WASHINGTON - Proponents of a broad immigration measure beat back challenges Thursday that could have scuttled the bill, including efforts to phase out a temporary worker program and bar millions of unlawful immigrants from gaining legal status.
The Senate overwhelmingly endorsed the legalization program, a cornerstone of the bipartisan plan. It also would tighten border security and create a strict verification program to deny jobs to illegal immigrants.
By a 66-29 vote, senators rejected an amendment by conservative Sen. David Vitter, R-La., that would have removed the chance for the nation's estimated 12 million unlawful immigrants to live and work legally in the U.S. and eventually become citizens.
Earlier, in a 49-48 vote, the Senate rejected a proposal by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., to end the temporary worker program after five years.
Those razor-thin votes showed the tenuous nature of the agreement between liberals and conservatives. Taken together, however, the defeat of the amendments showed the durability of the unlikely coalition that cut the deal and is fiercely lobbying other senators to preserve it.
"We are still together, and we're moving forward," said Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo.
President Bush, who has endorsed the compromise, used his harshest language so far on Thursday to denounce members of his own party who have derided what would be the first major immigration overhaul since 1986 as "amnesty."
"Anything short of kicking them out, as far as some people are concerned, is called amnesty," Bush said during a Rose Garden news conference. "You can't kick them out. Anybody who advocates trying to dig out 12 million people who have been in our society for a while is sending a signal to the American people that's just not real." With Congress set to break for a weeklong Memorial Day recess, supporters and opponents of the compromise were scrambling to shape public perceptions of the immigration overhaul.
Proponents were working to rebut criticism that the measure is too lenient by playing up border security and worker verification measures. They highlighted the hurdles illegal immigrants would have to scale - including fines, background checks and holding down a job - to gain lawful status through a new "Z visa."
Critics argue the measure could invite new waves of illegal immigrants by rewarding those already here.
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We welcome readers to share their opinion and ideas with us by writing to mailto:editor@ilw.com.
1. COMMENT
This Is Not A Drill
Some in the bar are misreading the Senate's debate on Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR). The Senate is not engaged in idle debate, it is determined to pass a bill.
This should not be news. The Senate was determined to act last year also, and despite setbacks the Senate did pass S. 2611, the McCain-Kennedy bill (some of the setbacks were severe, remember the Martinez-Hagel compromise which cut the legalization beneficiaries in half?). What has changed from last year to this year, is political control in Congress. And this affects CIR's language, and its legislative twists and turns, decisively. Last year, the Republicans were in control of the House, and chose the path of confrontation rather than compromise. This was a political decision, and one which backfired on the Republican Party, being responsible in part for the GOP's losing both Chambers of Congress. This year the Democrats are in charge of both Chambers - with consequences to CIR's language which we spell out below.
In 2006, Senate Republicans could be certain that in passing a liberal bill like S. 2611, loaded with benefits (SKIL, AgJOBS, DREAM, etc), these benefits would be significantly watered down in a two step process. First, the House's bill would have none of the generous benefits - as indeed, the Sensenbrenner bill H.R.3347, which the House had already passed, clearly showed. Second, the Conference to reconcile these widely different bills would be controlled by Republicans from both chambers. The likely result would be a middle ground with fewer benefits, and harsher language all around, than the Senate's bill.
In 2007, the reality could not be more different than last year. This time, Senate Republicans can be certain that no matter how harsh a bill they craft, the bill will be significantly liberalized in a two step process. First, the House's bill will likely be STRIVE, or something even more generous (and bear in mind that STRIVE is more liberal than McCain-Kennedy in the number of its beneficiaries, in addition to having SKIL, AgJOBS, DREAM, and other goodies). Second, the Conference to reconcile the Senate's tough bill with the House's liberal bill will be controlled by Democrats from both chambers, probably Sen. Kennedy and Rep. Conyers. The likely result will be something far more generous than anything the Senate will pass.
That is why Sen. Kyl has to get all the concessions from Sen. Kennedy in the bank now, while the issue is still in the Senate. This way, Sen. Kyl is assured that the final Act will be slightly tougher on enforcement than otherwise. And that is why Sen. Kennedy continues to make concession after concession necessary to move the bill along, knowing full well that during Conference, the CIR bill will become more generous.
To the great credit of the politicians of both parties, they are moving the legislative process forward in the Senate despite strong opposition from both ends of the political spectrum. And the House is doing more than waiting in the wings. As Rep. Hoyer, the House Majority Leader, has already let slip, http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/reid-gives-immigrat...time-2007-05-16.html the House is determined to act on immigration regardless of what the Senate does. The House's bill, the first glimpse of which should be available during markup in the week of June 4th (the same week that the Senate will finalize its bill), will likely have so much good news that the bar will likely drop its collective jaw! A Conference is, therefore, very likely on this bill even if the Senate bill fails.
The bar should face up to the undeniable fact that our immigration law is broken, and badly in need of a total re-write. That is the process that the Senate has so courageously begun. Those who cannot see the trees of the Senate bill's language for the wood of the legislative process would be well counselled to heed Bismarck's admonition that Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made. Lets make improvements to the extent that is possible as the process unfolds, and prepare for a feast at the end. Bon Appetit!
Last updated May 26, 2007 2:46 p.m. PT Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Family separated by immigration policies
By MITCH STACY ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Keith Campbell poses with a family portrait, Monday, May 21, 2007 at his home in Bradenton, Fla. Immigration officials say Akiko, shown in the center of the photo, committed fraud in 1998 when she entered the United States with a fiancee visa after she had already gotten married to Keith. She is now prohibited from reentering the country for 10 years. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
BRADENTON, Fla. -- Keith Campbell and his Japanese-born wife spent his 47th birthday half a world apart because of an immigration dispute. Critics say the case illustrates how making mistakes in getting visas and permanent U.S. residency can lead to life-changing consequences for families.
"It's kind of a surreal thing," Campbell said recently as he waited to have his daily Web-cam chat with his wife, Akiko, and their two sons, ages 4 and 1, who are in Nagano, Japan. "We haven't done anything wrong."
Immigration officials say Akiko Campbell, 41, committed fraud in 1998 when she entered the U.S. with a fiancee visa after she had already gotten married to Keith. Now she's now prohibited from re-entering the country for 10 years.
Since she left in January, Keith Campbell has spent time furiously writing lawmakers, printing ***per stickers, talking to anyone who would listen and putting up a Web site - http://www.bringakikohome.com - to tell their story.
The family's last immediate hope of being reunited on American soil is a hardship waiver, which is still being considered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
American Families United, a group formed last year to advocate for families separated by immigration policies, says what is happening to the Campbells is more common than people think, but the issue has been overshadowed lately by the larger debate over illegal immigrants.
The group says a minor mistake on an immigration form or not filing for the proper visa can lead to arrest, jailing and deportation. Years-long processing times for visas often leave families in limbo.
"People's lives are being completely ruined," said Glenys Old of Wardensville, W.Va., whose British-born son is being deported because he turned 21 while his application for an alien child visa was still being processed. "Families are being torn apart."
American Families United co-founder Randall Emery sued the federal government last year to force the delayed processing of a visa for his Colombian-born wife.
"People have the impression before marrying someone from another country that it's a pretty straightforward process," Emery said. "But it's very complicated, and it's easy to make a mistake. And if you make a mistake like Keith and Akiko, the punishments are very draconian."
The Campbells say that when Akiko's fiancee visa didn't arrive before their planned wedding in Hawaii in June 1998, they were told by an official at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo to go ahead and get married and apply to change her status after she was settled in the United States.
They were staggered when they went to the immigration office in Tampa in March 2000 for an interview to secure her permanent residency and were told Akiko wouldn't be allowed to stay in the country because she committed fraud.
Campbells have been working with lawyers and filing unsuccessful appeals since then. In 2005, they got a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice saying their visa petition was approved. But Akiko would have to return to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo to get it.
Akiko packed up her two sons for a visit with family in Japan. But when she went to the embassy, the visa was flatly denied, and she was told she couldn't go back home. The couple believes they were deliberately misled by the government to get her out of the country.
Citing privacy laws, Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Chris Bentley said the agency can't comment on specific immigration cases. In general, "We're bound by making determinations based on what the law says," he said.
Robert Deasy, who practiced immigration law for more than 25 years before becoming an official of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that it's difficult to budge Citizenship and Immigration Services once there is a finding of fraud. The details rarely matter.
"This is heart-wrenching and unfortunately not unusual," Deasy said. "The tragedies from strict application of the law to what in the commonsense world are minor infractions are just extraordinary."
If their hardship waiver is denied, Keith Campbell said he'll likely sell their house and most of their possessions, close his successful landscaping business, say goodbye to their friends and join his family in Japan.
"I'm a man of faith. I think it will work out," he said. "Wherever God wants me to be - that's how I cope with it."
The immigration reform bill reminds me of Frodo. Yep. From "Lord of the Rings." A bunch of tough guys displaying serious swordplay try to keep the little Hobbit safe on a journey that slices and dices him nonetheless.
The fellowship of senators pushing the immigration package has had quite a week keeping the legislation safe on its journey (not to suggest that those opposing the bill are a bunch of blood-thirsty Orcs). Their compromises have survived. Next comes a week back in their home states. The survival of the legislation may depend on how badly their ears are ringing when they return to Washington in June.
A recap:
Monday
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., an architect of the bipartisan plan, starts with a hedge. "For each of us who crafted it, there are elements that we strongly support and elements we believe could be improved. No one believes this is a perfect bill," he says. Later, Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney lashes out at rival John McCain for supporting the bill. McCain shoots back with references to Romney's rabbit-hunting youth and his hiring of a landscaping firm that employed illegal immigrants. "Maybe his solution will be to get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his lawn," McCain says.
Tuesday
Democrats go on the attack and take on the temporary guest worker provision that would allow up to 400,000 immigrants a year to work in the U.S. for two years at a time. An amendment sponsored by Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., fails in an effort to kill the program after five years. "It is just a fiction that these are jobs Americans aren't willing to do," Dorgan says. "The main reason that big corporations want a guest worker program is that it will drive down U.S. wages."
Wednesday
Democrats and Republicans take turns whacking the bill around. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., offers an amendment to create mandatory prison sentences for illegal immigrants who get caught trying to enter the country a second time. Graham helped broker the deal, which has been met with a chilly reception back in South Carolina. The amendment goes nowhere. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and a candidate for president, announces . . . his intention to come up with a plan to challenge parts of the bill. Let us know when you figure it out, Senator.
Thursday
The "grand bargain," as it is being called in Senate chambers, survives two more attacks. Kennedy buttonholes Hawaii Sen. Daniel Akaka, a Democrat, to switch his vote on a proposed limit of five years for the guest worker program - a change potentially fatal to the bill. The amendment fails 49-48. Then it gets weird. Awarding legal status and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the U.S., potentially the most explosive part of the bill, easily survives. An amendment to strip what opponents call the "amnesty" provision fail 66-29. The poison pill stays in the bill with a bulletproof majority. I don't get it.
Friday
This is a day of "debate" before senators head home for what promises to be a heated holiday recess. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., one of the compromise's authors, knows what's waiting. Some party faithful have their ears back and their teeth flashing. "I have learned some new words from some of my constituents," Kyl says. He'll learn some more.
Blake Morlock can be reached at 573-4692 or bmorlock@tucsoncitizen.com. See his blog, "Is this thing on?" at www.tucsoncitizen.com.
By Luis Alberto Urrea Sunday, May 27, 2007; Page B01
The most cutting-edge domestic issue facing the United States today is the crisis of illegal immigration. The outrage of open borders has led to the current invasion -- something never before seen in U.S. history, something that could mean the end of our American way of life. You can be compassionate, but you need to stand firm.
Columnist Owen Arnold sums it up nicely: "Along the 2,300 miles of Mexican border, aliens of every color and character are constantly looking for cracks." He puts the vexing issue of border enforcement in clear focus, citing the recent addition of 300 Border Patrol agents to the corridor that runs between San Diego and Brownsville, Tex.: "That's only one man to every eight miles, so you can discount him if you have a nice bomb-throwing uncle you want to bring in via Mexico."
At last! Somebody is saying what has to be said. Call Lou Dobbs and get this man on CNN.
Oh, wait. I got confused. Arnold wrote those words in April 1938.
Immigration is a handy political card trick; it has always been possible to distract the American public, a large conglomeration of displaced aliens, with the threat of large conglomerations of displaced aliens. In 1868, the first Border Patrol was mounted to chase the Chinese out of the gold fields and off the rail lines; it kept Great-Grandpa's mind off Reconstruction and that pesky Indian problem. In the early 1950s, "Operation Wetback" rounded up all those Mexican produce-pickers we'd brought in after we put our Asian agricultural workforce in internment camps, then had to let them out. Hmm. I wonder what we have going on today that might require inflamed posturing from cynics and carpetbaggers.
There is as little wisdom from pundits as there is from politicians. Rhetorical flourishes and racial profiling solve nothing, accomplish nothing except to cause inflammation. We are plenty inflamed but little informed. How many times have Americans heard the term "illegal"? How many times has the law being broken been explained? We all know what a "coyote" is, but have talking heads spelled out the difference between civil law and criminal law? Yon illegal immigrant -- have I likened thee to a speeding ticket?
Tom Tancredo, the anti-immigration Republican congressman from Colorado, can't explain immigration law, though he did look into banning Spanish-language books from Colorado libraries. Mexico hasn't made an effort to educate its public, either -- it doesn't want to stop them from sending home $20 billion in remittance money every year. Secure borders? If you want to hear anti-immigrant rhetoric, go to Mexico's southern -- and impoverished -- border and see how the people there feel about all the Hondurans and Salvadorans gushing in. Illegal immigration is not a genetically programmed racial trait. It's about the money.
The United States' last hearty anti-immigrant movement was called the Know-Nothing Party. That was a century and a half ago. Today, it's the same as it ever was. More than 300 entrants die every year on the U.S.-Mexico border for lack of knowledge. Nobody knows how many die in the jungles to the south. On the frontier, we worship the god Moloch. The sacrifice of peasants brings us great blessings.
If you want to know what's happening, you have to get on the ground, listen to people who have nothing to gain by feeding you misinformation.
South of Tucson lies one of the epicenters of immigration's convulsive temblor. A town called Arivaca has lately been in the news because the vaunted Homeland Security "virtual fence" has run into resistance there. You'd think that spy towers watching for wily Mexicans would be welcomed by the generally conservative population of the Arizona desert. But desert rats know Big Brother when they see him, and they have asked why the cameras and sensors are pointing at them and not at Mexico. This story is developing, and promises to be rich in ironies if the citizens feel betrayed.
Even ****her south lies the Mexican burg of Sasabe, Sonora. Believe me when I tell you that Sasabe is now a cliche. It was an astonishment until reporters discovered it. Now, Lisa Ling trudges dutifully through the Sasabe scrub filming a report for "The Oprah Winfrey Show." But before its 15 minutes of media rapture, Sasabe was a dangerous funnel for "illegals" coming in from deeper Mexico and beyond. It is flanked to the west by a vast former cattle ranch said to be manned by narco cowboys who used to appear in the desert in their white Jeep Cherokees and hold their AK-47s out the windows to let you know they didn't like you poking around.
Here, back in the good old days of a couple of years ago, I had the occasion to hang out with Mexican immigration cops -- the elite, sometimes notorious Beta Group. Make no mistake, Beta was a brilliant law enforcement idea: inviolable Mexican cops, safeguarding the border. But Moloch is a jealous god, and the flow of sacred gold could not be interrupted. In Sasabe, the cops weren't allowed to carry weapons. They were also decked out by the government in brilliant day-glo orange vests, so the bad guys could see them from, oh, 20 miles away.
I know that the idea of Mexican cops can send shivers down Americans' spines, but you need to know that these officers were warm, generous and professional. They agreed, for example, to take us to the open field where the immigrant vans dislodge their occupants, but only if I promised to run as fast as I could if the machine-gun boys started to drive in our direction. The cops liked me because I was born in Tijuana. They thought I could escape with my life while the narcos were busy shooting at my reporter friends.
As of 10:30 in the morning, the vans hadn't shown up yet. I asked my Beta companion where they were. "Oh, smugglers sleep late," he said. "They don't get to work till after 11." And, sure enough, after 11 o'clock, the vans began to appear.
Each one disgorged 27 to 30 people. This, in a desert devoid of anything but some adobe ruins and a tin shack where two abandoned immigrant girls who worked for the local water mafia were selling old plastic milk jugs full of hose water for 10 times the going rate. I asked my friend how many people came through this spot. "Well, I don't know what happens after six at night," he said. "But last Friday, between 11 and 5:30, we counted 137 van loads." Smugglers sleep late, but they work hard. They put in seven-day weeks, 137 van loads every day of the year.
We retreated to the police station, a cinderblock cube with overflowing garbage cans. The commander sat at his desk, looking as dapper as Andy Garcia. His men watched him watch me, and when he laughed, they laughed. When he glowered, they looked at the floor.
I told him I had never seen anything like the parade of vans in the desert.
"Nobody has," he said.
It's bigger than we realize, I said.
He replied: "Undocumented immigration is the second-largest source of income to the Mexican government. First, petroleum. Second, immigrants' remittance money. Third, tourism."
What about the narcos?
He paused. Then he smiled. When he laughed, his men laughed, too.
"Okay," he said, "illegal immigration is the third-largest source of income to Mexico."
How do we solve this problem?
"There is no solution," he said. "Because there is no problem. Illegal immigration is not a problem. It is something else. It is a phenomenon. When faced with something like this . . . Biblical . . . exodus, all we can do is observe. You don't solve a phenomenon, you surrender to it in awe."
Juanito might have passed through Sasabe. The officers there are rotated around the border -- he certainly might have met my friends from the besieged desert station on his way back to Mexico. You see, Juanito thought he was a U.S. citizen until he got arrested for some bad barrio behavior in California and found out he was a Mexican. His parents had never told him he wasn't born in the United States. Not only did he go to prison, but when he got out, he was deported.
Like all good Americans, he wasn't going to let Big Brother keep him from his San Diego Padres or good jobs or his girlfriend. No, he scraped together all his money, worked like a dog in Mexico and borrowed money from relatives. Being a California kid, he wasn't going to go to any Sasabe desert and risk dying in the brutal Arizona sunlight. He found a friendly coyote in Tijuana and paid him $2,500 for a ride north.
If you believe you're an American, it's not hard to banter with the border guard -- after all, you can talk the talk, quote the hip-hop, complain about the governor and name your street and city. And he got through. And he got his ride north. Way north. All the way to the Canadian border.
He looked around for a job until he found the perfect employer. True, he is undocumented, but his bosses needed to save money, just like anybody else. He works as a gardener at a U.S. Border Patrol station.
Now consider the strange case of a certain young man enraptured by America's greatest export to Mexico after remittance money: La Jip-Jop, a.k.a. rap. He wanted to become a rapero, and he learned his "rolas" and freestyle technique in Mexico City. But if you're going to be a great rapper, there's really only one place to do so -- the United States. However, "the long lines of legal immigrants waiting for visas" we hear about in the media held no hope for him or anyone like him. That Lou Dobbsian long line of legality is strictly for people with college educations, careers and bank accounts -- not raperos, burger cooks, chicken pluckers or tomato pickers. This young man jumped one of the largely imaginary border fences and made his way through the undocumented underground to Los Angeles. There, he discovered that to be an American hip-hop star, you need to speak English. He enrolled in language school, where he had the amazing good fortune to meet a fellow rapero visionary from El Salvador.
The men studied hard, as their dreams were on the line. And they formed a band that is becoming known on the West Coast. If you knew its name, you could watch their videos on YouTube right now. They're touring, and they're headlining shows. It's the American rock 'n' roll dream for a new millennium. There is one minor catch, though: This young rapero has suddenly realized that if he becomes more famous, he will be found out and deported. It is a moralist's conundrum: If your dream comes true, it holds the seeds of your downfall. What will he do?
Ask. Seek. You will find that the number of crossers in the Arizona sectors is dropping -- but it isn't hot news to hear that fewer are coming. Why are there fewer crossers? The joke on the ground is that there's nobody left in Mexico. You can look at peripheral stories and form a true picture for yourself -- last fall the Pacific Northwest's strawberry crop rotted because the workers did not appear. Something is happening, America. The paradigm, as paradigms tend to do, continues to shift. Being know-nothings works to the advantage of those few who do know and want us to do their bidding. Perhaps this is what the Mexican consul in Tucson meant when he said to me, "The entire border is ruled by one thing: north and south. And that is the politics of stupidity."
Amen.
luis@luisurrea.com
Luis Alberto Urrea, a novelist and poet,
is the author of "The Devil's Highway."
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Story Highlights• Vermont town sits on U.S.-Canda border, has unguarded streets that cross it • Town's library is in both countries; one water system serves both sides of border • Border Patrol worried smugglers will take advantage of low-key border crossing • "There have been some significant cases," officer says Adjust font size:
DERBY LINE, Vermont (AP) -- Step through the front door of the Haskell Library and you're in the United States.
Walk across the carpeted floor to the circulation desk and you're in Canada. But if you sit down on the couch, you're back in the U.S.
The 106-year-old Romanesque building, which straddles the international border, has enjoyed a kind of informal immunity from border restrictions through the years.
But a U.S. Border Patrol crackdown focusing on three unguarded streets linking Derby Line with Stanstead, Quebec, across the border, could soon change that.
"There's been an increase in illegal activity, both north and south, in the last little while," said Mark Henry, the operations officer for the Border Patrol's Swanton sector, which runs across northern New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. "There have been some significant cases."
Under the crackdown, instead of parking their cars outside the library in Quebec and walking to the front door in the U.S., Canadian patrons would have to detour through one of two ports of entry linking the municipalities.
It's not far, though people are leery about the change.
"For as long as I've lived here, the practice was if they were only going to the library, they didn't have to report," said village trustee Keith Beadle, who also sits on the library board.
If the streets are closed, smugglers will just walk across lawns or through the woods, Beadle said.
No decisions have been made yet, but U.S. and Canadian authorities are holding a series of meetings with officials from both communities.
"This all fits in to the larger picture of the Border Patrol strategy to gain operational control of our borders," Henry said.
Grocery shoppers not the target Cpl. Luc Bessette, a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said: "I don't think they're aiming at people who go pick up groceries and come back. It's people that want to use this in a bad way."
Smugglers have learned the side streets are unguarded, and while surveillance cameras monitor activity on other streets, border agents on both sides can't always get there in time when illegal activity is spotted.
Recently, two vans carrying 21 illegal immigrants were caught in the U.S. after having crossed over on one of the unguarded streets.
What exactly would change in the crackdown remains to be seen.
"We don't know what the outcome would be," said Pierre Dussault, Stanstead's general director.
Even though Derby Line and Stanstead are separate municipalities, they share water and sewer systems and emergency crews, which respond to calls on both sides of the border.
'Quite the rats' nest' In the town of Beebe Plain, about three miles west of Derby Line, the border runs down the middle of Canusa Avenue, a residential street.
Houses on the south side fly American flags and cars with green Vermont license plates sit in the driveways. Across the street, a sign says "Arrêt" (French for "stop") and cars have white Quebec plates. Anyone who crosses the street without reporting to its customs houses can be prosecuted.
"This is quite the rats' nest, if you think about it," said Pat Boisvert, 66, who has lived in the same house -- on the Vermont side -- his whole life.
Boisvert said residents never used to notice the border, but life along it has since changed.
"It was like it wasn't even there, especially for people who lived around here," he said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
By Spencer S. Hsu Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, May 28, 2007; Page A01
Last June, U.S. immigration officials were presented a plan that supporters said could help slash waiting times for green cards from nearly three years to three months and save 1 million applicants more than a third of the 45 hours they could expect to spend in government lines.
It would also save about $350 million.
The response? No thanks.
Leaders of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services rejected key changes because ending huge immigration backlogs nationwide would rob the agency of application and renewal fees that cover 20 percent of its $1.8 billion budget, according to the plan's author, agency ombudsman Prakash Khatri.
Current and former immigration officials dispute that, saying Khatri's plan, based on a successful pilot program in Dallas, would be unmanageable if expanded nationwide. Still, they acknowledge financial problems and say that modernization efforts have been delayed since 1999 by money shortages, inertia, increased security demands after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the disruptive launch of the Homeland Security Department.
As the nation debates whether, and how, to legalize as many as 12 million illegal immigrants living here, the agency that would spearhead the effort is confronting its reputation as a broken bureaucracy whose inefficiency encourages more illegal immigration and paradoxical disincentives to change.
Under the Senate's proposed immigration legislation, Citizenship and Immigration Services would vet applications and perform security checks for those illegal immigrants -- a surge that would be almost triple the agency's annual caseload of 5 million applications.
Each application could generate fines and fees of $1,000 to $5,000, a windfall of $10 billion to $15 billion over eight years, Homeland Security officials said. The money would dwarf revenue from a previously announced agency plan to increase fees on immigration and employment applications by 50 percent as early as next week, to raise $1 billion a year.
Former U.S. officials, watchdog groups and immigrant advocates warn that Citizenship and Immigration is ill-positioned to make the best use of the money. Instead, they say, Congress must change how it funds the 16,000-worker agency and provide tough oversight if the agency is to move past its legacy of shoddy service, years-long delays and susceptibility to fraud. Liberals and conservatives say relying on user fees to upgrade the agency is a recipe for disaster.
"If the USCIS fails once again to meet the challenge, the laws of supply and demand will overtake U.S. immigration laws," driving workers and employers to bypass the law, said James Jay Carafano, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Given the nation's history of weak enforcement at the border and against companies that hire illegal workers, Citizenship and Immigration's record as gatekeeper for legal immigrants often goes overlooked. Each year the agency, once known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, awards 1 million green cards, 700,000 naturalizations and 1 million temporary work permits.
Delays have plagued its efforts, however. After peaking at more than 5 million applications in 2003, the agency's backlog stood at 1.1 million last summer after a five-year, $500 million reduction effort. That includes 140,000 cases not awaiting action by another agency.
Immigration Agency Mired In Inefficiency Citizenship and Immigration's troubles stem from the nation's 1986 amnesty. Acting on the principle that citizenship is a benefit that immigrants, not taxpayers, should pay for, Congress required immigrants to cover the cost of citizenship examinations, then about a tenth of INS's budget.
But what started as a reform became an addiction. Hooked on fees, Congress allowed the growth of a Turkish bazaar of levies, through which immigrants now pay for 90 percent of the agency's budget. They subsidize even non-paying applicants such as refugees, asylum seekers and U.S. military members.
As workloads grew, fees, last revised in 1998, did not keep up. Without money to invest in technology and management improvements, the agency continued to rely on a paper-based filing system from the pre-computer age. That carried $100 million a year in costs for archiving, retrieval, storage and shipping, as well as lost paperwork and delays. The 2001 attacks prompted costly new mandates for background checks, security upgrades at more than 100 offices and subsidies to strapped enforcement operations and the new Homeland Security Department.
By 2004, Citizenship and Immigration was "looking at maybe $500 million or more in the hole," said William Yates, then head of domestic operations.
As backlogs and deficits grew, the agency ratcheted up charges to cover its budget. The longer applicants waited, the more they paid.
"We were really operating a Ponzi scheme," said Yates, who retired last year after 31 years at the agency. "The money that current applicants were paying, we were using to adjudicate older cases.
For example, Citizenship and Immigration set up a Chicago office strictly to accept signed applications and checks, even though most applications are not approved. Officials said they created the system because the Treasury Department offered to set it up at no cost, and the agency doesn't like to process applications before being paid to do so.
In 2005, it raised $230 million by charging green-card applicants for about 1 million temporary work and travel permits they needed while waiting for their cases to be processed. About 325,000 interim permits went to people whose applications were later denied, creating a security risk, Khatri said.
The agency raised another $139 million by charging a separate "premium processing" fee of $1,000 -- three times the normal fee -- that is now used by a majority of applicants to speed up the process.
"If you're a good-government agency, why are you trying to cheat or fool the public into thinking they have to go into first class?" Khatri asked.
Yates said he proposed the premium charge in 1999 to pay for modernization efforts, but the money was tapped after the 2001 attacks for operations.
Under a proposal issued Jan. 31 and to be made final as early as this week, Citizenship and Immigration seeks to boost fees by more than 50 percent on average and to dedicate $139 million in premium fees to modernization. The cost of applying for legal permanent residency, for example, would nearly triple, from $325 to $905.
The plan has drawn 39,000 comments, including criticism from a wide range of interests. Critics say it proposes punishingly big fee increases on immigrants and their employers but promises just a 20 percent improvement in services.
Khatri's proposal to slash green-card waiting times was to assign staffers to weed out ineligible applicants and to ensure that others' forms are complete at the time of filing, cutting down caseloads and processing delays. However, officials determined that while "up-front" processing improved customer service at small offices, it would cost more and worsen service in busy offices because managers cannot anticipate how many people will show up, nor predict political or other circumstances that drive surges in applications.
Agency spokesman Chris Bentley declined to comment specifically on proposals pending before Congress and cited Yates as an authority on Khatri's past reports.
Business transformation is "not something that can be done overnight," he added. "We're building an immigration system to last 30 years."
The Senate proposal would allow Congress to appropriate money in advance to Citizenship and Immigration. The funds would be repaid by legalization fines and fees, and would not be counted toward the federal deficit.
Yates said the clock is ticking. "If they do not start to modernize, they're going to be at a really severe disadvantage when the impact of this comes in," he said. "It means they should have already started."
Spencer S. Hsu Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, May 28, 2007; Page A04
Most of the Department of Homeland Security's immigration enforcement work is consumed not with stopping terrorists and unraveling their support networks, but with relatively minor administrative violations, according to a new analysis of federal records.
DHS authorities filed charges against more than 800,000 people in U.S. immigration court between 2004 and 2006, but only 126 of them were accused of terrorism- or national-security-related crimes, according to the study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.
Of that number, 41 were removed from the country, four of them on terrorism charges.
Routine violations, such as entering the country illegally or overstaying a visa, made up 86 percent of deportation cases, the study found.
Thirty-one other people were referred for federal prosecution in U.S. criminal courts as terrorists or terrorist financiers by Homeland Security investigators or by the FBI with DHS assistance.
"Traditional regulation of immigration to this day remains central to the activities of both" of DHS's main enforcement agencies -- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection -- study authors David Burnham and Susan B. Long wrote.
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke called the report politically motivated, ill-conceived and fundamentally mistaken about how the department's enforcement strategy targets "security risks and criminals in a post-9/11 world."
"Terrorists do not show up at ports of entry to say, 'I'm here, I'm a terrorist, take me into custody,' " Knocke said. "By being tough and being serious about enforcing the rule of law, you make it increasingly difficult for security risks to exploit the system."
Department officials noted that U.S. authorities often charge suspects with less-serious crimes in immigration proceedings because tougher charges are harder to prove and the ultimate penalty of deportation is the same. In other cases, defendants may face relatively minor charges in exchange for cooperating in terrorism probes. Tougher U.S. screening overseas of visitors may also weed out suspects before they arrive.
For the report, TRAC analyzed millions of Justice Department immigration court and U.S. prosecutor records dating to 1992.
1. MYTH: The government is going to give permanent legal status to 12 million illegal aliens before securing our borders.
* FACT: Temporary worker and Z visas will not be issued until benchmarks for enforcement are met. These triggers include: o Increasing border fencing. o Increasing vehicle barriers at the Southern border. o Increasing the size of the Border Patrol. o Ground-based radar and camera towers along the Southern border. o Resources to maintain the end of catch and release. o DHS establishment of worksite enforcement tools, including an electronic Employment Eligibility Verification System.
* FACT: As we work to meet these triggers, we must provide a mechanism for undocumented workers with clean records and steady jobs to come out of the shadows and be accounted for in a regulated system, on a probationary basis. This will allow immigration enforcement officers to focus their resources on apprehending violent criminals and terrorists.
* FACT: To obtain probationary status, illegal immigrants must come out of the shadows to acknowledge they have broken the law and pass a preliminary background check.
* FACT: Probationary status may be revoked at any time if a worker is found ineligible for the Z visa, fails to maintain a clean record, or fails the background check required for obtaining a Z visa.
* FACT: The Administration has already seen progress in securing our borders due to increased investment and other deterrence factors - the number of apprehensions for illegally crossing the Southern border is down 27 percent from this time last year. The Administration has: o Expanded the Border Patrol from approximately 9,000 agents in 2001 to more than 13,000 agents today. o Built 78 miles of permanent vehicle barrier and 86 miles of primary fencing. o Put in place four Ground Surveillance Radars and one Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), with another (UAS) coming on line in July of this year.
2. MYTH: Under the guest-worker program, guest workers will be able to bring spouses and children into the United States. Children of guest workers will be entitled to free education in public schools, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
* FACT: Temporary workers can only bring their families if they show that they have the financial means to support them and that their family members will have health care insurance while in the U.S. In addition, the number of family members that may be brought into the U.S. by temporary workers is capped.
* FACT: Temporary workers are required to pay taxes on the income they earn while working in the U.S. They must also pay a State impact fee of $500, plus $250 for each dependent (capped at $1,500 per family), to cover costs of public services used.
* FACT: Temporary workers are not entitled to welfare, Food Stamps, SSI, non-emergency Medicaid, or other programs and privileges enjoyed by U.S. citizens and some Lawful Permanent Residents.
3. MYTH: This bill, through mandates with the Employment Eligibility Verification System, gives the federal government the authority to force national ID cards on all American citizens.
* FACT: There is no provision in the bill that requires the creation of a national ID card. The Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS) requires workers to present a limited range of highly secure government-issued or government-authorized IDs. These include: o U.S. Passport (for U.S. citizens only). o Document issued by DHS or the State Department containing photo, biometrics, other such personal identifying info needed to ensure identity (for non-citizens). o State-issued, REAL ID compliant license presented along with a Social Security card, or for a limited period before implementation of REAL ID, a State-issued license with a photograph that can be verified by DHS, presented along with a birth certificate and Social Security card.
4. MYTH: The bill allows dangerous gang members access to the Z visa program if they renounce their gang affiliation.
* FACT: Any gang member convicted of any of a wide range of criminal conduct is not permitted in the Z visa program, whether he or she has renounced his gang affiliation or not. The range of crimes that disqualify applicants from the Z visa program extends into the thousands and includes: o Any felony o Any three or more misdemeanors o Any serious criminal offense o Crimes involving moral turpitude (with narrow exceptions for certain misdemeanors such as those committed before age 18) o Violations of a law relating to a controlled substance
* FACT: Even if a gang member or other applicant has not been convicted of a crime, he or she is ineligible for the Z visa program if the Government concludes that he is sufficiently dangerous. This is true for all applicants, including gang members who have renounced their affiliations. For example, among those ineligible is any gang member (or other applicant): o About whom there are "reasonable grounds" for regarding as a danger to the security of the United States; o Who the Government knows or has reason to believe seeks to enter the U.S. "solely, principally, or incidentally" to engage in unlawful activity; or o About whom there are reasonable grounds for believing has committed a serious criminal offense outside the U.S.
* FACT: The bill would, for the first time, give the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Justice (DOJ) tools to keep certain aliens out of the United States solely on the basis of their participation in a gang. No conviction is required - if an individual has associated with a gang and helped "aid" or "support" its illegal activity, then he or she is not allowed to remain in the country - even if he renounces his gang affiliation.
5. MYTH: The bill contains a new category of visas for family members that includes a waiver for "family members in hardship cases," which will exponentially increase extended-family chain migration.
* FACT: The bill would end chain migration - preferences for siblings and adult children would be eliminated. In addition, visas for parents of U.S. citizens would be capped.
* FACT: After the family backlog is cleared in the first eight years after enactment, the bill will eliminate about 190,000 extended family visas per year. By contrast, the category of "extreme hardship" cases is capped at 5,000 visas per year.
* FACT: The number of family members that could qualify for the waiver is exceedingly small - such individuals could migrate only if they would otherwise experience "extreme hardship" that cannot be relieved by temporary visits. For example, the category might extend to families that have a member with a disability.
6. MYTH: Illegal workers who remained in the country after they were ordered deported by an immigration judge are eligible for Z visas.
* FACT: Illegal workers who ignored deportation orders are not eligible for the Z visa program, except in exceedingly rare cases in which they can demonstrate their departure would "result in extreme hardship."
* FACT: The determination of what constitutes "extreme hardship" lies entirely within the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security, who has no interest in allowing this exception to be abused.
In immigration battle, Cubans are spectators. Cubans generally won't be affected by immigration proposals being debated in Congress but differ in opinions about them.
BY OSCAR CORRAL ocorral@MiamiHerald.com
RONNA GRADUS/MIAMI HERALD STAFF
It took 14 years for Miguel Gomez, left, to be reunited with his twin, Gerardo. Immigration policy for Cubans Document | Chronology of Cuban migration to S. Fla. Miguel and Gerardo Gomez window-shopped in Little Havana dressed exactly the same -- Cuban identical twins separated by 14 years of exile and reunited a little more than a week ago.
Their casual jaunt at Flagler boutiques Thursday framed the best and worst that Cubans have to face under U.S. immigration policy. Their unique immigration status, defined by the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act but punctuated by family separation and yet an easy path to citizenship, can give Cuban Americans a different perspective on the issue.
It took 14 years for Miguel Gomez, 63, to see his twin, Gerardo. Like other immigrants, Cubans who make it to America usually must wait years to bring family members.
''I don't understand this country,'' Miguel Gomez said. ``This is a country of immigrants, yet they hunt down immigrants and kick them out of here like that.''
His twin, still awed by the American abundance surrounding him, said he would stay in this country and never return to Cuba. It's a right he has as a Cuban who touches U.S. soil regardless of how he arrived -- legally through a U.S. immigration lottery system that sets aside 20,000 visas a year or illegally, smuggled in by sea.
Legal experts say Cubans probably would not be affected by a Senate bill to help millions of undocumented immigrants gain work permits and eventually a path toward citizenship.
That leaves Cuban exiles and Cuban Americans watching the debate from the other side of the fence, secure in their own U.S. status and often ambivalent about what rights other immigrants should have.
Some Cubans, particularly older exiles with conservative views, believe that only legal immigrants should be allowed to stay and become citizens, and that the United States should aggressively secure the borders. Others believe that amnesty should be granted to all who want to work here.
''Cubans, we have a different situtation from these people,'' said Spanish-language radio commentator Martha Flores, who has a nightly show on 710-AM, Radio MambÃ. ``But what I don't understand is why we should be against them. . . . Everyone here should have a right to live.''
Some Cuban Americans at La Carreta restaurant in Miami's Westchester neighborhood expressed skepticism last week about any reforms that would allow illegal immigrants to qualify for citizenship.
''People can't claim rights if they start off in this country by breaking the law,'' said Manuel Nobregas, 62, who was born in Cuba.
Ignacio Jesus Vásquez, a retired division chief from the Miami-Dade County Police Department, said the United States has a right and a duty to protect its borders.
''These politicians are just playing politics with the security of our country,'' he said. ``I'm a U.S. citizen. It's time this country assumed some responsibility with its borders.''
CUBANS' SITUATION
Unlike most other immigrants, Cubans begin a path to citizenship immediately upon arriving in the United States, whether they came legally, were smuggled in, or arrived on boats or rafts. It's the result of the controversial wet-foot/dry-foot policy, started by the Clinton administration in the wake of a 1994 rafter crisis, in which Cubans who make it to U.S. shores are allowed to stay, but those intercepted at sea are sent back to Cuba.
Miami immigration lawyer Wilfredo ''Willy'' Allen said the immigration reform proposals before Congress would generally not affect
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