By Daniel Restrepo – Center for American Progress Action Fund
Published: 07-30-08
The next president must get our fundamentally broken immigration system under control. The public demands it. Our security requires it. Economic reality compels it.
To achieve that control the president will have to work with Congress to leave behind the hate-filled demagoguery that defines the immigration debate. The new administration and Congress must instead focus on practical effective solutions to our country’s immigration challenge.
Any such proposal must require illegal immigrants to become legal. It is unacceptable to have 12 million or more people living in the shadows of society. And it is impractical to try to drive them out of the country through deportation. The president must work with Congress to establish mechanisms that require the undocumented to pay back taxes learn English pass criminal background checks and get to the back of the line for citizenship as keys to legal status.
Getting the system under control also requires smart tough targeted efforts to control our borders and ports of entry — alongside effective action against employers who provide incentives for illegal immigration. Such efforts must go hand in hand with solving the challenge of the 12 million illegal immigrants now living and working among us and with us. To do otherwise is to tacitly embrace an untenable status quo.
At our borders we should increase the number of Border Patrol agents and ensure the Border Patrol is one of the most professional law enforcement agencies in the country. We must also make effective use of technology to ensure security at our borders and other ports of entry. Barriers should only be used where sensible.
In the workplace we must forcefully sanction employers who violate labor wage and immigration laws that undermine all workers. They must no longer be able to discount the possible consequences of their illegal actions as a mere “price of doing business.” And we must also relegate to the past those Bush administration-era raids that targeted undocumented workers and ripped apart families in the process while merely slapping employers on the wrist.
The next president must also ensure that all immigration-related enforcement regardless of target is conducted consistently with the rule of law. In short achieving control requires that we create a legal immigration system for the 21st century.
For this new system to work policy makers simply have to take into account 21st century economic realities. Immigration affects all aspects of the U.S. economy from the corner store to the multinational corporation from lettuce fields to biotech laboratories and from the lowest paid to the most highly compensated work. Given the increasingly global nature of labor markets we need a system to effectively regulate immigrant flows.
In crafting such a modern immigration system the next president and Congress must avoid falling into the false choice of creating a system that values only highly educated immigrants or one that only respects family integration. Expanded legal immigration must incorporate both while protecting U.S. workers by safeguarding the ability of all workers to defend their rights including the rights to change jobs freely to organize without fear and to earn a fair wage.
Finally a functional immigration system must do more to integrate immigrants into our society. Immigrants want to integrate more fully but they need effective government investment and invaluable assistance from a committed private sector to become full members of society. As a start more public and private resources need to be dedicated to adult English instruction and such instruction must be harmonized with continuing education and workforce development efforts.
Daniel Restrepo is director of the America’s Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
