Humane Tweak to Immigration Enforcement

 The Dallas Morning News has an excellent editorial today about a new approach to immigration "raids" at employers:

Any new approach to immigration enforcement almost certainly will raise someone's hackles, and the Obama administration's latest innovation, known as "silent raids," is no exception. As a temporary step while the nation debates comprehensive immigration reform, there is much to praise, but also much to criticize, in this new strategy.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are de-emphasizing the disruptive, headline-grabbing workplace raids such as those in 2006 at Swift meat-packing plants in Cactus, Texas, and other American towns. The raids, in which 1,297 illegal workers were captured, helped satisfy advocates seeking harsh action against millions of undocumented workers.

The problem was that the raids imposed unduly cruel punishments on those captured. They lost all household belongings. Children came home from school to find empty houses and were left to their own devices as their parents were whisked into deportation proceedings.

In the silent raids, ICE auditors comb through businesses' employee rosters and computer records to identify illegal workers. The employer is notified and fined, as well as warned of additional sanctions if the illegal workers aren't fired.

"Instead of hundreds of agents going after one company, now one agent can go after hundreds of companies. And there is no drama, no trauma, no families being torn apart, no handcuffs," immigration-law consultant Mark K. Reed said in a recent news report.

But serious deficiencies exist in this new approach. Without deportation, the tagged immigrant is often free to stay in the U.S. and hunt for new work. And companies caught employing large numbers of illegal immigrants escape the embarrassing "name and shame" coverage that occurred during the raids experienced by companies like Swift. The anonymity of silent raids allows violators to escape public accountability, and that's not right.

This newspaper favors this more humanitarian approach, albeit with additional tweaks. There should be no ambiguity for illegal workers who are tagged. ICE must follow up with a written or verbal warning: Your days are numbered; clear up your affairs, pack up and leave immediately to avoid forced deportation. A 48-hour warning seems humane but adequately tough.

As for employers, there must be no escaping full public accountability. Embarrassment and bad publicity provide a much-needed deterrent, which is why the occasional raid serves a constructive purpose.

Jobs are generally the reason migrants come here illegally. Those who employ illegal immigrants deserve to be named and shamed so that the magnet of work ceases to exist. That said, comprehensive immigration reform is essential, including provisions for a greatly expanded guest-worker program that gives businesses greater access to low-cost – and legal – immigrant labor.

The goal shouldn't be to destroy lives and traumatize families. But enforcement must include an unmistakable message that the American workplace is open only to those who enter legally, obtain the proper documents and stay only as long as permitted.

At Least $800 Million Spent for 53-Mile Border Fence

The Associated Press reports that taxpayers have spent at least $15.1 million per mile for 53 miles of "virtual fence" built to secure the U.S. and Mexico border, more than 12 times the original estimate. Here are excerpts from the article:

The federal government set aside $833 million for the fence of cameras, sensors and other barriers in 2007, and the vast majority of that money, at least $800 million, has been spent on a sliver, in Arizona, of the nearly 2,000-mile southern border. About $20.9 million has been used on the northern border.

Rep. Chris Carney, D-Pa., chairman of a House Homeland Security subcommittee, said the money was supposed to buy virtual fence for 655 miles of border in Arizona, New Mexico and a slice of Texas, at a cost of about $1.2 million per mile.

The fence, developed as part of a border security plan under President George W. Bush, was supposed to monitor most of the southern border with Mexico by 2011. Now, the 53 miles in Arizona is expected to be done by the end of the year.

Additionally, the expected capabilities of the virtual fence have shrunk, said Randolph Hite, a Government Accountability Office official.

The Homeland Security Department has suspended the project while it decides what to do next. Several officials acknowledged some good has come from the project, but they questioned the cost for those capabilities.

Online:
House Homeland Security Committee
Secure Border Initiative report

Calling Immigration System 'Broken,' Obama Pushes Bill

President Obama gave a speech today calling the current immigration system "broken" and urging passage of comprehensive immigration reform. For an excellent summary of the speech, and of the issues surrounding the immigration debate, please read the article in the New York Times. 

Common Sense Needed in Immigration Cases

The Dallas Morning News has an excellent editorial today pointing out the inequities in our current immigration system, particularly deportation. Few people would object to the deportation of criminals or of those who knowingly came here illegally as adults and made no effort to work within the system. But the editorial mentions the plights of other immigrants who, through no real fault of their own, have been placed in terrible situations by seemingly arbitrary decisions by the federal government.

The editorial is important enough to be reprinted in full: 

Justice isn't always blind when it comes to immigration enforcement. U.S. authorities exercise apparently wide latitude to impose the letter of the law or inject compassion, especially in cases of political expediency. Too often, simple common sense doesn't seem to factor into the equation. Three recent cases illustrate the point.

Olivera Snyder and her sister, Jelena Boldt, were born in the former Yugoslavia and brought here as children by their parents in 1985. They know little of their Serbian homeland. Both married Americans, and Olivera has three American children. Through one of the stranger twists in U.S. immigration enforcement, the Dallas-area sisters are bracing for deportation, despite having filed all the required paperwork and completed every step of the process.

Their immigrant mother won permission to stay. They have no criminal history. Someone in the bowels of Immigration and Customs Enforcement decided it was time to close their cases and move on. Their lawyer says he can't get an explanation and describes the case as "one of the most disturbing departures from rational thinking I have ever witnessed."

Eric Balderas is a Harvard student who grew up in the United States and has virtually no memory of his early childhood before his parents brought him to Texas from Mexico. He lost his passport and wound up in the sights of an ICE official as he boarded a flight from San Antonio to Boston. Now he faces deportation. Harvard dignitaries are trying to help, but the 19-year-old's future hangs in limbo until a July 6 deportation hearing.

Hervé Fonkou Takoulo is a Cameroonian facing deportation after losing an asylum bid. He and his American wife, Caroline Jamieson, are professionals in Manhattan. Jamieson wrote to President Barack Obama in a desperate attempt to stave off the deportation, and in apparent retaliation, two immigration agents went to the couple's house, mentioned the Obama letter and then took Takoulo away in handcuffs. An inquiry by The New York Times led to Takoulo's quick release.

Thousands of such cases never make it into the media spotlight, so there's no telling how many horror stories are out there. It shouldn't take a reporter's inquiry or an embarrassing news article to make immigration authorities recognize that theses are human beings whose lives face irrevocable destruction.

Yes, we want a predictable and consistent system of immigration laws that apply equally to all. But common sense also must come into play. These three cases underscore the real human hardship created by America's broken immigration system and overburdened immigration courts. Comprehensive immigration reform, with tough but fair measures to help people attain legal status in this country, is the best way to break this chain of tragedy.

ICE Detains Fewer Suspected Illegal Immigrants from Irving Jail

As reported by the Dallas Morning News, federal immigration agents since October have cut back by about 50% the number of suspected illegal immigrants removed from the Irving city jail. The city of Irving began running citizenship checks in 2006 on all people arrested by Irving police.

There seems to be some confusion about the reason for the decrease in immigration holds. Here are excerpts from the newspaper article:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and Irving police disagree on the cause of the drop. Irving police say that federal officials are no longer detaining scores of suspected illegal immigrants who only have class C misdemeanor charges.

"Nothing changed in terms of our practice," Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd said. "We still share information with everyone who is arrested in Irving."

Immigration officials say they continue to place immigration holds on suspected illegal immigrants accused of low-level crime. They suggest Irving jailers are the ones who have made an alteration.

"We haven't stopped taking any sort of referrals at all," said Carl Rusnok, an ICE spokesman.

Irving has turned more than 5,600 people over for deportation since the city began using the Criminal Alien Program in 2006. The program allows federal authorities to check the immigration status of inmates in the city's jail.

Irving officials brag that with the program, they have turned over more suspected illegal immigrants than any other city in the country. Demonstrations supporting and opposing CAP helped the city become the backdrop for America's discussion on illegal immigration nearly three years ago.

Rusnok said the agency will take only people charged with more serious crimes if resources such as beds, time or manpower are scarce. But, he said, there have not been the kind of long-term resource shortages to explain the sudden and sustained drop in detainers in Irving.

Boyd maintains that his jailers have said that ICE no longer seems able or interested in taking suspected illegal immigrants charged with the lowest level of crimes. Boyd said ICE has taken about 82 percent fewer Irving people charged only with class C misdemeanors this year compared with last year.

The Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity last year released a report that found "strong evidence" that Irving officers racially profiled Hispanics in order to process them through CAP. Boyd disputed the study. The report from the institute, which is part of the law school at the University of California-Berkeley, was released the month before last year's drop in detainers.

Boyd, who has disputed the study's finding, said it had nothing to do with the decline in immigration holds. He said the study also has not changed the average number of inmates or the crimes for which arrestees are held.

Edward Schumacher-Matos: Why We Need the Dream Act

This opinion piece in the Dallas Morning News is by Edward Schumacher-Matos, the Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. 

Of all the political fights over immigration, the one that makes the least sense concerns children who came here illegally with their parents and then graduated from American high schools.

Based on statements to the media, most of the heartless Scrooges who want to kick these innocent youths out of the country – even though most are culturally and patriotically American – are Republicans.

But the dirty little secret is that Democrats have been as responsible for short-circuiting these young lives – and for denying the nation their talent after having already paid for their schooling.

They have done so in Congress by holding hostage the so-called Dream Act, which would give these young people a pathway to citizenship by joining the military or going to college. For the past decade, this bill has been seen as a motherhood-and-apple-pie measure that would help sell comprehensive immigration reform.

That logic once made tactical sense, but no more. The immigration debate has become so toxic that, spurred by Arizona, it now threatens to turn into a downward spiral of national paranoia about immigrants, particularly Hispanics. Periodic bouts of such hysteria pockmark our history – Japanese living in America during World War II, Germans before World Wars I and II, Italians and Slavs in the 1920s, and Irish and Chinese before that.

The Dream Act is urgently needed to help break this dangerous dynamic by reminding Americans of the positive side of immigration. The terms of the immigration debate have to be changed from what now is one of enforcement – and unfounded fears, largely of crime and terrorism – to an honest assessment of costs and benefits, and of the moral responsibility of immigrants and employers.

Only Obama can do this, in alliance with Democratic congressional leaders and some sympathetic Republicans. Most of our leaders have become cowed instead by the loud, often virulent anti-immigrant backlash. Obama himself says the right things but is reluctant to act.

Opposition to the act comes in part from the hard right and the normal cabal of talk show hosts who call the bills "amnesty light." They add, as Republican Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas wrote three weeks ago, that the Dream Act "will result in illegal immigrants taking more of the limited number of spaces available for students at public universities, crowding out deserving American students."

Opponents on the hard left, meanwhile, charge that, given the low numbers of Latinos in college, the offer of citizenship through military service will become a popular default choice that condemns them to fighting in Iraq.

Nearly 115,000 immigrants are in the military today, and the Pentagon says it indeed would welcome more. Being an immigrant and a Vietnam War veteran myself, I agree with paying your dues or proving your loyalty. The immigrants don't have to stay.

But going to a university and using your learned skills is a contribution, too, and we are amazingly foolish to kick out youths in whom we already have invested so much.

Arguments such as Smith's are misplaced. States subsidize tuition because college graduates stimulate economic growth. There may be a point where those costs outweigh the benefits, but the relatively small number of students involved and the fact that they are already in each state's education system suggest that we are nowhere near this point. What the opponents are doing is shrinking their state talent pools, a recipe for decline.

The youths themselves best make their case. As a 22-year-old wanting to join the military told The Boston Globe, "We don't want a handout, just the opportunity to prove ourselves."