Immigration Problems and Plan from Obama Transition

It’s only a sketch but it’s enough for a first assessment of how the Obama/Biden Transition Team see the immigration issue. As part of the transition, the transition team has opened a nifty government website – http://www.change.gov/ --that concisely outlines the problems and policy solutions, as they see them, and invites viewers to provide feedback.

The problem is three-fold, according to the transition team:

“Undocumented population is exploding: The number of undocumented immigrants in the country has increased more than 40 percent since 2000. Every year, more than a half-million people come illegally or illegally overstay their visas.

“Immigration bureaucracy is broken: The immigration bureaucracy is broken and overwhelmed, forcing legal immigrants to wait years for applications.

“Immigration raids are ineffective: Despite a sevenfold increase in recent years, immigration raids only netted 3,600 arrests in 2006 and have placed all the burdens of a broken system onto immigrant families.”

True enough that illegal immigration has rapidly expanded since 2000, but what is not recognized that according to U.S. census figures, the influx of undocumented immigrants has slowed since 2005 and the population of illegal immigrants has actually declined by some half-million in the last year. The Pew Hispanic Center reported: “Inflows of unauthorized immigrants averaged 800,000 a year from 2000 to 2004, but fell to 500,000 a year if you average from 2005 to 2008 with a decreasing year-to- year trend. The unauthorized immigrant population grew more slowly in the period from 2005 to 2008 than it did earlier in the decade.”

Some combination of new enforcement practices (including steady rise in deportations – up 20% over 2007 to 349,000 in 2008) and the economic downturn makes the statement that the “undocumemted population is exploding” appear alarming and supportive of restrictionist fear-mongering.

Yes, the immigration bureaucracy is plodding, but that’s to have been expected after the old and maddeningly slow INS was folded into the entirely new department of Homeland Security in 2003. A recent DHS announcement that the system for visas and residency documentation is being computerized may mean that help is already on the way. Main problem, though, is that the immigration bureaucracy is now part of a national security bureaucracy.

The assessment that raids “have placed all the burdens of a broken system onto immigrant familes” is welcome indicator that the new administration will move beyond a policy with a simplistic enforce-the-law logic, and will shape a new immigration policy that has heart and is concerned with justice not just law enforcement. One can only hope that the new administration will instruct Homeland Security to end the raids on selected worksites that while netting relatively few illegal immigrants have terrorized and devastated entire communities

Now what’s the “Barack Obama and Joe Biden Plan” for immigration and border control?

Create Secure Borders Obama and Biden want to preserve the integrity of our borders. They support additional personnel, infrastructure and technology on the border and at our ports of entry.

Improve Our Immigration System Obama and Biden believe we must fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy and increase the number of legal immigrants to keep families together and meet the demand for jobs that employers cannot fill.

Remove Incentives to Enter Illegally Obama and Biden will remove incentives to enter the country illegally by cracking down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants.

Bring People Out of the Shadows Obama and Biden support a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.

Work with Mexico Obama and Biden believe we need to do more to promote economic development in Mexico to decrease illegal immigration.”

“Control Our Borders” – long a rallying cry of U.S. nativists and anti-immigration forces – is now a core piece of the liberals’ immigration policy agenda. Virtually all the freshmen members of the 110th Congress have said, like Obama and Biden, that border security is the top priority. And the Democratic Congress keeps throwing Homeland Security billions of dollars more for the “personnel, infrastructure, and technology” that the transition teams calls for. But this is problematic, just as employer crackdowns are, because the control and enforcement budget keeps expanding without any reform that keeps people in the shadows. What needs to be stated is that enforcement can’t come first. If we are to enforce “existing laws”, as DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff has repeatedly said, we must at the same time “bring people out of the shadows” with a reform that makes them legal. Otherwise, we will simply see the immigrant crackdown continue. Not enforcement first, not enforcement only, but legalization and enforcement as part of same package.

Image: Feedback icon on www.change.gov

Emanuel's Immigration Report Card

Rahm Emanuel, a former aide to President Clinton and Obama’s pick for chief-of-staff, will come back to the White House with a failing record.

During his first year in Congress, the Federation for American Immigration Reform gave Cong. Emanuel (D-IL) a 0% rating – with the number reflecting the percentage of time that Emanuel voted FAIR’s preferred position. Other restrictionist organizations that track congressional votes have confirmed FAIR’s assessment that Emanuel is irredeemably liberal when it comes to immigration reform.

NumbersUSA, the organization that spearheaded the grassroots mobilization against the Senate’s 2007 immigration reform bill, gives Emanuel a failing lifetime position. He flunked the NumbersUSA test, receiving an “F” on his “immigration-reduction report card.” U.S. Border Control gave Cong. Emanuel an 8% rating, indicating his “open-border stance.”

In other words, Emanuel, picked to exert control over Obama’s team and its policy agenda, is about as bad as you can get. He has, after all, cosponsored the McCain-Kennedy reform proposal, voted no on building a border fence, and even cast a “no” vote on a bill that would require hospitals to notify immigration agents when treating illegal immigrants.

But immigration restrictionists aren’t particularly worried. That’s because Emanuel, after the drubbing that immigration reform received in mid-2007, let it be known that the Democratic leadership in Congress wouldn’t be pushing comprehensive reform in 2008 or even in the first term of the next administration.

Calling immigration the “third rail” of American politics, Emanuel began backing away from comprehensive reform in 2007, even as he continued to oppose overly restrictive immigration and border bills.

Emanuel has come under fire from Latino columnist Ruben Navarrette for keeping immigration reform off the table this year. “House Democrats, under orders from Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., kept the controversial issue off the legislative agenda in 2008. Why? Organized labor. Democrats' slavish adherence to unions required that they derail any proposal that includes guest workers, as any bill with a chance to win Republican support would have to do,” wrote Navarrette. At the annual convention of the National Council of La Raza, Juan Salgado, board chairman of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, shocked participant, stating: "Congressman Rahm Emanuel said to me two weeks ago, there is no way this legislation is happening in the Democratic House, in the Democratic Senate, in the Democratic presidency, in the first term.” Emanuel’s office confirmed the congressman’s position. Emanuel’s spokesman Nick Pappas told the Washington Times: “Congressman Emanuel has worked hard to make comprehensive reform a reality and that work continues. However, President Bush and congressional Republicans’ failure on this critical matter has set back efforts to enact real reform.”

In turn, Salgrado said, “I was caught off-guard by the statement. I interpret his comments as a lack of courage on what they know is right. Listen, we’re here at the NCLR conference, and what it’s to take is not the attitude of Rahm Emanuel, if this is a second-term issue. What it’s going to take is boldness by the president.”

FAIR's Family Tree

The Federation for American Immigration Reform has its own family tree.

The country's oldest restrictionist institute has created two major spinoffs that pursue its restrictionist agenda on the legislative and legal fronts.

The FAIR Congressional Task Force is a 501(c)4 organization that desribes itself as a "non-profit, public interest organization whose purpose is to serve the public welfare by developing and promoting immigration policies which are consistent with the economic, social and demographic interest of the United States; to restrict illegal immigration to the United States; and to limit legal admissions to reasonable levels.” FAIR's Congressional Task Force is the annual sponsor of the "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" campaign to bring restrictionist pressure on congressional representatives and staff.

Another FAIR family member is the Immigration Reform Law Institute. IRLI says it is “America's only public interest law organization working exclusively to protect the legal rights, privileges, and property of U.S. citizens and their communities from injuries and damages caused by unlawful immigration.”

It describes itself as “a nonprofit public interest law firm dedicated to controlling illegal immigration and reducing legal immigration to levels consistent with the national interest of the United States.” In other words, FAIR’s ILRI works not just against illegal immigration but also against most instances of legal immigration.

Typical of well-funded, well-established right-wing policy institutes, IRLI benefits from clear messaging. Central to its anti-immigrant messaging is its focus on U.S. citizens and its claim to be defending the “rule of law.” The “rule of law” framework for its activities routinely appears in statements by its principals and is regularly echoed by the state and local governments that work with the institute to design anti-immigrant laws.

On its homepage, ILRI warns: “The injuries caused by illegal aliens in your community have become a growing crisis in communities nationwide.” Another FAIR offshoot is the Center for Immigration Studies, which was established in 1985 as an anti-immigration think tank to complement the grassroots and policy work of FAIR. CIS says it is dedicated “to expand the base of public knowledge and understanding of the need for an immigration policy that gives first concern to the broad national interest.” Like FAIR and its affiliates, CIS has counted on funding from a funding umbrella, U.S. Inc, created by John Tanton for its financial support. Mark Krikorian, CIS executive director, formerly worked as a FAIR staff member.

Directors and Advisers of FAIR

FAIR's board members include Nancy S. Anthony (Chairman), Sharon Barnes, Edith Blodgett, Henry M. Buhl, Major General Douglas E. Caton, Donald A. Collins, Pat Choate, Sarah G. Epstein, Stephen B. Swensrud, Roy Porter, John Tanton, Alan Weeden.

Among those board members who are affiliated with population control, immigration policy, or family planning organizations are Sharon Barnes, a FAIR founding member and longtime population control activist; Donald Collins, who serves on the board of directors of the Population Institute, Family Health International, and International Projects Assistance Services: Sarah Epstein, who sits on the boards of Pathfinder International, Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, Center for Development and Population Activities, and Population Institute, and John Tanton, who founded FAIR and is a principal in several anti-immigration groups, including Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA.

In addition to its board of directors, FAIR counts on a national advisory board. Its cochairs are Richard Lamm, former Colorado governor, and Cong. Brian Bilbray (R-CA), who is also the chair of the House Immigration Reform Caucus.

Prominent members include Fred Ikle, Peter Nunez, Bruce Reid, Henry Luce III, and Curtis Winsor, Jr. Former Sen. Eugene McCarty (deceased) was also a supporter of FAIR and a member of its advisory board. FAIR has drawn from its advisory board for help establishing its front groups and affiliates.

FAIR receives money from the Sidney A. Swensrud Endowment Fund, Swensrud Memorial Internship Fund, Border Security Fund, Cornerstone Contributors, Seventh Generation Society, and FAIR Gift Memberships. Swensrud, who died in 1996, was one of the founders of FAIR. According to MediaTransparency, FAIR received $3.5 million in 40 grants from right-wing and conservative foundations from 1986 to 2006. Major foundation support came from the Scaife Family Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, and Carthage Foundation.

Photo: Brian Bilbray

Immigration Challenge for Obama

During his tenure as homeland security secretary, Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff has overseen a dramatic buildup in border security and immigration enforcement. As part of this crackdown on illegal immigrants, Chertoff has launched such new programs as Operation Community Shield (going after immigrant gang members), Operation Streamline (arresting and detaining illegal border crosses), and the Secure Border Initiative (which includes the 670-mile fence and the virtual fence).

Today, DHS deploys nearly 18,000 border patrol agents and has 30,000 prison beds dedicated to immigrants. In pursuing the immigrant crackdown, Chertoff has won broad bipartisan support for large annual increases in ICE and CBP budgets and for his initiatives that merge federal enforcement with local and state policing. What is more, many local and state governments have passed new laws aimed at driving unauthorized immigrants out of their communities.

Chertoff has set in motion a well-coordinated and unremitting immigrant dragnet in motion. The law-and-order immigration apparatus directed by DHS is certainly demonstrating results. But with its emphasis on law enforcement and its disregard for justice it is destroying millions of lives while splitting communities and families.

“Whether you like what we are doing or not,” said Chertoff in his "State of Immigration" speech on Oct. 23, “it would be hard to argue we were conducting business as usual in the last year and 18 months (since his appointment).”

Now that the infrastructure, funding, rationale, and strategy for a wide-ranging enforcement regime are in place, a new “business as usual” immigration policy is being passed on to the Obama administration. Despite declarations as a candidate that he would pursue comprehensive immigration reform in his first term, Obama will be hard put to back away from Chertoff’s strategy to enforce immigration law “as it currently exists.”

Any retreat from Chertoff’s hard-line position on enforcement will be met with an upsurge of angry anti-immigration organizing. And any Chertoff-like proposal for an expanded temporary workers program will likely be opposed, as FAIR signals, as a de facto legalization initiative. As the economy stagnates, active support for immigrant rights and legalization is likely to decline, making yet more difficult for the Obama administration to summon the political will to fight back against the enforcement-first measures that Chertoff and the restrictionists have set in motion.

The Obama administration and the new Democratic Congress will soon face the challenge of addressing the immigration crisis. The path of least resistance may be to accept the “State of Immigration” as shaped and defined by Chertoff and the Republicans.

But the bolder path is to stand on reason and principle in backing a new comprehensive reform bill, which meets valid citizen concerns about effective border control and sustainable immigration flows while also ensuring that immigrant workers and their families are treated with justice and fairness.

Remove Illegals, Contract Temporaries

Homeland Security Secretary (DHS) Michael Chertoff made clear in his wrap-up speech on the “State of Immigration” that comprehensive immigration reform should include a three-pronged strategy of strict enforcement, border security, and immigrant worker programs.

Business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, have objected to employee verification programs because they cost businesses time and money. Noting this opposition, Chertoff retorted: “In my experience, making money is not a sufficient justification for violating the law, since most people break the law in order to make money.”

But he readily acknowledged that enforcement-only is not the answer. “I think it would be a lot easier if we said to businesses if we can work together to have a legal way to get the workers, that is a win-win. You get the workers, the workers get protected, and we are obeying the law.” What’s needed, he said, is “comprehensive immigration reform that addresses the issue of temporary workers.”

Chertoff said:

“It is our philosophy, it is my personal philosophy that the answer to dealing with the problem of jobs that Americans do not seem to want to fill, is not to allow people to come in illegally, to break the law to fill them, but to create a regulated legal, visible and secure path, to invite people in when we want to invite them in, under the terms and conditions that satisfies us as Americans, that we are comfortable with the security and the economic impact of that migration in that temporary work, and also using a path that is transparent and protects the workers themselves from the kind of exploitation some of them experience when they come in an illegal status.”

There is simplicity to Chertoff’s proposal missing from other comprehensive immigration reform proposals. Rather than address the complexities of a “pathway to citizenship” or “earned citizenship,” Chertoff simply ignores the entire issue of possible citizenship for the 11-12 million illegal immigrants, focusing exclusively on temporary work programs as the legal path for new foreign workers.

In its simplicity – enforcement plus temporary worker program – Chertoff’s proposal for comprehensive reform lays out only two options for illegal immigrants – removal or temporary work permits.

This solution suddenly looked more possible when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that any solution would have to be bipartisan, which would mean sacrificing some of Democrats' past priorities, such as giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

"Maybe there never is a path to citizenship if you came here illegally," Pelosi said. "I would hope that there could be, but maybe there isn't," she said.

If there is no pathway to citizenship, immigrants now in the country illegally can expect increasingly precarious lives. Only if they sign up for a temporary or guest worker program will illegal immigrants likely be permitted to stay in the country. But most illegal immigrants don’t work in industries, such as agriculture, that have traditionally been included in temporary worker programs.

Immigration restrictionists, while pleased that “pathway to citizenship” proposals seem to be losing support even among Democrats, are already preparing their forces to do battle against a broad new temporary workers program that would possibly give worker visas to current illegal immigrants and to new flows of foreign workers.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, for example, has incorporated a response to a Chertoff-like proposal to expand temporary worker programs. In FAIR’s newly released Seven Principles of True Comprehensive Immigration Reform, one of its reform principles states: “Redefining illegal aliens as ‘guest-workers’ or anything else is just that: a redefinition that attempts to hide the fact it is an amnesty, not reform.”

While acknowledging that there may be some need for temporary workers in the U.S. economy, FAIR aims to wage battle on the benchmarks Congress and the new administration set for determining the need for foreign workers. Rather than relying on employers or even the government to document a shortage of workers, FAIR says that “the need for guest workers must be determined by objective indicators that a shortage of workers exists, i.e., extreme wage inflation in a particular sector of the labor market.”

In other words, unless businesses can show that they are paying exorbitant wages to attract labor, any plea for foreign workers should be rejected. Echoing the language of many unions and progressives, FAIR, in its principles for comprehensive immigration reform, declares: “Immigration policy should not be permitted to undermine opportunities for America's poor and vulnerable citizens to improve their working conditions and wages.”

FAIR Creates Dysfunctional "Choose Black America"

As part of its reaction to the mobilization of immigrants in the spring of 2006, the Federation for American Immigration Reform created a couple of new front groups aimed to divert media attention from the pro-immigration rallies. After a major spurt of publicity and organizing, the two groups – You Don’t Speak for Me and Choose Black America – have become inactive. Frank Morris, identified by FAIR spokesperson Bob Dane as the director of Choose Black America, says that the group is “not functional” and he is not the executive director. Morris is one of the eleven original members of Choose Black America, and he is a member of FAIR’s advisory board. At the kickoff press conference, Morris was identified as CBA’s chairperson. Morris is an educator and former deal of graduate studies at Morgan State University. In its 2006 annual report, FAIR, the nation’s most influential anti-immigration organization, described the origins of Choose Black America:

“While American Hispanics grew increasingly concerned about the widespread portrayal of amnesty for illegal aliens as a ‘Hispanic issue,’ American blacks were also growing alarmed at the impact that mass immigration and unchecked illegal immigration were having on their own communities and the failure of the recognized black leadership in American to advocate on behalf of their interests. Increasingly, black citizens were seeking representation in the national immigration debate and they, too, turned to FAIR for assistance."

Two weeks after it launched You Don’t Speak for Me, a self-described American Hispanic coalition, FAIR launched Choose Black America, which FAIR described as a “coalition of leading black academics, clerics, community activists and others, who came together to represent the unique concerns that their communities have in the immigration debate.” No African American organizations are represented in this “coalition.” According to FAIR, “CBA spokespeople quickly established themselves as a countervailing voice the black political leadership’s support for an illegal alien amnesty and increases in immigration.” Under FAIR’s guidance, Choose Black America did initially attract media attention, but it soon fell into disarray. FAIR organized a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington in mid-May 2006, paying for the travel and expenses of CBA’s members. But as it quickly became evident, CBA was not so much a coalition but a front-group assembled by FAIR from African Americans who had expressed concern about the impact of immigration on the black community. Although CBA’s and FAIR’s Morris said that CBA is not a project of FAIR and raises its own funds, the CBA website, when it was functioning, noted in small print that CBA was a “Project of FAIR.” What’s more, CBA lists Bob Dane as its media contact. Calling the number for Dane, you reach the offices of FAIR. FAIR spokesman Ira Mehlman told a reporter that FAIR helped organize Choose Black America after it got calls from African-Americans who were concerned about how illegal immigration was affecting them. "I don't think FAIR did it to gain legitimacy,” Mehlman said, responding to charges that FAIR was attempting to appear more racially diverse, “I think FAIR is a legitimate organization whose viewpoints represent the viewpoints of a substantial number of Americans. But several groups have a bigger stake in this issue." According to an investigative article by the Southern Poverty Law Center, several of the founding members of CBA said they didn’t know the other member of the coalition before they came to the DC press conference that launched the “coalition.” One of the founders, James Clingman, a Cincinnati columnist and businessman, told SPLC: "Choose Black America was just the banner under which we had a press conference…There are people involved [in CBA] who I am just diametrically opposed to, like [far-right Christian evangelical] Jesse Lee Peterson and those other neo-conservative, black so-called leaders." Noted African American writer Earl Ofari Hutchinson told SPLC: "The African Americans they brought there were just to put a black face on their position. These blacks had no other further use. [FAIR] got what they wanted, so why would they have meetings [of the CBA]? Why would they create an organization? These individuals are so loosely affiliated, what kind of organization are you going to form out of that?" Hutchinson declined an offer by FAIR to fly him to Washington to join the May 2006 press conference. Choose a Name CBA’s website says that "mass illegal immigration has been the single greatest impediment to black advancement in this country over the past 25 years." and their mission is simply "defending our country, our rights, our families, our jobs. Blacks, in particular, have lost economic opportunities, seen their kids schools flooded with non-English speaking students, and felt the socio-economic damage of illegal immigration more acutely than any other group."

According to founder and leading CBA spokesperson Ted Hayes, "We choose the title of ‘Choose Black America’ not as a Black racial-racist, separatist group, or even having a Black Nationalist agenda, but rather as a counter point to the racist strategies of the proponents of illegal immigration and amnesty, such as La Razs, Mecha, LULAC, MALDEF and the other so-called Latino, Hispanic, Chicano, Mechistas , et al. It is these groups that have labeled any American, especially Whites who resist their efforts of illegal invasion of our nation as racist pigs, nazis, fascist, hate mongering Europeans, et al.”

According to SourceWatch, Lou Dobbs featured Choose Black America on his Oct. 24, 2006 Broken Borders show on CNN. During the show, CNN showed film of a CBA protest in Chicago that targeted a Mexican women who sought refuge from immigration authorities for herself and her child in a neighborhood church.

After their launch in May 2006, both Choose Black America and You Don’t Speak for Me organized events that made the case the Latinos and African Americans were concerned about their civil rights. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the two groups sponsored a “Civil Rights March and Rally in Los Angeles, and a CBA subsidiary called Crispus Attucks Brigade distributed a flier demading “protection of Black US Citizens From Ethnic Cleansing By Latinos, Europeans, Asians, Africans, & Others Invading and Illegally Colonizing Our Country.” During the event, CBA leader Ted Hayes shared the stage with YDSFM leader Al Rodriguez. Such language is not found on FAIR’s website or in its own publications, but neither has it publicly distanced itself from such anti-immigrant organizing.