Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution (6 page)

The challenge regarding people who are here illegally has two very different components: those who illegally entered as adults, and those who came as children. We believe that under our Constitution, children born within the boundaries of the United States are citizens, so we do not address that issue, because that status can be changed only by constitutional amendment.

Many illegal immigrants who entered as adults are well-established, hardworking members of their communities. By definition, though, they live in the shadows of society. “Although they live among us, pay sales taxes and property taxes like us and
even perform labor for us, laws mandate that they must be ‘apart’ from us,” writes W. Randall Stroud, a North Carolina immigration lawyer. “It is illegal for them to work alongside us in most of our jobs, to drive cars in almost all states and in some states to go to universities with the same friends who were in their high school classes.”
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When the recession hit in the last decade and efforts to identify and deport illegal immigrants were stepped up, many immigrants literally disappeared from their homes in the dead of night. Much of the information about them is anecdotal. It appears that many families had both legal and illegal members. Some moved from one state to another; others returned to their native countries. In many instances, their departures exacerbated the economic crisis when immigrants abandoned their homes and stopped paying taxes.

It is in no one’s interest for illegal immigrants and their families to live in the shadows. We need everyone to participate in the mainstream economy, to pay taxes, to participate openly in their communities, to be willing to report crimes—that is to say, to be accountable, responsible members of society. That cannot occur when people fear they will be arrested if their immigration status is known.

We propose a path to permanent legal resident status for
those who entered our country illegally as adults and who have committed no additional crimes of significance. The first step in obtaining that status would be to plead guilty to having committed the crime of illegal entry, and to receive an appropriate punishment consisting of fines and/or community service. Anyone who does not come forward under this process will be subject to automatic deportation, unless they choose to return voluntarily to their native countries.

Once immigrants who entered illegally as adults plead guilty and pay the applicable fines or perform community service, they will become eligible to start the process to earn permanent legal residency. Such earned residency should entail paying taxes, learning English, and committing no substantial crimes.

Permanent residency in this context, however, should not lead to citizenship. It is absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that actions have consequences—in this case, that those who violated the laws can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship. To do otherwise would signal once again that people who circumvent the system can still obtain the full benefits of American citizenship. It must be a basic prerequisite for citizenship to respect the rule of law. But those who entered illegally, despite compelling reasons to do so in many
instances, did so knowing that they were violating the law of the land. A grant of citizenship is an undeserving reward for conduct that we cannot afford to encourage. However, illegal immigrants who do wish to become citizens should have the choice of returning to their native countries and applying through normal immigration processes that now would be much more open than before.

This proposal combines the two features necessary for successful immigration policy: it provides an option that is sufficiently certain and attractive that illegal immigrants will pursue it, while also imposing sufficient penalties as to uphold the rule of law. This proposal is not amnesty by any ordinary meaning of that term. Amnesty allows people to escape consequences for unlawful conduct. Our proposal imposes two penalties for illegally entry: fines and/or community service, and ineligibility for citizenship. Yet it allows for illegal immigrants who have proven themselves to be otherwise law-abiding members of the community to remain in our country. It preserves families and communities, and it provides security and permanency. It brings sunlight to the shadows.

Illegal immigrants who were brought to this country as children present a very different situation. Entering the country illegally requires an intent that we cannot ascribe to children when
they were under the control of adults. They are not responsible for the wrongdoing of their parents. Most children and young adults who have been here a long time speak English as their primary language, their friends and many of their relatives are here, and they know no other country. They are Americans in every way except legal status.

Most efforts to deal with this issue have revolved around the DREAM Act, which if Congress had enacted would have granted permanent residency status to young people who were brought into the country illegally, resided here for at least five years, and earned admission to a postsecondary institution. Rather than leading the charge for legislative action, President Obama dressed up a quasi–DREAM Act in the guise of discretionary law enforcement policy. Unfortunately, that executive action leaves those who take advantage of the policy in a continuing state of uncertainty by conferring no definite or permanent legal status.

We believe the ideas encompassed in the DREAM Act and President Obama’s executive order should be made part of fundamental immigration reform. We especially like one aspect of the President Obama’s policy: encouraging the completion of high school or a GED by providing legal immigration status. Many Hispanic-American children are doing poorly in school, and
roughly half drop out before graduation. Since Obama announced his policy, many young Hispanics who were brought illegally into the United States have been working to qualify for GEDs to avoid deportation, which obviously is a positive development both for the kids and the country.
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Given the educational challenges facing many Hispanics, we think that predicating legal immigration status on earning a high school diploma or its equivalent is an inspired idea.

Indeed, we would go further than President Obama’s policy by creating a clear and definite path to citizenship. As an overall policy, we propose that those who were brought illegally into the United States under the age of eighteen, who have resided in the United States for at least five years, and who have committed no significant crimes also should be entitled to permanent legal residency, without having to plead guilty to a crime or suffer legal consequences. We do not intend such a policy to provide refuge to young people who come to the United States on their own volition and want to step in front of the line. Rather, the policy should extend to those young people who have been here long enough to consider themselves Americans.

Beyond that, those young people who graduate from high school or its equivalent, or who enter military service, should
thereafter receive a green card. By residing in America since they were children, committing no crimes, and earning a high school degree or volunteering for military service, those young people will have demonstrated the qualities we want in American citizens. Such a plan provides certainty and stability for young people who have done nothing wrong and who fully deserve the benefits of American citizenship.

Dealing on an ad hoc basis with immigrants who entered the country illegally does not provide a permanent solution for the immigrants nor for the nation as a whole. We need to address this problem in a fair, firm, and comprehensive way, while at the same time fixing our immigration processes so that in the future, millions of people do not feel the need to enter our country illegally because there are no viable means for them to do so lawfully.

Unfortunately, there is only one method to prevent illegal immigration that repeatedly has proven itself effective, and it is a “cure” that is worse than the disease: a bad U.S. economy. Immigration is tremendously sensitive to market forces. A long and deep economic recession has accomplished what the erection
of border fences and massive increases in U.S. Border Patrol resources could not: reducing net migration from Mexico to zero or less.

Many on the right say that we must secure the border before we do anything to reform our immigration system. The fact is that we can’t do one without the other. Although border security is an essential component of broader immigration reform, broader immigration reform also is an essential component of border security.

Demanding border security as a prerequisite to broader immigration reform is a good slogan but elusive on the details and measurements. What do advocates of such an approach mean by “operational control” of the border? That not a single immigrant will cross illegally? That no illegal drugs will cross the border? That no terrorists will enter our country? What exactly is the magic moment we must wait for before we can fix the broken immigration system?

We have already taken greater efforts to stem illegal border crossings than ever before. The number of Border Patrol agents increased from 11,000 in 2006 to more than 17,000 in 2009, which is five times the number of agents in place twenty years ago.
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We have built hundreds of miles of fence supplemented by high-tech
surveillance. Deportations of illegal immigrants increased to a record level of 319,000 in 2011.
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Those efforts, combined with greater enforcement of immigration laws against those residing in the United States, a deep and lingering American economic recession, and improved economic conditions in Mexico, have significantly stemmed the flow of illegal immigrant border crossings. Unfortunately, they also have had the effect of changing the way that migrants come to the United States—instead of crossing the border and returning to their families on a regular basis, increased numbers have remained in the United States and brought their families here.
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Nor are illegal crossings the sole source of illegal immigration. The Pew Hispanic Center found that nearly half of illegal immigrants initially crossed the border legally and overstayed their visas.
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We need to swiftly deport individuals who overstay their visas rather than allowing them to stay indefinitely or to pursue multiple appeals. Our failure to enforce visa requirements is one of the major causes of large numbers of illegal immigrants residing in the United States for substantial periods of time.

For that same reason, true border control requires not only detection of illegal crossings but also an effective system to monitor those who enter lawfully. And that requires immigration policy
reform that goes beyond fencing the border and placing more boots on the ground. Still, the bottom line is that today there is no avalanche of illegal immigration. To emphasize halting illegal immigration as a cornerstone of immigration reform is fighting yesterday’s war.

None of this is to say that we do not have a border security problem. Quite the contrary. But the nature of the problem has evolved. It is no longer merely illegal immigrants crossing the border. Border security today encompasses threats from drug cartels and terrorists. Each threat requires distinct responses.

As the number of illegal aliens entering the country has declined, the movement of illegal drugs and weapons across the U.S.-Mexican border has intensified. On the Mexican side of the border, full-scale war among paramilitary drug cartels has left fifty thousand people dead over the past six years. Discoveries of dozens of horribly mutilated corpses has become a regular feature of Mexican life.
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The cartels are presenting a direct challenge to the Mexican government—so much so that in 2010, then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton characterized the cartels as “an insurgency.”
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Their resources are enormous. The Sinaloa drug trafficking organization is headed by billionaire fugitive prison escapee Joaquín Guzmán Loera.
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The Los Zetas cartel was originally
composed of former elite airborne special force members of the Mexican army. The Congressional Research Service reports that in their fight over enormous profits, the cartels have created “an environment of urban warfare with commando-style raids on state prisons, abductions of journalists, murder of police, and attacks on military posts.”
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Given Mexico’s inability to control the drug cartels and the massive drug market in the United States, spillover effects are inevitable. The most vivid example is the horribly failed Operation Fast and Furious, in which weapons obtained from U.S. authorities were linked to at least a dozen violent crimes in the United States, including the death of a Border Patrol agent.
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Given that the cartels control an estimated 90 percent of the illegal drugs entering the United States, their effects extend to American gangs, crime syndicates, and drug addicts.
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It is important to differentiate border security problems involving illegal immigration and drug cartels. Otherwise, immigrants are blamed for violence and other ill consequences for which they are not responsible. But the problems are merging, as drug cartels expand into the human smuggling business. Indeed, even as illegal crossings by Mexicans are declining, the numbers of Central Americans fleeing violence and poverty and entering
the United States through Mexico are increasing.
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Because illegal immigrants and drugs both flow across our southern border with the involvement of crime cartels, the appropriate responses overlap.

In terms of illegal immigrants, many have advocated walling off the border. The image of a fence makes us seem more like Fortress America than the country whose attitude toward immigration is embodied by the Statue of Liberty. A fence encompassing all 1,969 miles of our southern border would be enormously costly and not necessarily effective. Several hundred miles of fencing have been completed at a cost of more than $49 billion—yet the Congressional Research Service says that illegal immigrants simply shift to other areas.
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Similarly, experiments with “virtual fences” using cameras, radar, and unmanned aerial vehicles so far have not proved effective,
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despite additional billions of dollars in costs.
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We would give federal authorities broad discretion to meet the border security challenge with the most cost-effective combination of real and virtual fencing, aerial surveillance, and increased Border Security staffing. We also support giving the Department of Homeland Security authority to take security actions in the fifty national parks within one hundred miles of U.S. borders.
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