In December, the House passed, by 239-182 vote, House Resolution 4437 sponsored by Representative F. Sensenbrenner (R-WI) a bill making it a federal felony, with criminal penalties, to live in the United States illegally or to help illegal immigrants enter or stay in the country. It also requires the construction of 700 miles of fence along the US-Mexico border and the hiring of additional Border Patrol agents and Port of Entry Inspectors. It includes no provisions for the legalization of undocumented immigrants or a temporary worker program.
In May the Senate has passed, by 62-36 vote, its own bill, Senate Bill 2611 sponsored by Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), which unlike the House gives some illegal immigrants a path to eventual citizenship and creates a guest worker program. The proposed guest worker program, something akin to what President Bush has been advocating for over the last two years, allows 200,000 foreign guest workers to be admitted annually and provides a path to legal permanent residence for these guest workers.
The Senate bill imposes penalties for smuggling aliens, like the house bill, but offers exceptions for those who provide humanitarian assistance to illegal immigrants including medical care and housing. It also provides for the construction of 350 miles of fence along the US-Mexico border and the hiring of 2,400 new Border Patrol agents each year through 2011. The Senate bill also would declare English as the country’s national language.
The path to citizenship the Senate bill sets up is a complicated three-tier system for determining which illegal immigrants can stay and which must leave. It also allots more federal jail cells for those waiting deportation. The first tier is those immigrants who have been here for five or more years; these illegal immigrants will be allowed to stay and apply for citizenship provided they have no serious criminal record, pay their back taxes, and learn English, our new national language. The second tier consists of those immigrants who have been here two to five years, who would have to return to their home country and apply for a green card that they would be given priority in obtaining. This could allow for their immediate return. The roughly 2 million immigrants who have been in this country for less than two years would be ordered home and subject to deportation.
The Senate bill does require that illegal immigrants convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors to be deported regardless of years in residence. Most reasonable people in and outside of the beltway understand that it would be nearly impossible to round up and deport two million illegal immigrants, as the Senate bill proposes. Though that task is much less formidable than empting the country entirely of illegal immigrants, a job six times as big, as the House bill proposes.
The bill will spend the next month in a House-Senate conference committee, where Senators and Representatives will try to rewrite the bill in a manner both chambers will approve. However, the chances of reaching an agreement seem slim; many Republican house members refuse to consider legalizing immigrants until illegal border crossings are dramatically reduced, while many senate Democrats refuse to crack down on illegal immigration without a mechanism for some illegal immigrants who have been living here for years to achieve legal status.
A further complicating issue is House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s policy of only allowing votes on major issues if most of the house’s 231 Republicans support it, eliminating the possibility of a compromise immigration bill passing with support of most of the house’s Democrats and nearly half house Republicans. Such a support group is a distinct possibility as the Senate bill passed with the support of 23 Republicans, 38 Democrats and One independent.
Should we as a country admit we were wrong, weak on border control and unappreciative of the importance mostly Hispanic illegal immigrants play in our economy, and therefore allow illegal immigrants a pathway to legal citizenship? We all are decedents of immigrants ourselves after all.
On the other hand, should we recognize that doing so would be rewarding breaking the law, the foundation of our social contract between the people and our government? And while we can work to make our laws more accommodating we must not sanction illegal behavior. And how is any of this really going to be accomplished? Is it possible to round up the millions of illegal immigrants in this country and completely close our Mexican border? Is it something we should really be spending all this federal time, money and energy on even if we could? The party of the state’s rights and Barry Goldwater seems to think the answers to those questions are yes and yes. Awkward, do you think not?
It is not the only thing that has been going that way recently though. Terrorism has become the new Soviet threat, which the Republicans think we should spend, spend, spend to defeat. But what does No Child Left Behind, banning gay marriage, ending stem cell research, and now cracking down on hard working illegal Hispanic immigrants have to do with terrorism? I think even less than Saddam Hussein had to do with Al Qaeda.
Regardless, the federal government is tied up in partisan politics and clearly is not about to do anything to help solve the problem of illegal immigration anytime soon. Judging on their ability to get American refugees out of Lebanon or to help New Orleans recover from Katrina, even if they could decide on what they wanted to do they would never be able to do it. But the issue of illegal immigration isn’t just a federal issue anymore. The states are taking action. In my home state of Massachusetts, the senate unanimously added three Republican led amendments to our state budget to address the issue.
One amendment stops illegal immigrants from being allowed to live in state subsidized housing, requiring housing authorities to verify applicants’ immigration status, aiming to stop draining state money onto those who illegally reside here and do not pay taxes. Another amendment requires judges in trial courts to ask defendants of their immigration status during a hearing. And the third amendment cracks down on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, increasing the penalty for doing so from $200-$500 to $5,000-$10,000 and requiring the attorney general to produce an annual report detailing action against such employers. I think it is quite clear employers currently do not face enough of a penalty to stop hiring illegal aliens and therefore continue to provide them with employment and reason to come to the commonwealth.
All three did not pass the budget conference committee with the house and died before even reaching the governor’s desk.
In response to the overwhelming support the amendments received from constituents in Massachusetts the same Republican Senators, one of whom I admittedly work for, filed “An Act to Promote Fair Employment and Security in the Commonwealth,” legislation which outlines a more comprehensive set of state measures to address illegal immigration. Funny that at the state level it’s the Republicans actually working on the issue instead of using partisan politics to stall action on it.
To address illegal alien employment, the bill requires that companies who conduct business with the State verify the immigration status of their employees through available federal databases and authorizes penalties of up to $5,000 and imprisonment of up to 5 years for the use of false identification in obtaining employment with such companies. It, like the amendments it stemmed from, also requires public housing authorities to verify an applicants immigration status, making sure illegal immigrants don’t take up housing desperately needed by the legal citizens of the commonwealth.
The bill also requires immigration status reports for any person incarcerated for a felony or driving under the influence, and for any defendant appearing before a trial court. Additionally, the bill creates penalties for falsifying state identification documents including drivers’ licenses with the intent to sell and assesses penalties based on the number of documents falsified. A toll free telephone number would be established to create a system to report, confidentially, the employment of illegal aliens.
Other states around the country are enacting similar laws; the legislation here in Massachusetts, for example, is based on similar legislation in Georgia. Immigration is an issue that should be discussed further, at the federal and state level, maybe the campus level too.
