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From the President’s Desk LIRS Continues to Call for Truly Comprehensive, Humane and Pro-Family Immigration Reform The chances for congressional passage of comprehensive immigration reform look gloomier now. On the night of June 7, the U.S. Senate failed to move forward a “grand compromise” bill that had been negotiated between the White House and a bipartisan group of senators led by Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ). As I write there are intense discussions about whether and on what terms the Senate might take up the bill again before the July 4 recess. The current political climate is such that we do not expect the House of Representatives will act unless the Senate goes first. LIRS remains deeply committed to the need for comprehensive immigration reform. Our current immigration law is badly broken. We hear this from members of our churches and members of our communities: Families are separated, willing workers and employers cannot legally contract for employment, and upwards of 12 million persons live in fear in our country without legal status or a path to permanence. Yet the Senate compromise bill was badly flawed. After painstaking deliberation LIRS opposed it. The bill would have had positive short-term impact in providing documentation to many of the undocumented and in reducing the backlog of people waiting to be reunited with family. Yet in the long term the bill would have abandoned family unity as a cornerstone of U.S. immigration law. It would have created pressures for more undocumented migration in the future. It was not the comprehensive fix that our broken immigration system requires. How did LIRS arrive at this conclusion? Over the years, we have developed and relied upon four tried and true principles for evaluating the various proposals for immigration reform: family unity, workers rights and human rights, enabling the undocumented to come out of the shadows and live without fear, and a path to permanence for those who have put down roots in our society. Within our staff, with our board of directors, and with church leaders, we tested the Senate compromise bill against these principles. Regretfully, it came up short. Particularly troublesome for this Lutheran faith-based agency was the way in which the Senate bill devalued family relationships. (See my May 2007 column.) Two of our bishops said it particularly well: “Core spiritual values unite us in this diverse cultural and religious place called America,” noted the Rev. Stephen P. Bouman, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Metropolitan New York Synod. “Central to these shared values is the family. Senate Bill 1348 failed to speak to our common spiritual foundations.” “Our nation is founded on strong families that stand at the center of our communities,” observed the Rev. H. Gerard Knoche, bishop of the ELCA’s Delaware-Maryland Synod. “The Senate’s proposal turned away from that long-standing tradition and from the Christian principle that we should welcome the stranger in our homes and families.” LIRS hopes that the White House and the Congress will take in earnest our concerns. Now is the time for the president and the Congress to work to enact an immigration reform bill that is truly comprehensive, humane and pro-family.
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