The immigration plan outlined by Janet Napolitano yesterday at the Center for American Progress can best be summed up by the title of a Sergio Leone spaghetti western: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
The plan is good in that it creates a pathway toward legalization for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States and focuses most of the law-enforcement efforts on employers who use undocumented workers and the coyotes who smuggle them into the country.
The bad is the specifics of the pathway, which include requiring
illegal immigrants who hope to gain legal status … to register, pay fines and all taxes they owe, pass a criminal background check and learn English.
This raises the question of what kind of fines and whether they will act as an impediment toward bringing the undocumented out of the shadows.
The American Immigration Council calls for a relatively simple process that could include small fines and avoids onerous requirements and other rules designed to minimize the number of people who can be legalized. It has offered a blueprint that seems to make sense. Basically, it includes:
- Covering as many people as possible, which “makes sense from a humanitarian perspective” and gives the program its best chance of succeeding.
- Creating a “straightforward process that measures prospective, rather than retrospective, eligibility” and does not include “overly onerous, politically motivated initial requirements.” This “will maximize the likelihood of success,” the organization says.
- Avoid large fines and focus on “Basic proof of identity and a criminal background check(s).”
- Focus on “integration into the community and a commitment to becoming a lawful permanent resident.”
Minimize the impulse to punish people. There is likely to be considerable political pressure to impose high fines, require people to leave the country before applying, limit the ability to bring in immediate family, or complete other requirements in exchange for legal status. While these measures sound tough, they are counterproductive. In order to achieve the broadest possible legalization, the eligibility criteria and evidentiary standards must be achievable by a maximum number of people.
Upon registration, applicants should be a on a path that leads to a green card, provided they meet specified criteria. The criteria that most seem to measure commitment—paying taxes, learning English, working hard or going to school, staying out of trouble—can be built into the requirements for successful completion of the program, but the trade off must be legal status that can eventually lead to citizenship. Without the promise of a green card, legalization is nothing more than an expanded temporary worker program, running the risk of creating a second-class citizen with the right to work, but with no incentives to put down roots and no opportunity to remain lawfully. Newly legalized immigrants must not be granted a distinctive status that singles them out from other legal immigrants, inviting discrimination and abuse.
And then there is the ugly — the continued heavy focus on enforcement and the “fence,” which she praised and which the administration does not appear ready or willing to abandon.
