Immigration Reform

Immigration reform is the hot topic in politics right now. I work in that field, so I definitely have some thoughts on the issue. Of course, refer to my disclaimer: My opinions are solely my own and do not reflect the opinions of my employer. Also, you should be aware that I follow law and policy in my work, not my personal opinion.

As I've said before, immigration is one topic where everyone has an opinion, but nobody seems to know anything about it. Not only do they get it wrong in movies and TV, even the news gets it wrong. Regularly.

I came into the field with the same understanding as a lot of people. The system is broken, and we ought to allow all the illegals to stay. Now, I know that we have, in a lot of ways, a very good system--on paper. The problem is a question of incentive and will. A person in Guatemala whose life is threatened by drug cartels and has no job prospects has a lot of incentive to come to the United States. An employer who has a shitty job that needs to be done has an incentive to hire anyone who's willing to do the job. And the government just doesn't have enough incentive, apparently, to enforce the law. And because the law hasn't been enforced, the system has broken down. If they had enforced it from the beginning, we would still have a very good system, not just on paper.

So, what are my thoughts now, after working in immigration for over four years?


I don't believe for one second that this is a civil rights issue. (I don't buy into either of the great "civil rights" issues of our age.) I don't feel sorry for people who crossed the border illegally, or overstayed their welcome. They brought in on themselves, and they wouldn't have done it if they were in a worse situation now than they were at home. I do feel sorry for people brought here as children, but only a little. If anything, their parents are the only ones they can blame. And if we take pity on them and grant them immediate citizenship, then that creates some very bad incentives for even more people to do the same thing.

At the same time, I'm a pragmatic person. I know it's simply not possible to send them all home, as I'd like to do. But I am not keen on the "pathway to citizenship" either. There is a middle ground, and a better solution.

Polls show people strongly support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. I suspect that's because they haven't thought about other options. There are ways we can allow them to stay and work legally without granting citizenship. We are already doing similar things with the children who were brought here by their parents, or with people who aren't eligible for legal status but we can't send them home (e.g., because their home country won't take them back, or they'll be tortured if they're sent home).

That's the best and fairest solution: Grant a special status that gives only the right to stay and to work. It should not lead to citizenship (but should not operate as a bar to citizenship either). They can't vote, they can't petition to bring their relatives here, but they can stay.

And to fix the problem so it doesn't happen again, increased border security can only do so much. You need to modify the incentives. This can only be done at the employer level. We have a program which allows employers to verify that someone is legally allowed to work. We only need to make it mandatory, and then beef it up to increase its reliability and integrity. If anyone tries to skirt it, they need to face some real penalties.

In sum, cut off the draw (illegal employment), wipe the slate clean, but don't give people a gift because they broke the law.

There's a lot more to immigration reform than simply dealing with illegal immigration. I'm not going to get into that. But I do want to mention here, at the end of this rant, the whole semantic debate. "Illegal alien" is the most accurate term we have. I don't know what happened to that term, because you heard it all the time in the 90's. Not all aliens with unlawful status are technically immigrants, so "illegal immigrant" doesn't always work. And many of them are in fact documented, i.e., the government has information on them, so "undocumented" is a very poor term.

So . . . this has gone on very long. Thoughts?