December 11, 2008
Thursday

The nation's economic crisis could make it tough for President-elect Barack Obama to deliver on his pledge to overhaul the nation's immigration laws, some analysts predict.

With unemployment rising, foreign workers are less welcome, say immigration restrictionists, who have vowed to oppose offering legal status to the nation's estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants.

Key immigration issues facing President-elect Obama By TYCHE HENDRICKS San Francisco Chronicle Key immigration issues facing President-elect Obama: Employment Eligibility Verification. In 2009, federal contractors will be required to use E-Verify, an electronic system (that's voluntary for other employers) to confirm the work eligibility of new hires. Congress must reauthorize funding for the E-Verify program before March 1, but business groups vow to fight it, calling the system onerous. Civil liberties groups say its inaccuracies will penalize legal workers. President-elect Barack Obama has said he favors making such a system mandatory for all employers but he wants it to include improved accuracy and privacy standards. Immigration raids: During the past two years, the Bush administration has stepped up arrests of illegal immigrants through worksite raids and operations targeting immigration fugitives. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 40,000 people in 2008 and 36,000 the year before. Immigrant advocates say the raids have disproportionately hit workers rather than abusive employers. Obama has condemned the human toll of the raids. Border enforcement: Border Patrol funding and staffing more than doubled during the Bush administration, and Homeland Security officials have been working overtime to build 700 miles of border fence, although only about half of that will be done by the end of the year. Obama has said he supports strong borders, and he voted to authorize the fence, but he has said that a fence is not the best approach. Earned legalization: Obama has said he supports allowing otherwise-law-abiding undocumented immigrants to obtain legal status if they pay a fine and back taxes, admit they've broken the law, learn English and go to the back of the line. He supports the DREAM Act, which offers citizenship to college-bound young people brought to the United States illegally as children. But observers believe that these proposals will have to wait behind priority issues such as stimulating the economy, ending the war in Iraq and repairing the nation's health care system. Legal immigration reform: Obama favors changes to the "dysfunctional bureaucracy" in the legal immigration system that include eliminating backlogs for family based immigration. The country faces a still-unresolved debate over whether to offer more green cards based on the country's economic needs -- for both high- and low-skilled workers -- or continue the current arrangement that favors family ties. Three agencies in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security handle immigration matters. They are: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: Oversees lawful immigration, deciding on applications for asylum and refugee status, lawful permanent residence and U.S. citizenship. U.S. Customs and Border Protection: Secures the nation's borders and ports of entry, monitoring legal trade, travel and immigration while intercepting smuggled goods, illegal migration, agricultural pests and potential terrorists. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Enforces immigration laws inside the country, focusing on illegal aliens and employers who hire them, and targets criminal organizations trafficking in people, drugs, weapons and other contraband.

But as the presidential transition goes into high gear, Democratic political insiders still believe that immigration reform has a good chance. Until a comprehensive bill is introduced in Congress, Obama's pick to head the Department of Homeland Security, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, will play a key role in refocusing the way the government handles immigration.

"Clearly the economy is job No. 1 for the new administration," said Frank Sharry, director of America's Voice, a pro-immigration advocacy group. "But we fully expect that by the end of year one, that they're going to take a hard run at immigration reform."

Others were not so sanguine. Yale Law School Professor Peter Schuck, an immigration expert, doubts lawmakers will take up the issue for a couple of years: "It's going to be on the back burner just because everything else is on the front burner. It's a very, very delicate political issue that nobody deals with with eagerness."

The weak economy -- the unemployment rate reached 6.7 percent in November, its highest level in 15 years -- combined with increased immigration enforcement, appears to be discouraging illegal immigrants from entering the country and impelling others to head home. Demographer Jeff Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center recently estimated that 11.9 million illegal immigrants are living in the United States now, down from an estimated 12.4 million a year earlier. The U.S. Border Patrol reported making 700,000 arrests over the past year, down from 1.1 million two years prior.

But the illegal immigration issue remains volatile, and the next Congress and new administration will have to decide what to do about the people in the United States without authorization and how to deter future illegal immigration.

Problems in the legal immigration system have festered for years. The agency granting permanent legal residence (the green card is the token) and citizenship has long been plagued by epic backlogs and dysfunctional computer networks. Major policy debates over appropriate levels of immigration and whether to prioritize family ties or economic contributions -- and high- or low-skilled workers -- remain unresolved after "comprehensive" immigration bills died in Congress in 2006 and 2007.

Obama supports allowing illegal immigrants to earn legal status, continuing tough border enforcement and establishing an electronic worker eligibility verification system. He has been largely silent, though, on whether to admit temporary foreign workers, as President Bush and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., proposed, or to accommodate new workers by expanding the number of green cards, as some labor advocates prefer.

Obama's advisers and congressional leaders are talking about a bill that would include a strong, mandatory verification system to ensure employers are hiring legal workers, combined with a measure to grant legal status to undocumented immigrants and require them to register and pay taxes, said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute and former immigration commissioner under President Bill Clinton.

Those who favor greater restrictions on immigration are adamant, however, in opposing both future visas and amnesty, or a path to legal resident status for illegal immigrants.

"The rule of law and not rewarding illegal behavior is a basic American concept," said Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., who heads the House Immigration Reform Caucus.

But Bilbray praised Obama for his support of employment eligibility verification and called it an area where Democrats and Republicans could work together.

The combination of toughening workplace enforcement through an electronic program known as E-Verify and barring legalization could force illegal immigrants to "self deport," restrictionists say.

"There are 6 million illegal aliens holding jobs in construction, services and manufacturing," said Roy Beck, director of Numbers USA, an immigration reduction organization. "If you have mandatory E-Verify ... and you make it impossible for illegal immigrants to keep those jobs, then you get 6 million jobs that have opened up for the country's 10 million unemployed workers."

Immigrant rights advocates counter that 12 million people, many of whom have deep ties here, including U.S.-born children, are not going to just disappear. Bringing illegal immigrants already working in the underground economy "out of the shadows" could have economic benefits for the country, some Obama advisers add.

Obama's choice of Napolitano may help straddle the political divide on immigration. If confirmed as secretary of homeland security, she will have wide-ranging responsibilities -- from preparing the country for hurricanes to preventing terrorist attacks. But she will also oversee the three major agencies that handle immigration.

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