program that would allow future workers to enter the country legally. Again, there is a catch – the program will be limited to only 200,000 visas per year. With official estimates of the current undocumented flow at 500,000 people per year, this guest worker program would not help 60% of the targeted population, leaving many migrants to continue down the life-threatening routes of illegal entry in the desert.
• continued militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. While not as severe as the House proposal, the Senate bill includes close to 400 miles of fencing, increased Border Patrol staffing, use of the National Guard at the border, and similar provisions for the use of high-tech infrastructure.

With immigration bills now passed by the House and the Senate, both chambers are responsible for negotiating the differences between the two different bills to create one, final version. The negotiation process, known as a conference committee, is currently stalled over procedural issues, but it is expected that a conference will begin around the 4th of July vacation period.

The two-ton gorilla in the room hanging over these deliberations, in addition to the ideological differences between the two chambers, is the upcoming November elections. While Senate negotiators are insisting that they will hold firm on the need for legalization and guest worker provisions, they need to maintain the support from the republicans who support reform (they are a minority of the party in the Senate) in order to hold firm on their position. As negotiations drag closer and closer to the elections, republicans may feel increasing political pressure from the party and the White House to produce an immigration reform bill, regardless of its positions on legalization and guest worker provisions, in order to produce a victory on the issue before the elections. This could be disastrous for immigration advocates, as it would favor the production of an enforcement-only or immigration reform-lite outcome. As a result, many pro-immigrant activists are now hoping for a stalemate in the conference committee, which would mean that Congress would tackle immigration reform again next year – hopefully in a less politicized climate.

Given the provisions in both the House and Senate bills, stalemate is looking like an increasingly attractive outcome. The militarization of the border raises serious civil liberty and private concerns for the millions of Americans who live at the border. They are increasingly vocal in asking why they should be asked to live in a militarized society when Americans across the country would never accept these same conditions in their communities. And many border activists point to the decade-long failure of these same militarization policies to deter or slow the flow of migrants across our border. While there is a solid recognition of the need for greater security at the U.S.-Mexico border, many experts believe that legalizing the flow of migrants will free up the Border Patrol best, so that they can focus on serious threats to national security.

Immigrant communities are also increasingly vocal in their opposition to both the House and Senate bills. With the belief that the legalization program could split families based on how long each family member has been in the U.S., opposition is growing. There are also concerns that this plan will drive migrants who do not qualify for legalization deeper into the shadows, making them more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

Business leaders are similarly concerned about the current language. With only two-thirds of the current undocumented workforce eligible for legalization, employers could stand to loose a significant portion of their workforce. And with fewer visas available to future workers than demand seems to indicate, they could be facing worker shortages for years to come.

Human rights advocates are equally as concerned about the guest worker provisions. With only a minority of the current flows of migrants eligible for visas, we can expect to continue to see migrants making the dangerous desert trek that has cost almost 3,000 migrant lives in the past six years. Coupled with increased militarization of the borderlands, migrants will be forced into the most isolated and dangerous stretches of desert in the country, likely causing the death toll to skyrocket.

No one will be happy with the outcome of this year’s immigration reform debates. But the increased public awareness that our nation must, once and for all, realistically address the problem could be the biggest gain for immigrants and their supporters this year.