|
Statement on 'New' Senate Immigration Bill from LIRS President Ralston H. Deffenbaugh Jr., June 20, 2007
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) urges senators to oppose the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S. 1639) unless the Senate fundamentally improves it.
LIRS commends Senate leaders for offering provisions that would enable legal status for many of the nation’s 12 million undocumented immigrants and reduce the current family visa backlog. These would be constructive one-time changes—but the bill’s future impact would be devastating to immigrant families. Furthermore, instead of providing a workable, comprehensive fix to our broken system, the current bill would perpetuate its brokenness. To be truly comprehensive and workable, immigration reform must promote family unity, preserve human rights and worker rights, bring people out of the shadows, and provide a path to permanent legal status. In its current form S. 1639 would not create a future system that fulfills these principles. The proposed legislation fails in numerous ways.
- Harmful to families. The bill would dramatically cut the family visa system, now a cornerstone of U.S. immigration law, by dismantling four of five family visa categories, making it more difficult for U.S. citizens to reunite with their parents and nearly impossible for U.S. citizens to reunite with siblings and adult children. It would kick out of the visa waiting line some 800,000 family members who have filed for family unity.
- Unworkable, unfair temporary worker visa program. The bill offers little or no opportunity for temporary workers to obtain permanent status and has a burdensome requirement for both employers and employees to acquire a visa for three two-year periods, with each visa period being interrupted by a year outside the United States. Moreover, it allocates only 200,000 slots for unskilled workers when our economy needs more than twice that number.
- Unworkable, unfair earned legalization plan. The bill’s “touchback” provisions and punitive fines would create obstacles and real hardships for many eligible immigrants and families.
- Costly, ineffective, inhumane enforcement. The bill relies too much on fences, border patrol and prison-like detention methods that will cost billions of dollars, deprive immigrants their basic dignity and access to due process, and ultimately not address the root causes of unauthorized migration.
- An untested point system that devalues family. The proposed visa point system would displace the current system, which allocates visas based on ties to a family or an employer. The point system would give little weight to the needs of families to be together, and would deprive businesses of the opportunity to select workers. The system ignores the indispensable role played by family and employer ties in the integration of newcomers into the community.
Along with fundamental improvements needed on workability, the Senate could fundamentally improve the bill by preserving and improving the family visa system and by eliminating backlogs. Alternatively, they could amend the visa point system to generously facilitate family unity. LIRS applauds efforts thus far by Sens. Clinton (D-NY), Menendez (D-NJ), Dodd (D-CT), and Obama (D-IL) to introduce family-friendly amendments to an earlier version of the bill. We also applaud Sens. Lieberman (I-CT) and Feinstein (D-CA) for amendments on detention reform and care of unaccompanied children, respectively.
LIRS opposes the bill in its current form, and urges senators to improve it fundamentally. LIRS will continue its efforts to support workable comprehensive immigration reform that is fair, humane and supportive of families.
Archived News Releases
|
