Signs of Life For Immigration Reform

USNews

By Gabrielle Levy

June 3, 2015

Signs of Life For Immigration Reform

With comprehensive immigration reform essentially dead on Capitol Hill for the foreseeable future, Republicans appear poised to advance a series of incremental measures to address the hot-button issue amid political pressure to tackle the broken system.

GOP lawmakers in recent weeks have proposed potential areas of compromise they hope can help the party handle the delicate balance between appeasing the demands of the base in beefing up border security while addressing the practical economic need for foreign labor.

Activists protest for and against President Barack Obama's immigration policies on May 19, 2015, in New York City.

The moves come amid almost no progress on immigration legislation since the then-Democratically controlled Senate passed a comprehensive reform bill in 2013 that never came up for a vote in the GOP-led House. The impasse led President Barack Obama to issue executive orders protecting some groups of immigrants living illegally in the U.S. from deportation – infuriating Republicans in the process.

With the unilateral moves halted by a federal judge, congressional leadership has been content to sidestep the thorny issue after losing a faceoff in March in which they unsuccessfully tried to tie funding for the Department of Homeland Security to a rollback of the Obama actions. But the looming presidential race has increased the sense of urgency among some of the rank and file eager to see the party raise its standing among Hispanic voters.

“If you’re a Republican [running for president], you at minimum want the immigration issue neutralized, and maybe gain votes where Mitt Romney was unable to get them” in 2012, says Stuart Anderson, executive director of the nonpartisan, nonprofit National Foundation for American Policy.

While any of the the piecemeal proposals faces long odds to passage and even less chance of cooperation with the White House, one area of focus appears to be on guest worker programs that would increase the number and accessibility of visas for both high- and low-skilled workers. The reform already has bipartisan support.

“When it comes to illegal immigration, what’s the No. 1 reason people come to this country illegally? The same reason our ancestors came here: to work,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Tuesday at a bipartisan event exploring pragmatic methods of reigniting the debate on reform. “From my standpoint, if you really want to secure our border, let’s eliminate or drastically reduce the incentives for illegal immigration, starting with a guest worker program.”

Some studies have suggested that, instead of taking away jobs from Americans, those workers help spur economic growth. It’s a position immigration advocates hope to use to sell the issue to a broader constituency.

“If you don’t have a restaurant worker working in the kitchen … you’re not going to have good jobs, waiter jobs, management jobs in restaurants for Americans,” says Alfonso Aguilar, director of the Latino Partnership program at the conservative American Principles in Action group and the former chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship under President George W. Bush. “So we need to connect with the middle class and show that immigration is good for the middle class.”

Aguilar’s organization has suggested setting up guest worker programs for low-skilled workers that would allow the number of visas to fluctuate based on the needs of businesses. The system, particularly suited to the needs of the agricultural industry, would allow workers to come into the U.S. for a few months of the year, then return to their home countries.

A more narrowly tailored bill from Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has also gained some interest from advocates on both sides of the aisle. The measure, which has yet to move in committee, would increase the number of visas for high-skilled workers, particularly those in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, fields, and make it easier for those workers to stay in the U.S.

"Just like in business, I don't want the smart people working in my competitor's business, I want them working in mine,” Johnson said. “The same thing should be true for a national economy: If we use American resources to educate the brightest people from around the world ... we should provide every incentive for the brightest minds to be working here to grow our economy."

Political demands from the Republican base mean that any bill that would allow more foreign workers in would need to first improve border security, whether that be through extending and enhancing a fence or increasing the number of border agents. A border security bill nearly made it to the House floor in January, but was pulled back at the last minute over objections from more conservative members that it did not go far enough or block funding to implement the president’s executive actions. Republican leaders say they plan to bring it up again.

But Democrats, unwilling to sacrifice any leverage they hold, have refused to support tightening border security without moving toward a path to legalization for the roughly 11 million immigrants already in the U.S. They extend the argument about economic benefits to justify a path to citizenship.

“Embracing immigration for those who want to be entrepreneurs is enormously positive for job growth,” Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., said at Tuesday’s immigration forum.

“To think it’s good for our economy to deport 11 million people is the single most preposterous thing I’ve heard,” he said. “The best way to increase economic growth is to embrace a forward-looking immigration policy.”

Anderson says that progress on border security bills could pave the way for other modest measures.

“If [Congress] were able to move some enforcement bills, next they could do high-skill immigration and get bipartisan support,” he says.

Other programs like E-Verify, an online database that businesses can use to check the legal status of potential employees, are popular but stumbled when the agriculture industry complained it could cause a labor shortage. In March, a bill making E-Verify mandatory for all employers passed the House Judiciary Committee, but Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., agreed to consider an agriculture worker guest program after a group of 61 lawmakers, spearheaded by Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., complained one would be “unworkable” without the other.

The passage of a guest worker program could replace workers barred because of their immigration status with temporary, legal foreign employees while also reducing an incentive for illegal immigration.

“If we can ensure that they cannot find a job if they lack legal status, that will remove the incentive to come here legally and overstay,” Aguilar says.

So while the odds for immigration measures are still long this year, there seems, at least, to be incentive for lawmakers to try.

“There will be some efforts to move forward,” Anderson says. “As to how successful they will be, well, anything is possible.”

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com