Open Door or Open Floodgate?

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

By PJH Staff

Does the new immigration bill solve America’s problems with undocumented
workers or worsen them?

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Wrapping one’s head around what is called the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 is a daunting task. Gleaned from newspapers, online news sites, web logs, television, radio or all the other ways the news is disseminated in this rapidly transforming media age, there stands a mountain of material to sift through.

To further complicate that yeomen’s job of keeping current with the most significant immigration bill in at least the past two decades, the bill is still being debated in the Senate, where an unfolding give-and-take tenuously keeps the highly controversial and complex bill afloat.

If, as has been reported in some national publications, Senate leadership calls for an end to discussion at the close of this week – which seems less likely each day – the bill, which was brought forward by a bipartisan effort and has the strong support of President Bush, could advance to the House of Representatives, where many congressional watchers predict it will face an even more apprehensive bunch of lawmakers.

This is due largely to the idea that the bill could provide what many consider “amnesty” to an estimated 12 million immigrants in the country illegally, granting citizenship to those who initially came to the U.S. unlawfully. Over 200 House Republicans are up for reelection in the fall of 2008, and many of them represent constituencies that oppose the idea of so-called amnesty for illegal immigrants. In the Senate as well, this a major cause of contention right now.

Wyoming’s U.S. Senators Mike Enzi and the late Craig Thomas have both said they opposed any such bill on the grounds that it rewards illegal behavior through amnesty. Though as it stands in the bill, “amnesty” is no easy pardon but an arduous, expensive path to legitimate residency, if not outright citizenship.

While Republican and Democratic negotiators recently agreed to the “grand bargain,” a tradeoff that will allow Democrats a way to provide a path to citizenship for many of the 12 million here, Republicans now have a means to steer the criteria for future immigrants away from family ties – as has long been the approach – and more towards skills and education.

Sen. Enzi, for his part, did co-sign on a stand-alone bill that would mandate English as the country’s official language, said Elly Pickett, assistant communications director with the senator’s office. The senator is, according to Pickett, against the bill because “it had amnesty provisions.”

Similarly, Rep. Barbara Cubin, Wyoming’s lone voice in the U.S. House, is opposed to any bill that contains anything resembling amnesty provisions.

“This proposal is an amnesty proposal wrapped up in a big fancy package,” said Rep. Cubin’s Press Secretary, Allison McGuire. “[Rep. Cubin] has said all along: ‘We need to secure our borders and go from there,’” she said, adding it would be July before the House even took up the issue.

The great unifier in the Senate thus far, apart from the bargaining and deal-making that renders this bill imperfect from virtually any single point of view, has been the collective recognition that border security greatly needs beefing up.

If the countless shifting of parts and nuances have a ways to go before the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act ever sees the light of day, there are some unchangeable truths to what the massive reform bill aims to achieve.

Title I of the bill deals solely with border enforcement. Currently proposed is the addition of some 14,000 border-patrol personnel on the U.S.-Mexican border. That number would double the current police force there. Additionally, around 300 miles of fence would be added along high-traffic areas, with 70 new camera and satellite towers surveying the border electronically. 

Sen. Ken Salazar, a Democrat from Colorado, was one of the bill’s co-authors. His Communications Director, Cody Wentz, offered the senator’s take on a bill that would make the U.S.-Mexican border less permeable, weigh hefty fines on American employers who continue to hire illegals, and provide a path to a legal status for many.
“The ‘amnesty’ moniker is rhetoric for sure,” Wentz said Monday from his Washington, D.C., office. “There are no rewards in this bill.”

Wentz continued: “There would be [for aliens seeking citizenship] a minimum of eight years in purgatory; a rigorous process of fines of at least $8,000; they’re going to have to go to the back of the line” – behind those already legally in the pipeline for citizenship.  “They have to prove proficiency in English and civics. The possibility of citizenship is there, but it is by no means an amnesty bill. This is by no means a pardon.”

At one time the Immigration Reform Bill Act called for up to 400,000 seasonal work visas, though that number has been whittled back to 200,000, where it currently stands.  Senators Enzi and Thomas have endorsed augmenting this figure to help alleviate Wyoming’s own seasonal worker needs. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Jackson Hole, where some local business await crucial foreign workers to handle the swelling tourist season. 

There would be a separate guest-worker program for immigrant farm workers.
Immigrants here five years or longer would qualify to stay and apply for citizenship. They would have to show a clean record, learn English, and, based on an amendment Sen. John McCain introduced in May, pay some portion of their back-taxes.

Those here for two to five years would have to eventually return to their home country, where they could apply for a green card and potentially return immediately to the U.S.
Immigrants who have been here illegally for less than two years – their numbers are estimated to stand at about 2 million – would be ordered home or become subject to deportation.

It would be an imperfect system for sure – one some warn could tear apart families or perhaps somehow establish a tier of unskilled laborers with little hope for upward mobility. Still, there are those who believe, as does Salazar, “If we don’t do this now this is an abdication of our duty.”

-Ben Cannon

A closer look:the human face of immigration policy

The names of the immigrant individuals in this article were changed to protect their identity and integrity.

Legislation does not always translate into everyday life. Politicians often claim that they hit the streets, poll the masses and have a grip on the effects their policy has on the millions of people they represent; but the reality of it is that you cannot apply laws to people like you apply a cookie cutter to soft, pliable dough. There are always exceptions to the situation and kinks in the system.

We know what the recently introduced immigration bill in Congress looks like on paper, but what does it mean to the estimated thousands of illegal immigrants that live and work in the valley, enriching our tourist-based economy and diversifying our community?

Although the current immigration bill is no doubt a far cry from the final form it will take when and if it hits the Oval Office, the legislation politicians in Washington are throwing back and forth at each other will have a significant impact on the Latino community here in Jackson Hole.

Families may lose sons to deportation, grandmothers could gain citizenship and immigrants might be able to finally stop looking over their shoulders in fear, stressing about their illegal status.

María Lopez is a 25-year-old Mexican immigrant working at a local hotel, living with friends and sending money home to her family. If the bill passes as is, she would be forced to go back to her rural town in Mexico where the employment opportunities are few and far between, and get in the long line of applicants for the new guest worker program, putting her large family’s livelihood at risk.

Lopez has been playing by the rules. She arrived legally with a seasonal worker visa and went back to Mexico to reapply for a summer visa when her time was up. The cost of the trip back down to Mexico and the time spent away from work is too much of a financial burden for her and her family to bear.

She believes that the proper visa renewal process is more risky than staying in the United States illegally after her summer visa will expire in October. Although she cringes at the idea of living and working illegally, Lopez sees no other options.

Immigration Attorney Joel Anderson wants to see one issue – employer sanctions  – addressed in detail in the bill. Without providing employers with incentives not to hire illegal immigrants, border security will be ineffective and the problem will remain unsolved, he said. On the other hand, Anderson notes that enforcing employer sanctions will prevent the need to deport undocumented workers because without jobs, they will leave the country voluntarily.

Anderson’s law firm specializes in employment-based and family-based immigration benefits, or getting visas, green cards or citizenship for immigrants through employers or family members. He works out of Colorado and will be opening an office in Jackson in late summer.

Edgar García ran the technical security department of the Colombian government’s bank. He now runs the graveyard housekeeping shift in a hotel. Having lived and worked in the valley for over a decade, García is hoping that the legislation at hand will pass but is skeptical that its provisions are realistic.

An educated man from Bogotá, García feels a sense of nostalgia for what used to be the good life he lived in Colombia. In the midst of an ongoing civil war, the economy of the South American country is far from thriving, leaving little room for García’s contributions and making competitive wages a thing of the past. He could not have survived doing housekeeping back home.

“With the job I do here in hotels, I can eat. With the same job in Colombia, I couldn’t feed myself,” said García. “The wage difference is exorbitant and grotesque, people are desperate and that is why they come here.”

Several organizations and individuals in Jackson value the many contributions that immigrants provide the community and are collaborating to dispel the myths that plague the undocumented population, to provide adequate health care to workers and families and to promote cultural exchange and education for Latinos and Anglos.

El Puente, the Changing Faces Changing Community (CFCC) project and the Latino Resource Center are just a few local organizations that are part of the Latino Services Network and the initiative to integrate Latinos into the community. Carmina Oaks, executive director of the Latino Resource Center, says the main concern is that valley immigrants become documented.

Oaks has seen firsthand the contributions Latinos have made to Jackson, including small businesses, a strong workforce on which our tourism-based economy depends, and the diversification of the valley.

Pittsburgh native Jim Clouse met a Mexican woman while doing humanitarian work in Oaxaca. They married 13 years later. Clouse’s wife Tina had three children at the time, to whom he grew very close over the years and considers his own.

Yet under immigration law, only the son that was under 18 years of age at the time could gain citizenship and live in the United States legally.

Although Tina is now an American citizen, her two sons are left behind in Mexico, only able to work and live nearby their parents in the States through temporary work visas.
Clouse is therefore hoping that the final draft of the immigration bill will include provisions allowing him and others in similar situations to bring his two boys to live in the States legally and permanently, regardless of blood relations.

As a youth mentor through the Latino Resource Center and an active participant in the CFCC action-based conversation, Clouse has an outsider’s view inside and understands the importance of legalizing immigrant workers not only for Latinos but also for Jackson.
As these three brief profiles exemplify, the reality of applying uncompromising legislation to the estimated 12-20 million illegal immigrants and fitting them into three categories is perhaps unfathomable.

Lopez, García, Oaks, Clouse and Anderson all agree on one thing: something has to be done, and soon. “Everybody knows the system is broken,” said Anderson. “Current immigration laws are old, inadequate and not well thought out.”

Getting immigrants out of the darkness and into the light could be the simple solution to what so many denounce as “the immigrant problem.” If individuals, businesses and the government took a closer look, they just might uncover a different picture than that painted by the faceless words “illegal alien.”

-Lucille Rice


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