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Pedestrians line up to cross the U.S. border checkpoint in Calexico, California, in this file photo. The Build Back Better plan includes $100 billion for immigration reform, including expanded access to visas and DACA-like protection for up to 7 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., but not the pathway to citizenship advocates had pushed for. (Photo by Josh Denmark/Customs and Border Protection)

WASHINGTON Buried in the $1.9 trillion Build Back Better Plan is $100 billion for immigration reform, money that critics say has no business being in the bill and that migration advocates say does not go nearly far enough.

The immigration provisions, which were included in the bill House approved Nov. 19 on a mostly party-line vote, are certain to become a sticking point if and when the Senate takes up the full Build Back Better bill, one of the Biden administrations key initiatives.

The money would be used for everything from expedited processing of immigration paperwork, expansion of visa availability and access to work permits for as many as 7 million undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S., among other provisions.

But it does not include a pathway to citizenship for those immigrants, which advocates see as a slap that does not address the larger issue the need for comprehensive immigration reform.

The Build Back Better Plan, the one that passed in the House, its not a path to citizenship, and it just feels like a temporary bandage, said Vicki Gaubeca, policy and communication strategist for the Southern Border Communities Coalition.

So its a short-term fix, but really, I think, ideally, we need to get immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for all 11 million people who are here without work authorization, Gaubeca said.

That was echoed by Jose Patio, the director of education and external affairs at Aliento, an Arizona-based immigrant advocacy group.

Its been since 1986, over 35 years since we had an immigration reform, Patio said, referring to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. That bill, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, led to citizenship for more than 2 million undocumented immigrants who were in the country at the time.

But Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said the U.S. has no ethical obligation of rewarding people who have broken the law by coming here illegally.

Nobody promised people who came into the country illegally that they were going to get some kind of benefit, you know, including a path toward citizenship, Mehlman said.

The bill currently before the Senate does not provide a path to citizenship, but it provides a path to at least a provisional status, which is parole for, you know, for undocumented immigrants who arrive prior to January 1, 2011, said Donald Kerwin of the Center for Migration Studies of New York.

In addition to being here since 2010, immigrants who want to apply for protection under the bill would be charged a fee for the application and would have to meet other criteria. Kerwin said it is similar to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, under which work permits and other benefits are provided along with temporary protection from deportation.

But DACA provides just two years of protection, which can be renewed for two years at a time, for undocumented migrants who can prove they were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Under the Build Back Better plan, however, the deportation deferral would be good for five years at a time, and renewable.

Its a very positive bill, Kerwin said.

Mehlman does not just disagree with the proposal, he disagrees with the way Democrats are trying to get it through the Senate.

With the Senate evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, critics of the bill can easily block a measure by filibustering it, since it takes 60 votes to end a filibuster and bring a measure up for a vote. One way around that is through budget reconciliation measures, which need only a simple 51-vote majority.

Mehlman noted that the Senate parliamentarian has already rejected an attempt to include immigration language in an early reconciliation bill, and said that should happen again, since he does not believe the migration policy proposal really constitutes an investment.

Shes going to have to rule again, that these are social policies that really dont belong in a budget reconciliation bill, Mehlman said of the parliamentarian.

You can dress it up any way you want, call it an investment. It is not, it is a major policy change, he said. So, you know, it probably is not going to make it into the final version of the Senate bill.

Gaubeca said that not only should it be included but she hopes that senators take it a step further and include a path to citizenship, even though she concedes that she is being a little bit super-idealistic.

That would be awesome to offer a pathway to citizenship, even though they will have to send it back to the House, she said.

Patio said undocumented immigrants deserve a path toward citizenship, noting their contributions to the U.S. by serving as front-line workers in dangerous circumstances during COVID-19 pandemic.

They were the ones who are out there risking their lives with no vaccines, no access to unemployment, a very little gear, and making sure that we have food on the table, he said.

Continued here:
Neither side thrilled with immigration reforms in Build Back Better bill - Cronkite News

I read your article about U.S. Rep. Bob Latta and immigration (Latta language protested, Nov. 24). I can offer some light on this topic. I was an immigration civil surgeon, which means that I did the intake physical exams on people trying to become citizens of this country.

I began doing the intake exams in 1987 and continued doing them until the Donald Trump administration. I probably did some 5,000 exams.

As is well known, the former president had a hard stand against immigration from non-European countries. He made it hard to enter the country, but this tactic did not slow the rates of immigration much. As a result, the Trump administration decided to reduce the number of civil surgeons, thus bottle-necking the immigration process at both ends.

The agency that handled the civil surgeon end of the process contacted me about their intent to revoke my civil surgeon status, saying that I had to prove that I had been in practice for at least four years. I pointed out that I had been doing CIS exams since 1987, but this was not sufficient. I complied with every request they made, but that was not sufficient either. I still have the paper work for inspection. Hence, my civil surgeon status was revoked though I could pay $675 dollars and file an appeal. But, being no indication that my appeal would be granted and I would still be out the $675, I could see the handwriting on the wall, so I did not appeal.

In light of the above, I consider Lattas response to La Conexion sadly laughable. I dont think that Latta really cares about immigrants despite what he says.

If La Conexion wants to improve the lot of immigrants, its members must vote Republican lawmakers out of office, beginning at the local and state levels and continuing on to national levels. Otherwise, if Trump becomes president again and the Republicans gain control of Congress, immigrants are out of luck.

Originally posted here:
Immigration reform starts with your vote | Opinion | sent-trib.com - Sentinel-Tribune

The squeeze on foreign labor comes as the country's working-age population has been declining and as businesses say they cant find enough workers to staff their operations because of the pandemic. There were 10.4 million job openings in the U.S. at the end of September, according to the Labor Department.

The processing issues are huge, said Jon Baselice, vice president of immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Thats the most disruptive thing that I hear from companies on a regular basis.

Processing delays slow down all sorts of other things that a company has to do. So when they can't get things processed timely, that means people have to be taken off the payroll, Baselice said.

Foreign nationals already in the U.S. have been waiting for months and in some cases, for over a year to have their employment authorization approved or extended due to processing holdups at USCIS field centers, caused partly by the coronavirus pandemic. Thats forced some people, including asylum seekers, to quit their jobs in the U.S. after their work permits expired.

These are folks who are working and who took jobs to support themselves and their families, said Emma Winger, a staff attorney at the American Immigration Council. Now, because of this delay, they're losing their jobs. And many of those people were contributing to the economy and filling jobs that the U.S. really needs.

Winger is representing an asylum advocacy group in a lawsuit over USCIS processing delays affecting health care workers, a truck driver, a fast-food manager and others.

The delays across the agency have also prevented USCIS from issuing green cards that would give foreigners the ability to work in the U.S. permanently, leaving thousands to expire this year.

The fight is now playing out in the debate over Democrats $1.7 trillion Build Back Better legislation.

The House version of the bill would recapture unused immigrant visas going back to 1992, freeing up 157,000 employment-based visas, according to an estimate from Democrats, in addition to roughly 262,000 family-based and diversity visa slots, which would also allow applicants to work.

It would provide temporary protection and work authorization to an estimated 7 million undocumented immigrants including Dreamers and farmworkers who are already in the U.S., which Democrats say will accelerate the economic recovery. The House version of the legislation would also provide $2.8 billion to help USCIS process those new cases and fix processing delays.

Some business groups agree, saying the immigration provisions in the bill are necessary to address labor shortages that are contributing to rising inflation.

Immigrant workers are a critical component for calming the current hike in inflation, the American Business Immigration Coalition wrote in a letter to the president and Democratic leadership this week. "Labor shortages result in construction delays, higher production costs, and lower inventory levels, which all lead to inflation."

But anti-immigration groups have panned the provisions in the Democrats' bill as providing amnesty to millions and warned that the changes could actually have a negative effect on the economy.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which pushes for lower levels of immigration, argued in an analysis of the Build Back Better act that the sudden increase in the supply of legal labor generated by amnesty would likely further contribute to wage stagnation, giving employers even less incentive to raise wages.

Robert Law, director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the money included in legislation won't be enough to resolve USCIS' backlog issues.

There are so many structural problems within USCIS that, frankly, I don't think that money would make much difference as far as reducing some of the processing times, Law said. There's too much volume, there's too many other obstacles.

Democrats are already facing an uphill battle getting their broad social spending package through the Senate, where the bills immigration reform sections still need to be approved by the parliamentarian, who has blocked attempts to include immigration reform before.

Experts say the problem is two-fold, pointing to what they see as arbitrary caps on employment-based immigration, along with agency-wide delays in processing immigration documents.

Employment-based visas are capped at 140,000 each year and typically expire at the end of the year if they go unused. Under current law, people from any single country may only receive 7 percent of an annual pool of employment and family-based green cards. Immigrants from countries such as India, China, Mexico and the Philippines can face green card waits that span years.

We're just not issuing the number of visas that come up every year, said Kristie De Pea, vice president for policy and director of immigration at the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank. There are a lot of bureaucratic inefficiencies in the process. And when you pair that with the caps for certain countries, and the number of folks that are still trying to come from those countries all the time, you end up looking at backlogs that are a decade long in some cases.

There are currently 1,551,864 employment-based green card applications stuck in the backlog, according to an estimate from David Bier, a research fellow at the Cato Institute. Roughly 850,000 of those workers are simply waiting in line to adjust their status, meaning they are already working in the U.S. on some other visa which typically have limits on who foreigners can work for and for how long.

The Biden administration blames the delays in part on the Trump administration.

There's a massive backlog on these [work permit] applications, as with so many others, that we inherited and that we are working diligently to address, said a USCIS official who requested anonymity to discuss the previous administration. So we're very much aware of both the economic and human cost of people losing their ability to work for no reason other than administrative delay. We know it's happening. We know it's continuing to happen. And we are determined to prevent that from happening as soon as possible for everyone in that position.

The agency said it has tried to alleviate some of the backlog by temporarily suspending certain biometrics requirements for some groups and granting extensions of work permits, among other steps.

Immigration experts as well as the Biden administration say the problem has been made even worse by consulate and agency closures due to the pandemic, as well as policy changes made during the Trump administration that added hurdles for asylum seekers and immigrants to come to the U.S. and receive work authorization.

The Trump administration cut resources to an already inadequately funded USCIS and created bottlenecks by creating bureaucratic obstacles, according to the pro-immigration reform group New American Economy. This led to unprecedented delays to the processing of immigration applications and higher rates of rejection for temporary worker visa applications.

Dan Wallace, deputy managing director of the organization, said that from 2015 to 2019 there was a roughly 40 percent decline in migration to the U.S.

Researchers at JPMorgan wrote in a November report that the U.S. population is about 3 million immigrants short of where it would be if it continued on pace with pre-2017 trends, a large majority of whom would have been of working age.

That decline in immigration has been compounded by an extra 1.7 million people retiring during the pandemic, the researchers wrote, which could stunt the growth of the labor force and overall economic productivity.

Immigration rates could eventually rebound, but we suspect this will be a slow process, they said. Meanwhile, the resident population will continue aging.

The Census Bureau estimated that immigrants expanded the U.S. population by over 1 million in 2016, before falling steadily to about 480,000 by 2020, the JPMorgan researchers said.

This is sort of the worst possible time for us to be experiencing a decline in immigration, said Wallace, noting that immigrants are more likely to be working age and to have educational backgrounds that fit gaps in the labor force.

Read the original here:
Biden and businesses agree on one thing: U.S. needs immigrant workers - POLITICO

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --Today the Senate confirmed Chris Magnus to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), one of the world's largest law enforcement agencies. Magnus, who has a long-standing and well-documented antipathy for border and immigration enforcement, assumes the leadership of the very agency charged with keeping our borders secure amid an unprecedented border crisis precipitated by Biden administration policies. This sends a clear message to the world that our borders are wide open.

In response to Magnus' confirmation, the following statements were issued by Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and Mark Morgan, a senior fellow at FAIR and the former commissioner of CBP:

Dan Stein:

"Throughout his tenure as Chief of Police in Tucson, Arizona, Magnus was a staunch defender of sanctuary policies that undermine some of the very laws that he is about to enforce. As the Border Patrol is overwhelmed with record numbers of people crossing our border illegally compounded by vast amounts of lethal drugs being smuggled into our country the men and women who serve in that agency deserve a leader who will provide them with the proper support and resources they need to protect the American people.

"Chris Magnus is most assuredly not that guy. He was nominated by President Biden not to ensure that our borders are secure, but to see to it that his administration's open-borders policies are carried out regardless of the cost or risk to the American public."

Mark Morgan:

"Having had the privilege of leading one of the nation's largest law enforcement agencies, I am keenly aware of how vital the work of CBP is in protecting our borders and combatting criminal cartels that are waging what can be described as nothing less than a war against our country. I have seen, first-hand, the dedication of the men and women who serve in CBP to doing their job.

"Sadly, rather than selecting someone who is committed to the agency's mission, President Biden and Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have appointed a poorly qualified person who shares their commitment to undermining CBP's core mission. Chris Magnus is so ideologically opposed to immigration and border enforcement that as Tucson's police chief he rejected federal funding to help his department deal with criminal aliens who prey on communities in his city, over the objection of his officers. He is clearly the wrong man at the wrong time to be leading CBP."

Contact: Matthew Tragesser, 202-328-7004 or [emailprotected]

ABOUT FAIR

Founded in 1979, FAIR is the country's largest immigration reform group. With over 3 million members and supporters nationwide, FAIR fights for immigration policies that serve national interests, not special interests. FAIR believes that immigration reform must enhance national security, improve the economy, protect jobs, preserve our environment, and establish a rule of law that is recognized and enforced.

SOURCE Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)

http://www.fairus.org

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Senate Confirms the Wrong Man at the Worst Possible Time for the Critical Job of Leading US Customs and Border Protection, Says FAIR - PRNewswire

By Sarah Nicell || Campus Life Editor

In an increasingly politicized world, the first thing many of us do when we are inconvenienced is email our representatives. Whether we are impacted by a devastating event, an injustice, or the potholes in our roads, we send a strongly worded call to action to our local politicians. However, what we typically dont expect is an answer. That is just what F&M senior David Cazares got.

After reaching out to multiple PA government officials, David experienced what some would consider the opportunity of a lifetime: a meeting with Congressman Lloyd Smucker of the House of Representatives. He has served Pennsylvanias eleventh congressional district for the past four years. Despite having little in common in terms of background, perspective, and party, David and Congressman Smucker had a productive conversation about an extremely important subject that the United States must face as soon as possible: immigration reform.

Because its not every day that you get to chat with a Congressperson, especially about something so meaningful, I was thrilled to have the pleasure of interviewing David about this incredible experience.

Hey, David! Introduce yourself in whatever way makes you feel comfortable.

My name is David Cazares. Im a senior studying biology on the Pre-med track. I was born in Mexico City and crossed the border when I was six years old. I lived in Georgia before I transferred to F&M last year, and its been one of the best decisions I ever made.

You had the opportunity to talk to Congressman Lloyd Smucker. How did that happen? What events led to your conversation?

Heres the thing, I just emailed his office. I googled who our congressman, mayor, and senator were. I emailed all three, and he responded first. Senator Bob Casey couldnt meet, but I am meeting his legislative assistant soon. We so often hear that one person cant change the world. Its a pessimistic outlook, but one that Im guilty of. Im trying to change that.

I was motivated by the students around me. A good friend, Roger Avila, is a fellow ally to undocumented students, and we sat down one day discussing how we could do our part. We agreed that talking to the administration to improve help for undocumented students would be a good first step.

F&M helps undocumented students, but schools often like to maintain their help private to ensure their safety. I respect that. As a whole, I think institutions of higher education should help push for immigration reform.

I have a lot of friends and family that have been victims of the injustices of our immigration system. I view it as my responsibility to improve this world, and this is the issue Ive chosen to fight for.

According to your Instagram post, you spoke primarily about immigration reform. What does this issue mean to you? What is your vision for its future? What did Congressman Smucker have to say about it?

Congressman Smucker is a Republican. Im an undocumented immigrant. These labels are an unfortunate aftermath of years of politicization in this country. At the end of the day, were both humans. Congressman Smucker believes in securing the border, he asked me what I thought about it, and I told him I agreed.

He is adamant on border security being included in any immigration legislation. Its a terrible truth that immigrants are dehumanized to stoke fear. Its also true that the War on Drugs has increased violence in both North and South America, something being seen along the border.

Immigration should be regulated not stopped, and the government is doing everyone a disservice by not providing reformative legislation which combats these issues effectively.

I want to help people. He and I both agree that immigration reform is needed to allow hard-working undocumented immigrants to obtain citizenship. Because in the end, immigrants want to build a future here, and there are too many barriers to that right now.

In 2021, it often feels impossible to achieve bipartisanship on any issue. However, you posted, We dont see eye to eye on all political problems, but we agree immigration reform is a bipartisan issue. How do you think the parties can work together and cooperate to develop better solutions to such a big problem?

The United States has a dark history of the exploitation of slaves, immigrants, and foreign nations resources. In addition, there is a lot of media with the intention of dividing this nation. Fighting fire with fire will only make a larger flame, right? I see too many people on the political spectrum isolating themselves to be in an echo chamber. They focus on what divides us instead of what unites us.

We need to acknowledge the fact that we are so terribly divided. We need to acknowledge the pain and suffering caused to one another before any meaningful change can be accomplished.

Lastly, our government works because of us and it should work for us. Our government officials must be scientifically literate, open-minded, and representative of the average American.

All of that is easier said than done, especially on issues that are life or death.

How did it feel to talk to a member of the House of Representatives?

Surreal. I mean, at the end of the day Im just an undocumented immigrant. I dont have a vote, but I have a voice. We need to hold not only our representatives, but ourselves accountable for the role we play in other peoples lives.

I should have done it years ago, and I believe its something we should all do. We need to form closer relationships with the people we put in office. They need to see us with their own eyes. Its far too easy to become alienated with such large physical and literal distances between them and the average citizen.

Lastly, its so cool that you had this wonderful opportunity. Has it changed your perspective or outlook on government in any way? Do you think you would like to have a career as Congressman one day (though perhaps not within the same party)?

Before anything like that, I need my citizenship. I plan on using my platform to continue advocating for immigration reform. My goal is to become a physician, and I hope to fight for more support for undocumented students. Additionally, too many institutions of higher learning dont accept or provide support for this population within their schools. Now my focus is on the medical schools closing their doors to us. I plan on meeting with whoever is necessary to accomplish these goals.

My hands are tied at times because Im still afraid of one day being deported, but if I dont take a stance, who will?

David has spread the message that our voice matters more than we will ever know. For those of us who share the privilege of free speech, for those of us who have citizenship, for those of us who can stand up for immigrant rights, we must act now even if action begins with an email.

Sarah Nicell isa sophomore and the Campus Life Editor for The College Reporter. Their email is snicell@fandm.edu.

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Congressman Smucker is a Republican. I'm an undocumented immigrant At the end of the day, we're both humans.: An Interview with David Cazares The...