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On Sunday, the New York Times ran an analysis of the dueling and yet fairly similar immigration proposals advanced by the two leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, former President Donald Trump and current Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The headline read With Unrealistic Immigration Proposals, DeSantis and Trump Try to Outdo Each Other, but none of the proposals advanced by either candidate appears to be anything other than what the law demands. Of course, it would help if the Gray Lady didnt wildly underestimate Bidens border releases.

Republicans Pounce. Although it references Trump, the piece is actually an attempted takedown of DeSantis, and you can get a sense of where its headed right from the jump:

As a presidential candidate, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has said he would authorize the use of deadly force against people crossing the border, seek to end the practice of birthright citizenship and send the military to strike against drug cartels inside Mexico, a key ally of the United States, even without the permission of its government.

Those positions put him on the hard right among the Republicans running for president, many of whom are tapping into deep anger among G.O.P. primary voters over immigration.

Now, Mr. DeSantis, who often tries to stoke outrage with his border policies, has unveiled another extreme position: deporting all undocumented immigrants who crossed the border during the Biden administration. [Emphasis added.]

My colleague Mark Krikorian often alludes to the Republicans pounce trope, best defined by whats not commonly thought of as a hotbed of right-wing thought, Urban Dictionary, as follows:

A headline in a newspaper or other article that describes Republicans (or other right-leaning individuals) attacking a Democrat (or other left-leaning individual) when that Democrat commits a misdeed. Always written by a reporter with left-wing political views, it will attempt to frame the Republicans as overzealous, and will either downplay, ignore, or excuse the Democrat's misdeed. Commonly done by the New York Times or Washington Post, it is often viewed as a sign of the bias within the media.

Thats a decidedly accurate take in this instance, beginning with the use of the descriptor hard right. How often have you heard reference to the hard left? Rarely, I am guessing; the preferred term in the media is progressive wing. The same goes for stoke outrage, the likely cognate for which is stir up the base or promote liberal values, and deep anger, the opposite of which is strongly held beliefs.

Extreme Position. Of course, those are basically procedural arguments, and every procedural argument is self-serving. The idea that a would-be president is promoting an extreme position by proposing to deport all undocumented immigrants who crossed the border during the Biden administration, on the other hand, is hardly extreme at all.

In fact, its the expressed policy of the Biden administration.

In September 2021, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memo captioned Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law, which directs how ICE officers and attorneys must take certain enforcement actions, including investigating, questioning, arresting, detaining, prosecuting, and removing illegal aliens (undocumented immigrants) in the United States.

Those guidelines identify just three classes of aliens as priorities for such immigration enforcement actions: (1) terrorists and spies (threats to national security); (2) aliens who engaged in serious criminal conduct (threats to public safety); and (3) a group denominated as threats to border security, that is aliens:

(a) apprehended at the border or port of entry while attempting to unlawfully enter the United States; or (b) apprehended in the United States after unlawfully entering after November 1, 2020.

Not only are aliens apprehended in the United States after unlawfully entering after November 1, 2020 the same as undocumented immigrants who crossed the border during the Biden administration, but the former class is more expansive, stretching back to days before the 2020 election.

Its curious the Times never mentions this fact in its article, instead focusing exclusively on the logistical difficulties inherent in actually removing such a large group of aliens from the United States:

Conducting so many deportations would require Mr. DeSantis to hire more Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, authorize widespread raids into immigrant communities, significantly expand immigration detention space to meet national standards and substantially grow the fleet of airplanes used for deportations. Billions more dollars would need to be spent on bolstering immigration courts to adjudicate cases within months instead of years. Currently, some migrants who have recently arrived in the United States have been given court dates a decade from now because the immigration court backlog is so large.

Part of that is accurate, but most isnt.

ICE Officers. Plainly, DeSantis proposal would require the hiring of more ICE officers, but the agencys Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) branch the component responsible for most removals has been underfunded for years and is strained to the point of breaking in dealing the millions of new cases Bidens border surge has added to its backlog.

And yet, for some reason (assuming the administrations latest budget request is correct), ICE ERO lost 547 positions between FY 2022 (8,258) and FY 2023 (7,711), while the White House is only asking for 518 new positions in its FY 2024 budget 29 fewer than it had in FY 2022.

Authorize Widespread Raids. Its unclear to me how, exactly, the Times believes ICE conducts its business, but the widespread raid part is a head-scratcher.

Plainly, if the agency has reason to believe that a large number of removable aliens are at a given address or a specific worksite, theyd likely send more than a couple of officers to check it out. Yet, the papers depiction smacks of tens to hundreds of ERO officers all converging on neighborhoods across the Republic with guns drawn and sirens blaring.

Thats not how it works, because of course ICE would have no reason to believe that all the residents in a given area are aliens who entered illegally under the Biden administration. And, given the fact that the administration has given those migrants free rein to roam far and wide across the country, they likely would not be concentrated in one place.

Any such proposal would require those officers to locate specific aliens in specific places and go and pick them up, or, even better, to respond to local authorities who have encountered them. Thats not much help in so-called sanctuary cities that eschew local cooperation with immigration authorities, but in states like Texas and DeSantis own Florida, where the governments are more simpatico with ICE enforcement, it wont be that difficult.

That said, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) itself provides some helpful options the Times never even considers.

Section 262 of the INA requires all aliens in the United States to register their presence here within 30 days of arrival (backed up by a fine and/or prison sentence), while section 265 of the INA mandates that such aliens provide DHS with a change of address within 10 days of moving (with a lesser fine and/or a shorter prison sentence for non-compliance).

As an added authority, section 263(b) of the INA permits DHS to prescribe special forms and regulations for the registration of any class of aliens not lawfully admitted to the United States for permanent residence like aliens released under the Biden administration at the Southwest border.

Once a significant number are required to register, more than a few will decide theyve made enough money here and simply go home. That might sound crazy, but as my colleague, Jessica Vaughan explained in 2006:

Voluntary compliance works faster and is cheaper than a borders-only approach to immigration law enforcement. For example, under the controversial [National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS)] program launched after 9/11, DHS removed roughly 1,500 illegally-resident Pakistanis; over the same time period, in response to the registration requirements, about 15,000 illegal Pakistani immigrants left the country on their own.

Why was NSEERS controversial? Because it applied only to specific nationals of certain Middle East countries with Muslim majorities. A similar program that applied only to illegal entrants released under the Biden administration at the Southwest border would suffer no similar criticism because: (1) most of those aliens are nationals of Western Hemisphere countries; (2) none of those countries have Muslim majorities; and (3) it would have a demonstrably legitimate purpose.

And I havent even mentioned the most powerful tool DeSantis or Trump could bring to bear: a mandatory E-Verify program. As DHS explains:

E-Verify, authorized by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), is a web-based system through which employers electronically confirm the employment eligibility of their employees.

In the E-Verify process, employers create cases based on information taken from an employees Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification. E-Verify then electronically compares that information to records available to [DHS] and the Social Security Administration (SSA). The employer usually receives a response within a few seconds either confirming the employees employment eligibility or indicating that the employee needs to take further action to complete the case.

The I-9 employment-eligibility verification process all employers must comply with is already required by section 274A of the INA and has been since 1986. The problem is there was no internet in 1986 (compliance has been paper-based ever since), but the president could potentially mandate compliance with E-Verify by regulation or even executive order.

Would mandatory E-Verify encourage Bidens border migrants to leave? They almost definitely would.

In a March 2016 study, Do State Work Eligibility Verification Laws Reduce Unauthorized Immigration, researchers Pia M. Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny determined that having an E-Verify law reduces the number of less-educated prime-age immigrants from Mexico and Central America immigrants who are likely to be unauthorized living in a state. Thats the majority of Bidens migrants.

The duo examined the effect of the adoption of E-Verify laws on the illegal alien population, and focused their study on Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Utah all states that had adopted E-Verify policies.

Of course, workers who couldnt find employment in a given state could always move to one that didnt mandate E-Verify, but if that process were required in every state, where would they go? Assuming, as is evident from most media interviews conducted with Bidens border migrants, that the majority have come here to work, if they could not work, theyd leave.

Significantly Expand Immigration Detention Space. Plainly, to the degree that any Trump or DeSantis plan relied on ICE ERO officers arresting migrants who entered illegally under Biden, more detention space would be required. The good news is theres plenty of detention beds to go around.

I was an immigration judge at the York Immigration Court in York, Pa., which itself is not a hot destination for most migrants released at the Southwest border. The York County Prison, however, had lots of extra beds, which it rented out to ICE for aliens it had detained. That was a win-win for both ICE (it didnt have to build new facilities) and the county (it received recompense and a pretty good premium for room and board).

Some of those aliens would remain for extended periods of time, but only the ones who werent clearly removable or who had legitimate claims for relief (like asylum). The rest cleared out pretty quickly, and at present the median completion time for a detained case in immigration court is just 41 days.

Even thats on the high-side by historical standards, because as recently as FY 2012 (during the Obama-Biden administration), the median completion time for detained cases was just over two weeks. Why the difference? Because in FY 2012, ICE actually detained illegal entrants, few of whom had or have any right to be here, which is not the norm today.

So yes, more detention space would be required if a President DeSantis decided to actually enforce the policies the Biden administration currently has in place. But not as much as the Times suggests.

Substantially Grow the Fleet of Airplanes Used for Deportations. As for the Times contention that DeSantis proposed scheme would require DHS to substantially grow the fleet of airplanes used for deportations, my first response is, Why bother?

The department may prefer to use its own planes to conduct removals, but theres no need for it to do so. In fact, when I was an associate general counsel at the then-INS enforcement law division, nearly every alien (some of whom were seriously bad people) was just placed on a commercial airliner and sent home.

Even today, the ICE website states that the agency conducts removals through chartered flights, commercial airlines and ground transportation, for both escorted and unescorted removals. For countries not bordering the U.S., removals require ICE air charter or commercial flights (emphasis added). I dont even see the words DHS Air in that excerpt.

Even if ICE were to skip bookings on any one of the hundreds of commercial flights that depart for foreign destinations every day, the charter option is pretty economical, according to the agency:

A daily scheduled charter flight average cost is $8,577 per flight hour. A special high-risk charter flight average cost is between $6,929 to $26,795 per flight hour, depending on aircraft requirements. These rates cover the cost of not only the aircraft and fuel, but also the flight crew, security personnel, an onboard medical professional and all associated aviation handling and overflight fees.

Thats per flight, not per alien. The aircraft featured therein, registration number N279AD, is a Boeing 737-4, which can carry between 146 and 189 passengers. That works out to $183 per flight hour on the high side to just $45 per flight hour on the low a bargain compared to the $12 billion New York City expects to pay for its 100,000 migrants ($120,000 per alien).

How Many Alien Releases? At least 2,390,584. Given that the Times deliberately attempts to make the challenges of removing the migrants who have entered the United States under Biden seem daunting, its strange that it also understates the number of aliens who have come illegally on the current administrations watch: at least 1.6 million released since January 2021 plus about 1.5 million others have entered the country illegally without being detained, that is, got-aways.

In reality, as I recently explained, the Biden administration has released at least 2,390,584 illegal aliens at the Southwest border into the United States, though the actual number is much higher, given that Bidens DHS not only refuses to release the official total, but is actually hiding its port release figures and the number of aliens transferred by CBP at the border to ICE who were released by the latter agency.

Since February 2021 Bidens first full month in office CBP has encountered more than 3.57 million aliens at the Southwest border who were processed under the INA in lieu of being expelled under Title 42. I have been told anecdotally but by people who would know that all of them have been released into the country. If thats not true, the administration is free to correct me by releasing the actual total.

You can add to that figure nearly 1.6 million known got-aways since Biden took office, though then-Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz told Congress back in March that the actual number of got aways could be 10 to 20 percent higher, which adds anywhere between 160,000 to 320,000 to the total.

That gets you, at the high end, to 5.47 million new arrivals since Biden became president, and when you lump in the 263,000 inadmissible aliens waived in through the Southwest border ports who used the CBP One app to preschedule their illegal entries and the 211,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who flew into U.S. airports using Bidens illegal CHNV parole processes, youre pretty close to the six or seven million figure DeSantis referenced during a recent speech that the Times contended was greatly overestimated.

Again, the burden should be on the administration to disclose how many aliens have entered illegally on its watch, not on the governor of Florida, who is essentially a private citizen for purposes of this analysis. Nothing in the Times article suggests the writers asked DHS for the official figure, however.

If Removing Aliens Is So Hard, Why Does Biden Keep Letting Migrants In? The elephant in the room or more specifically the donkey in that article is why, if removing aliens is so hard, the Biden administration keeps allowing tens of thousands of them per month in.

That question applies not only to the 100,000-plus aliens Border Patrol released after apprehension in August at the Southwest border, but also to the 45,400 illegal entrants who were processed using Bidens CBP One port app interview scheme in August and about 30,000 others who came in on CHNV parole.

Note that Texas is challenging those CHNV parole processes in Texas v. DHS, in part, because Biden has no plan whatsoever to remove them. That actually makes the Times point, but the paper never even mentions either that fact or the states litigation.

None of this is to second-guess the Times. It wanted a piece attacking DeSantis and Trumps plans to remove the millions of illegal aliens Joe Biden has allowed into the United States at the border and got it. Respectfully, however, theres a lot more news thats fit to print about Bidens border policies, and it would have informed the public discourse had the Times simply included it.

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NYT: Trump, DeSantis Have 'Unrealistic Immigration Proposals' - Immigration Blog

HOUSTON (CN) A group of red states began to make their case Thursday, asking to federal judge to do away with a Biden administration program that allows 30,000 people per month from four troubled countries to be paroled into the United States.

With their home nations struggling amid political turmoil, natural disasters, economic crisis and gang violence, people from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti have been traveling to the U.S. in search of better lives like never before: Last fiscal year, for the first time, Border Patrol encounters with people from those four countries exceeded those of nationals from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

President Joe Bidens Department of Homeland Security over the first two years of his presidency released many of the travelers into the U.S. with notices to appear for deportation proceedings or to report to immigration offices.

America struggles to deport the group due to icy relations with their countries governments or dangerous conditions in their homelands, and they cannot be indefinitely detained in immigration prisons.

Desperate for a solution, as Republicans decried the White Houses open-border policies, Homeland Security started a parole program for Venezuelans in October. The agency added Nicaraguans, Cubans and Haitians in January. Around 181,000 people have come to the U.S. through the policy.

The initiative required buy-in from Mexicos government, which is also eager to stop emigrants from crossing its country to get to the U.S.

Mexico agreed to accept the return of those who enter the U.S. without papers instead of going through the parole process. After they are expelled, they must abide by a five-year ban on admission and could be charged with illegal reentry if they return before then.

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, the president has the authority to grant parole on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefits.

Both Democratic and Republican administrations have created similar parole pathways for a variety of groups: family of U.S. military members, children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, relatives of Filipino World War II veterans and Afghans who helped the U.S. military during the Afghanistan war.

Despite that history, Texas and 20 other Republican-leaning states sued the administration in January, alleging it had overstepped Bidens parole powers.

Texas claims the parolees who move to the state will increase its costs for education, health care, issuing drivers licenses and incarcerating immigrants convicted of felonies. It is the only one of the plaintiff states to provide financial data.

But the feds say in court filings the results were swift and dramatic: In the first months of the program, conditional releases of people from these countries dropped 90%, from 2,356 to 245 per day.

To qualify for parole, which allows for a two-year stay in the U.S. and a work permit, immigrants must have a U.S. sponsor who swears under penalty of perjury they will house them, and help them obtain health care, learn English and get a job. The sponsors themselves must file papers to start the application process and undergo extensive background checks along with the applicants.

Seven sponsors intervened as defendants in the case.

One of their attorneys, Monika Langarica of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law, said in opening statements of Thursdays bench trial that Texas is asking U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, a Trump appointee, to be the first judge in history to block such a parole plan.

Five administrations have enacted over 120 parole programs over seven decades. None have been found to be unlawful by a court and none have been overridden by Congress, she said.

Eric Sype, one of the intervenors and the only witness in the trial, described befriending a man named Oldryn, and Oldryns family, in 2014 while working for a nonprofit in Nicaragua. Over the years they have become so close they call each other chosen family.

Sype said Oldryn, whose last name has been withheld, lives in a coastal community that was devastated by tropical storms that swept away his in-laws home. Then in 2018, an uprising against authoritarian President Daniel Ortega led to blockades across the countrys highways.

All economic activity stopped. His family said there was no work for a long time, Sype testified.

The Covid-19 pandemic also stifled Nicaragua's economy. And with Oldryn struggling to find full-time construction work, Sype said Oldryn asked him for advice on ways to support his wife and two young children.

Sype said he and his parents decided to sponsor Oldryn as a form of reciprocity.

They supported me when I first left home and traveled out of country. Theyve welcomed me into their home again and again. And we see this as a chance to welcome him into our family and home during a time of need for him, Sype explained.

Oldryn arrived in the U.S. via San Francisco International Airport on Aug. 12, where he was vetted by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent and granted parole.

Oldryn is now living at Sypes parents home in Cashmere, Washington, and sleeping in Sypes childhood bedroom. He is waiting on a work permit so he can work on Sypes cousins apple farm, Sype testified.

He said his cousin always has difficulty finding enough labor for his farm, and Oldryn will help meet that need before returning to Nicaragua in August 2025.

Later on Thursday, Gene Hamilton of the America First Legal Foundation started closing arguments for the plaintiff states. The foundation was started by Stephen Miller, who served as a senior adviser to former President Donald Trump and helped craft his anti-immigration policies.

Hamilton accused the Biden administration of creating a shadow immigration system under the guise of managing the crisis at the border without analyzing their ability to remove parolees after two years.

He argued Biden does not have the same parole authority presidents had in the past because Congress curtailed it in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.

Under their interpretation there is no limiting principle to how they can use this statute, Hamilton said. Any time they want, for any nation, they can start one of these programs and parole as many people as they want.

Trying to establish standing, Texas assistant attorney general Ryan Walters also argued in closings the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act by starting the policy without first letting the public weigh in through a notice-and-comment period.

Tipton indicated it may take more than that. "I find that remarkable you said every time you sue for notice-and-comment you automatically get standing," he said.

He is presiding over the trial in Victoria, Texas. The proceedings are being livestreamed at the Houston federal courthouse.

The judge has a history of thwarting Bidens immigration policies.

Trial is expected to end Friday and Tipton said he will issue a ruling several weeks later.

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Trial over key Biden immigration policy underway in Texas - Courthouse News Service

Republican Congressmen Juan Ciscomani and Democrat Raul Grijalva held a rare bipartisan conversation on Tuesday, Aug. 22.

It is increasingly rare for two congressional representatives on opposing sides to appear on the same stage, especially in an event that is not an official debate. The conversation was hosted by the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Federal spending and border policy dominated the conversation at Pima Community College.

Both men expressed strong opposing stances on immigration. As both of the representatives districts cover the entire Arizona border with Mexico, immigration is an important issue to both them and their constituents.

Grijalva is a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform.

I'm a comprehensive immigration reform person. And I think that that's the way to solve this crisis. And it is a crisis, he said.

As an immigrant himself, Rep. Ciscomani said immigration is a deeply personal issue to him.

He told the audience that he sees immigration policy as falling into three separate buckets; the actual immigration process, security, and trade. To Ciscomani, border policy should deal separately in these three areas instead of sweeping reform.

Grijalva also called out his Republican colleagues Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar for injecting race into border conversations.

As I pointed out, Mr. Gosar and Mr. Biggs, the comments that they make are insulting. Sometimes, if not racist, right on the border. Im not going to stop calling them out on that kind of stuff. Thats not part of the dialogue, Grijalva said. With that point of view and to continue to interject that into the discussion, then there is no opportunity to find the middle ground.

Given the environment today, trying to do this in a long comprehensive way poses serious challenges that I dont see moving forward. What we need to do is take separate bites of the apple that deal with issues that we can fix now, Ciscomani said.

When representatives return to Washington D.C. next week, their first priority will be to pass a budget before the end of the fiscal year on Sept 30. As the deadline looms, each representative said they still have deal breakers theyll stand firm on.

Both men agreed that a budget must pass and a government shutdown cannot happen. However, they also said there are certain deal breakers they will stand on when it comes to passing a budget.

One of Ciscomanis is excessive government spending.

No new taxes, no new government programs, we can get to where we need to get to while being very responsible and funding the top priorities as well, Ciscomani said.

Grijalva attacked what he sees as Republicans poison pills, or culture issues injected into legislation proposals. He says these prevent important legislation from passing.

Let's take out those poison pills. Restricting a woman's rights, reproductive or otherwise, limiting and marginalizing groups of people because of who they love. Taking these cultural grievances and making them part of a budget process where the investment is what's at stake, he said.

Grijalva, a senior congressman, said that if it came down to a choice between his conscience and passing a budget, he would have to choose his conscience.

Whether you're a freshman or a senior member like myself, the only thing you have to take away with you is your conscience and the values that you stood for, he said.

Both men agreed on the necessity of passing a budget. As a Congressional veteran, Grijalva said that a budget deal can be reached in time to avoid a government shutdown.

Although Ciscomani is a freshman congressman, he holds a seat on the House Appropriations Committee. Despite demands from the far-right Freedom Caucus, he said he is confident that a workable budget can be reached.

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Grijalva and Ciscomani sitdown together - AZPM - AZPM

Most Americans didnt have email access the last time Charles Kamasaki lobbied for a comprehensive immigration reform bill that actually became law. In 1986, cellphones had barely hit the scene. He envied a co-worker who owned a clunky car phone.

It took years of face-to-face advocacy work before the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made it to President Ronald Reagans desk. Kamasaki barely saw the inside of his own office while he and his fellow members with the National Council of La Raza, now UnidosUS, haunted the halls of Congress and monitored every subcommittee meeting.

That act increased border enforcement, upped the penalties for hiring illegal workers, and included a pathway to citizenship for nearly 3 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. It was a bill that died three times before it was enacted, Kamasaki said. And if you want to go back even further, antecedents of this bill had been debated since 1952. No bipartisan, comprehensive reform has made it through since, though Congress nearly passed bills in 2006 and again in 2013.

An ambitious bipartisan overhaul, known as the Dignity Act, might have a chance, Kamasaki said. Reps. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, and Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., introduced the act last month. The Dignity Act is based on the biblical principles of dignity and redemption, Salazar said in a statement. The proposed legislation boosts border security along with legal immigration. It gives immigrants living in the United States illegally an opportunity to earn legal status. It may take years of legislative ping-pong for the bill to move forward, but experts say it has the potential to gain traction more quickly if something triggers demands for immediate reform.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle admit the immigration situation has reached crisis proportions. Immigration authorities encountered illegal immigrants at the southern border a record 2.76 million times last year. Asylum cases piled up in court, so U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement released thousands of immigrants into the country to await court hearings that are years away. A pending court ruling could end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program this summer, creating an uncertain future for more than 600,000 immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.

And legal immigration has become all but impossible, David Bier, the associate director for immigration studies at the Cato Institute, argued in an analysis released earlier this month. Less than 0.1 percent of refugees are selected for resettlement, and caps on family sponsorship visas mean most immigrants wait for years.

Employer-sponsored immigration is an expensive and lengthy process that is often too difficult for employers to complete. There are no temporary, year-round work visas for lesser-skilled workers without a college education to work in the United States, Bier explained. Employers continue to hire workers who are overstaying their visas and living in the country illegally. About 50 percent of U.S. agricultural laborers are illegal immigrants.

The Dignity Act would create an uncapped, temporary visa program for agricultural workers living in the United States illegally. Farmworkers who worked in an agricultural industry for at least 180 days out of the last two years could apply for the renewable, 5-year certified agricultural worker visa and later apply for lawful permanent resident status.

The act would also gradually implement an E-Verify system requiring employers to confirm that their employees lived and worked in the United States legally.

El Paso County Commissioner David Stout chairs the Texas Border Coalition, a group of business owners, city officials, and community leaders advocating for federal immigration reform. He supports the bills focus on expanding employment-based visas. Our farmers and ranchers dont have people to work their fields, he said. We have people that are in the construction industry that cant find people to work on their projects.

Instead of releasing asylum-seekers into the country to await their hearing, the bill proposes setting up five humanitarian campuses where asylum officers would process claims within 60 days.

Right now, its years in the queue of waiting for an asylum claim, said Tara Watson, a Brookings Institution economist who focuses on immigration. They make their home here. And then if their asylum claim is turned down, thats a very disruptive removal.

Under the proposal, about 1.9 million children brought to the United States illegally, including the 600,000 DACA recipients, could adjust to 10-year conditional permanent resident status.

Perhaps most controversially, the act would give the more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States a chance to step out of the shadows. Illegal immigrants could only access the legal Dignity status if they completed a criminal background check and paid taxes along with $5,000 in restitution. They would also have to contribute to a fund for retraining American workers for high-demand jobs, and they could not receive federal welfare benefits.

The goal is to recognize that there was a violation of a law, Watson said. She added the acts use of fines rather than deportation and family separation is a more proportionate response to an immigration violation.

This is different from amnesty, said Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy for World Relief and the national coordinator for the Evangelical Immigration Table. Its a restitution-based legalization process, he said. You have people paying significant restitution for having violated immigration law, but it does make it possible for them to pursue permanent legal status.

The idea is gaining ground among evangelicals. Last year, Lifeway Research found that 78 percent of evangelicals supported a pathway to permanent status for illegal immigrants if it involved paying restitutionup from 68 percent in a 2015 survey.

Once illegal immigrants completed the seven-year Dignity program, they would have two options. A five-year, renewable Dignity status would allow them to live and work legally in the United States and reenter the country. Or, if they completed the five-year, conditional Redemption program, they could adjust to lawful permanent status.

Reps. Escobar and Salazar paired the bills immigration reform measures with several border security initiatives. That speaks to the fact that there is an appetite in Congress to deal with this issue, to try to resolve it in a way that can be beneficial for our economy and for national security, said Christian Penichet-Paul, assistant vice president of policy and advocacy for the National Immigration Forum.

The Dignity Act authorizes at least $35 billion to improve infrastructure between and at ports of entry, including physical barriers and technology. It ups the minimum staffing levels for Border Patrol agents, Office of Field Operations officers, and Customs and Border Protection processing coordinators. And it requires the Department of Homeland Security to expand inspection lanes at ports of entry.

It also moves the border security goal posts away from operational control, which is preventing all unlawful entries. Instead, it aims for operational advantage, or finding and responding to high-priority security threats.

So far, the two representatives have recruited 10 co-sponsors: five Democrats and five Republicans. It could take a few years for something to pass, said Penichet-Paul. It could also be quicker than we expect. Another rush at the U.S.-Mexico border or the consequences of another court ruling on DACA could push Congress to act.

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Congresswomen propose ambitious immigration overhaul | WORLD - WORLD News Group

A detailed analysis of U.S. immigration laws by the Cato Institute is alarming: Less than 1 percent of potential immigrants of men and women who attempt to begin the process to legally immigrate to the United States are able to complete the process and relocate to the U.S.

The myth that legal immigration is relatively easy or a matter of simply waiting a few years persists, writes Catos David J. Bier. The focus then becomes solely on how to deal with the symptom of the restrictions people crossing illegally rather than the restrictions themselves, and legal immigration reforms fall to the wayside.

For about a century, there were virtually no limitations placed on immigration. For another several decades until 1924, our immigration laws were modeled to presume eligibility for permanent residence unless the immigrant fit into specific, narrowly tailored categories.

In 1924, this presumption was flipped, Bier writes. Today, all immigrants are presumed to be ineligible, and the burden shifted from the government to the immigrant to prove that they fall into certain narrow, eligible categories.

As Bier and the Cato Institute note, closing avenues of legal immigration funnels increasingly desperate people into doing what many say we most do not want them to do attempt to immigrate to the U.S. illegally, whether by crossing the border without documentation or by overstaying a tourism or other temporary visa.

We agree that illegal immigration is an untenable situation. We recognize the need for border security and for investigation, enforcement and apprehension of illegal immigrants.

But we also agree with the Cato Institute. We admire the institutes commitment to skepticism about the size and scope of government. We recognize, along with the Cato Institute, that arbitrary and cumbersome limits on men, women and families who wish to migrate to the U.S. to pursue life, liberty and happiness are in fact invasive and excessive big government.

And we join the Cato Institute in calling for immigration reform, in amending our laws so good people have better opportunities to openly join the our society and embrace its commitment to freedom and liberty.

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