CBP Chief: Immigration Overhaul a Critical Next Step for Security, Trade

CQ reported that: Congress will need to get serious about a post-election immigration overhaul if the nation is to deal with the duality of enforcing border security while facilitating trade, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan D. Bersin says. “We know the debate about immigration reform in recent years has been contentious,” Bersin said. “But heated debates aren’t an excuse for inaction.” Republicans and Democrats can agree on the need to mend the unsustainably broken immigration system, Bersin said during a speech Thursday at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan immigration think tank. Legislation such as the proposed overhaul in 2006, which would have created a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and a new guest-worker permit, can happen again if lawmakers can move past false debates, Bersin said. In truth, neither mass amnesty nor mass deportations will solve a problem that’s rooted in labor markets, which is why President Obama has shown a “fierce determination to stop kicking the can down the road” and supported a bipartisan proposal presented by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., last spring, as well as legislation (S 3932) Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., introduced shortly before the pre-election recess. These legislative proposals would take immigration to a place it failed to go after the 1986 overhaul (PL 99-603), which provided a path to citizenship but failed to confront illegal immigration, Bersin said. Since then, the immigration debate has centered on control and enforcement — a focus that magnified exponentially after Sept. 11, Bersin said. But, he added, enforcement and normalization cannot succeed without appropriate coordination with other policy.