My Hope for Obama: Reform the Immigration System

As Barack Obama is sworn in today, I harbor hope that he will listen to the people who voted for and supported him.  I hope that he will not fall into the "siege mentality" trap that many are calling for in this recession: "shut the door," "close the border," "don't let another immigrant in until every American citizen is employed."

This destructive, fearful mentality wrongly assumes a zero sum game between U.S. citizens and everyone else, overlooks the economic benefits of a liberal immigration policy and ignores the opportunity costs of blind enforcement, and refuses to acknowledge that many who came here at a young age have valid claims to full participation in American society.

I have five specific hopes for the new administration.

Stop the Raids - As George Bush saw his plan for immigration reform go down under a barrage of fire from the nativist wing of his own party, he decided to take out his frustrations not on the managers and executives who employed undocumented immigrants, but on the workers themselves.  2007 saw the implementation of a program of massive raids at factories and food processing plants across the country.  ICE was active on a smaller scale, too, breaking down doors of immigrant homes in the pre-dawn hours, sometimes locking up entire families, other times deporting parents and leaving U.S. citizen children to fend for themselves.  The raids turned the hope of the 2006 marches into an engrained fear more befitting a Soviet-era police state than a free democracy.  Bush didn't need the consent of Congress to initiate the nationwide raids, and Obama doesn't need its consent to suspend them.  This should happen first: justice demands that any forward motion on the border wall or legislative reform be contingent on suspension of the raids.

Advocate for sensible, humane immigration reform - This umbrella request could include any of my other hopes.  Simply put, legal immigration levels at present are mismatched to actual levels of labor supply and demand.  This creates a permanent underclass of legal non-entities for employers to exploit.  The current legal framework was not put in place based on the needs of business, the available supply of immigrant workers, or even the wishes of the majority of voters.  Rather, it was pushed forward, as were so many other misguided policies in recent decades, by motivated conservative interest groups and a ruling party blinded by ambition.  Mostly I blog about the negative effects of this system on the human rights of immigrants.  But the system as it exists doesn't work very well for anyone except for certain exploitative employers and nativist politicians.  It has to be fixed.

Support the DREAM Act - The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, is a bipartisan bill that would permit undocumented students conditional legal status if they meet each of the following requirements:

• brought to the United States before they turned 16 and are below the age of 30,
• have lived here continuously for five years,
• graduated from a U.S. high school or obtained a GED,
• have good moral character with no criminal record, and
• attend college or enlist in the military.

There's no good reason not to enact this bill, and it is supported by politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Support the UAFA - The Uniting American Families Act (UAFA) would permit a U.S. citizen or permanent resident to sponsor their same-sex partner for immigration to the U.S.  Currently, many binational same-sex couples must relocate to a country that recognizes their relationship or face forced deportation.

End the Widow Penalty - Because of a misinterpretation of the law by USCIS, immigrant spouses of American citizens face automatic denial and threat of deportation when their spouses die during the lengthy process of obtaining a green card.  Many have U.S. citizen children and strong family support from the family of the deceased spouse.  Several federal courts have ruled that USCIS is wrong on the law, but the government has refused to acknowledge its error and continues to deport these spouses.