USA Green Card Immigration Blog

Marco Rubio Says His Immigration Bill Can’t Pass the House | TIME.com.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A sweeping immigration bill in the Senate ran into criticism Tuesday from advocates who complained it puts up undue barriers to citizenship for millions here illegally.

Officials from several immigrant rights’ groups and the Catholic church held a conference call to highlight their concerns about the bill, including a cutoff date that excludes people who arrived here after 2011, and provisions disqualifying anyone with a felony conviction or more than two misdemeanors. President Barack Obama praised the Senate bill generally, though he said he would prefer to see some changes.

Immigrants would also have to pay $2,000 in fines and hundreds more in fees along the bill’s 13-year path to citizenship, and meet income and employment requirements designed to ensure they have resources above 125 percent of the federal poverty line and won’t need to draw on public welfare programs.

Advocates said the policies taken together could exclude hundreds of thousands or even a million or more of the 11 million immigrants here illegally. The Senate Judiciary Committee is to begin voting on the legislation next week.

“If you’re going to leave several hundred thousand behind and leave them in the shadows you’re not solving the problem,” said Kevin Appleby, director of migration and refugee policy for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“We’re very concerned that what the bill does is it punishes people for being poor,” Appleby said.

Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, said that after reading the 844-page bill, advocates have concluded it needs “major improvements.”

Advocates are also concerned that the bill requires certain goals on border security to be met before anyone can get a green card qualifying them for legal permanent residence and ultimately citizenship, and some say that the path to citizenship takes too long.

Despite their concerns, advocates said they continued to support the overall goals of the bill and promised to fight for its passage even as they try to make it better. And it’s not clear that they have much hope of getting a more favorable agreement.

The bill written by four Republican and four Democratic senators is a delicately crafted compromise meant to balance liberal with conservative goals, and the authors have promised to stick together to oppose any amendments that significantly alter the legislation. And the legislation already is seen as too permissive by many in the conservative-controlled House, which also will have its say.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who helped write the bill, told radio host Mike Gallagher on Tuesday: “The bill that’s in place right now probably can’t pass the House. It will have to be adjusted.”

Several of the bill’s authors have said the American public only is willing to accept citizenship, still derided by some as amnesty, if it comes with tough conditions. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., defended the bill’s approach.

“Becoming a United States citizen should not be easy, it’s never been easy for anyone who came here from another country,” McCain said Tuesday at a forum at the University of Southern California Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy. Republicans such as Rubio have indicated they won’t be able to support the bill if border security and enforcement provisions are weakened.

Obama, who’s embraced immigration legislation as a top second-term priority, also praised the Senate bill Tuesday even though it is stricter in some areas than his own approach on immigration. For example, Obama has not supported making the citizenship pathway contingent on border security.

“The bill that they produced is not the bill that I would have written, there are elements of it that I would change, but I do think that it meets the basic criteria that I laid out from the start,” Obama said at a news conference Tuesday. Those criteria are more effective border security, cracking down on employers who would hire immigrants here illegally, enacting improvements to the legal immigration system, and creating a pathway to citizenship, Obama said.

Obama said he was open to different solutions that might be proposed by the House, but only if his basic criteria still are met.

“And if they meet those criteria but they’re slightly different than the Senate bill, then I think that we should be able to come up with an appropriate compromise,” Obama said. “If it doesn’t meet those criteria, then I will not support such a bill. So we’ll have to wait and see.”

Bill offers a path to citizenship, new path on immigration – Politics – The Boston Globe.

WASHINGTON — A sweeping immigration bill that a bipartisan group of eight senators completed Tuesday seeks not only to fix chronic problems in the system and bring an estimated 11 million immigrants to the right side of the law. It would also reorient future immigration with the goal of bringing foreigners to the country based increasingly on the job skills and personal assets they can offer.

The bill, by four Democrats and four Republicans, is the most ambitious effort in at least 26 years to repair, update, and reshape the US immigration system.

The part of the bill expected to draw the most controversy is a 13-year pathway to citizenship for immigrants who have been living here illegally. In an effort to make that proposal acceptable to Republicans who fear it could unleash a new wave of illegal immigration, the senators placed a series of conditions along the pathway that would require the Department of Homeland Security to spend as much as $5.5 billion over 10 years to increase enforcement and extend fencing along the Southwest border.

The border security programs would have to be fully operational before any immigrants who had been here illegally would be able to apply for permanent resident cards, the first step toward becoming US citizens.

But the overall proposal is only one part of the complex bargain. Created by the senators in closed-door negotiations, the bill codifies other compromises designed to break logjams that have clogged the immigration system.

President Obama praised the legislation as ‘‘largely consistent’’ with the principles he had laid out for an immigration overhaul. After a meeting with two senators from the group, Charles Schumer and John McCain, the president said in a statement that the provisions of their bill are ‘‘all common-sense steps that the majority of Americans support.’’

McCain said his onetime rival for the presidency was ‘‘very supportive’’ but understands that ‘‘everybody didn’t get everything they wanted.’’

Schumer praised Obama for giving the senators room to craft the bipartisan legislation. ‘‘I thanked him for that. John thanked him for that.’’

Schumer said the process would begin formally with hearings Friday in the Judiciary Committee, with the goal of voting on the bill in the Senate in late May or early June.

For the first time, the legislation would create a merit-based program to award the visa for legal permanent residents, known as a green card, based on a point system. When the merit system takes effect, five years after the bill is passed, at least 120,000 foreign-born people each year would be able to gain green cards by accumulating points based on their skills and education, as well as their family ties and the time they have lived in the United States.

Over a decade, the balance in the immigration system would gradually shift away from the 75 percent of visas that now go to family members of immigrants already here. As a result of the merit program, closer to 50 percent of visas annually would go to immigrants based on their family ties, while about half would be based on job skills.

As part of the border security triggers, the bill would require all employers, within five years, to verify the legal status of new hires using a federal photo-matching system. It would also require the federal government to create an electronic system within 10 years for checking foreigners as they leave the country through airports and seaports.

The bill also would also create two new guest-worker programs, one for farmworkers and another for low-wage laborers.

It would give employers in technology and science fields tens of thousands of new temporary and permanent resident visas annually, which they have been urgently seeking for computer engineers and foreign graduates with advanced degrees from US universities. It raises current annual caps on temporary high-skilled visas, known as H-1B, to 110,000 from 65,000, while adding 5,000 more of those visas for the foreign graduates. The cap would gradually rise to 180,000.

And the bill would allow young immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children to become citizens after only five years.

Perhaps the most original compromise is the path to citizenship for immigrants here illegally. Several Republicans, especially Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, insisted that there could be no special, separate path for them. But Democrats, led by Schumer, fought for a direct, manageable pathway that would ensure that most immigrants here illegally get a chance to earn their way to becoming citizens.

In a first phase, those immigrants would spend a minimum of 10 years in Registered Provisional Immigrant Status, which would allow them to work and travel. After 10 years, they would be eligible to apply for green cards through the merit system.

Borders of immigration debate shift | Boston Herald.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul’s embrace of immigration reform last week shows just how far the GOP has come on this contentious issue since the election. Two years ago, the Tea Party’s favorite senator was one of those Republicans wanting to deny citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants born in the U.S. Now, he’s considering whether even their parents (and other illegal immigrants “who want to work and stay out of trouble”) should become eligible for citizenship at some point. “If they want to become citizens, I’m open to debate as to what we do to move forward,” he told reporters after his speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

One thing Paul really gets right and almost everyone else gets wrong is what role employers should play in enforcing immigration laws. He has consistently opposed “a national ID card or mandatory E-Verify, forcing businesses to become policemen.” It’s hard to imagine, however, that he’ll get far with his Republican colleagues on that issue. Nor are Democrats likely to go along, because demonizing “greedy” employers as the drivers of illegal immigration is their way of mollifying anti-immigrant factions within their own party.

But even with Paul’s support, comprehensive immigration reform faces tough days ahead. Well-financed immigration opponents are gearing up for a big fight, trying to intimidate Republican supporters like U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham by threatening to run primary challenges. And many Republicans still won’t acknowledge the reality that the border is as secure as it has been at any point in recent history, insisting instead that we have to pour more money and manpower into sealing an un-sealable border before we can increase legal immigration levels.

And not all supporters of reform agree on how best to manage legal immigration. Most Republicans favor bringing in high-skilled workers over lower-skilled labor. But we need both. And we need larger numbers of legal immigrants than either Republicans or Democrats are proposing. The best way to stop illegal immigration isn’t to build higher fences but to let in the number — and type — of workers the economy needs. Few politicians of any political stripe are brave enough to say so, however.

Perhaps the most promising development on the immigration reform front hasn’t been Paul’s embrace, but that of thousands of evangelical church leaders. The Catholic Church has been part of the immigration reform coalition for years, but evangelicals, as a group, are relative newcomers. A new group, the Evangelical Immigration Table, which represents pastors of more than 100,000 churches nationwide, is launching a grassroots effort to make immigration reform a moral crusade.

Beginning with a verse in the Gospel according to Matthew — “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me” — the group is trying to get church members to read 40 Bible verses that describe the duty to treat strangers as neighbors. If they succeed, the conservative base in the faith community may begin to view immigrants, including illegal ones, differently.

The Republican Party knows it has a problem. The recently released report on the state of the party commissioned by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus noted, “In essence, Hispanic voters tell us our party’s position on immigration has become a litmus test measuring whether we are meeting them with a welcome mat or a closed door.” Whether the party can do more than try to change its rhetoric is still an open question. But Paul might help lead the way.

“Immigration reform will not occur until conservative Republicans, like myself, become part of the solution,” he told the Hispanic Chamber. “I am here today to begin that conversation.”

Paul’s conversion, like that of his namesake on the road to Damascus, could prove the miracle needed to bring new members to the flock. Solving the GOP’s Hispanic problem is the easiest step in helping rebuild the party’s dwindling numbers.

Next, Republicans have to figure out a way to attract more women and young people, and unfortunately, no single position shift or piece of legislation can do that.

Linda Chavez is author of “An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal.”

G.O.P. Opposition to Immigration Law Is Falling Away – NYTimes.com.

WASHINGTON — Republican opposition to legalizing the status of millions of illegal immigrants is crumbling in the nation’s capital as leading lawmakers in the party scramble to halt eroding support among Hispanic voters — a shift that is providing strong momentum for an overhaul of immigration laws.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Tea Party Republican, on Tuesday became the latest to embrace a more welcoming approach, declaring to the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants that if they want to work in America, “then we will find a place for you.”

While he never uttered the word “citizenship” and said a secure border must come first, Mr. Paul strongly implied that citizenship would eventually be available to them.

Republican sentiment for a more liberal immigration policy has been building in the aftermath of last year’s election. But Mr. Paul’s comments provided strong new evidence that the rising generation of conservative leaders is turning against the Republican argument that those who enter the country illegally should be denied the chance to become permanent residents.

“Prudence, compassion and thrift all point us toward the same goal: bringing these workers out of the shadows and into becoming and being taxpaying members of society,” Mr. Paul said in a speech before the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

The remarks are a departure for Mr. Paul, who as a Senate candidate in 2010 called for an electronic fence and helicopter stations to help secure the border with Mexico. His new message follows the publication on Monday of a blistering report from the Republican National Committee that urged the party’s members to champion an immigration overhaul that Hispanics can embrace or risk seeing the party shrinking “to its core constituencies only.”

The report left vague, however, just what that “comprehensive” overhaul would include.

Mr. Paul joins Senator Marco Rubio of Florida in a growing list of leading conservatives to urge a new approach on immigration. Mr. Rubio is part of a bipartisan group of eight senators who are working to create an immigration overhaul that can earn support from both parties.

Some Republicans, including Mr. Paul, remain wary of any plan that would move illegal immigrants ahead of those who are in the country legally when it comes to getting full citizenship.

That view is particularly strong in the House, where Speaker John A. Boehner on Tuesday dodged the question of whether a separate, bipartisan group in his chamber working on immigration legislation would back a path to citizenship. But the House plan is expected to include some way for illegal immigrants to gain legal status.

Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, released a letter on Tuesday urging the Senate Judiciary Committee to move slowly, explaining to a group of reporters that there is no “moral or legal responsibility to reward somebody who entered the country illegally.”

But the new political landscape in Washington contrasts sharply with just a few years ago, when most Republicans derided the idea of legalized status for illegal immigrants as a form of amnesty that would simply encourage more people to cross the border illegally.

The overall shift in sentiment means that four months after Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, made “self-deportation” the party’s official position on immigration — and lost decisively to President Obama, especially among Hispanic voters — top party strategists and lawmakers of all ideological stripes are racing to change course.

“Now, you have the standard-bearer of the Tea Party saying that we should welcome undocumented immigrants as Americans,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration group. “It’s one of the fastest turnarounds I’ve seen on any issue. It’s mind-blowing.”

Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which opposes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, conceded Tuesday that “it certainly appears to be settled if one assumes that the inside Republican elite strategists represent the core of the Republican Party.”

But it remains to be seen how Republican voters and conservative activists across the country will respond to proposals that allow illegal immigrants to live in America and compete legally for jobs. Mr. Dane’s group is meeting with 52 talk radio hosts in Washington next month for a two-day session intended to bolster opposition to the idea.

“Amnesty is that which rewards lawbreaking,” Mr. Dane said. “An amnesty bill is going to split the party. Workers are going to go crazy.”

The fact that Mr. Paul never used the word “citizenship” in his nearly 18-minute speech on Tuesday reflects the narrow line that many Republicans appear to be walking in supporting a major immigration overhaul.

When initial reports about Mr. Paul’s speech suggested that he was backing full citizenship for illegal immigrants, his staff quickly corrected the record, saying that he supports “a quicker path to normalization, not citizenship.”

But the political climate has moderated, and many Republicans are being forced to accept, if not outright embrace, some form of legalization for the illegal immigrants already in the country.

“I think they’ve found themselves on the road to Damascus, or they understand that this issue is very, very important,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who is part of the bipartisan group in the Senate working on immigration legislation.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and another member of the Senate group of eight, put it more bluntly: “I just think the 2012 election was a bit of a wake-up call.”

The group of eight senators is finalizing a provision that would allow the 11 million illegal immigrants to reach full citizenship in 13 years — with a 10-year wait for a green card and 3 more years until citizenship.

No formal immigration legislative proposal currently exists, and members of Congress have yet to really sell their constituents on a pathway to legalization or citizenship. Lawmakers, aides and immigration advocates say that the citizenship component will be the largest obstacle to gathering support for a final bill, particularly among the conservative base.

Mr. Boehner, referring to the bipartisan group in the House working on immigration legislation, described it as “essentially” ready.

“This is just the beginning of the process,” he said. “There’s a lot ofeducation to be done.”

Though the House group, like the one in the Senate, has yet to release its legislation, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, said Tuesday that the group would announce it “in the near term” and that it would include a path to citizenship. Democrats in the group say they would refuse to sign on to any plan that does not include an eventual path to citizenship.

The Senate group is aiming to release its proposals in the second week of April, after lawmakers return from Easter break. A week later, as part of Mr. Dane’s event, activists, sheriffs, cattle ranchers and others will fan out across Capitol Hill to lobby against the legislation.

Their message, he said, is aimed directly at lawmakers like Mr. Paul: “Forget about politics. Forget about trying to win voters. Stand on principles.”

Foes of immigration ‘amnesty’ mobilizing.

PHOENIX — As lawmakers get closer to introducing a comprehensive immigration-reform bill, opponents are gearing up to flood Congress with calls condemning any legislation that allows illegal immigrants to gain legal status or citizenship.

The same tactic helped defeat immigration reform the last time lawmakers considered passing bills in 2006 and especially 2007, when a flood of angry calls shut down the switchboard in Congress.

That prompted supporters to pull the plug on immigration reform in favor of beefing up border security first.

Groups opposed to immigration reform say legalizing illegal immigrants is a form of “amnesty” that rewards people who broke the country’s immigration laws and encourages more people to enter illegally or remain unlawfully after their visas have expired.

Once legislation is introduced — lawmakers anticipate late March or early April — opponents plan to take advantage of the country’s high unemployment rate and conservative discontent with President Barack Obama’s policies to fuel a grassroots campaign against the bill that includes phone calls, emails, faxes and online petitions to lawmakers.

“It’s just starting to percolate,” said Rusty Childress, a former Phoenix auto-dealership owner who has founded several anti-illegal immigration groups, including United for a Sovereign America, American Freedom Riders and Riders USA.

Childress and others who oppose any form of legalization for undocumented immigrants acknowledge that, so far, the issue hasn’t generated as much heat as it did in 2006 and 2007, even though Obama has made immigration reform a top priority this year and a bipartisan group of lawmakers is moving fast to get a bill passed as quickly as possible, perhaps this summer.

“I am trying to light a fire here and get the passions burning again, and I know that, in the end, Americans will melt down the phone lines in Washington against amnesty,” Childress said. “We are not there yet.”

They blame fatigue for sucking some of the life out of the “anti-amnesty” movement. Opponents also say there is a feeling that passage of an immigration-reform bill may now be inevitable given the renewed push by key Republicans to pass immigration reforms to attract increasingly influential Latino voters following the drubbing GOP nominee Mitt Romney received from them in November.

“It is tiring. There may be a sense that people are a little worn out,” said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA. The Washington, D.C., group advocates for restrictions on immigration and has organized campaigns in the past urging its members to call, fax or email lawmakers to oppose immigration reform.

“And I think there is a little bit of sense right now that maybe they can’t stop it, so why bother,” Beck said.

Diminished influence

A sharp drop in illegal immigration since 2007 has slowed some of the momentum behind the “anti-amnesty” movement, Beck said. Since 2006, Border Patrol apprehensions on the southern border with Mexico have dropped 66 percent, from 1.07 million to 356,873 last year.

In the Tucson Sector, which covers most of Arizona, Border Patrol apprehensions are down 69 percent since 2006, from 393,074 to 120,000.

“In that sense, the conditions don’t feel probably as dire or raw,” Beck said.

In 2006 and 2007, the last time Congress seriously considered immigration reform, illegal immigration was a major topic on talk radio and conservative hosts played a major role in fanning public opposition.

Now, immigration reform has not gained as much traction on talk radio, said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, a trade industry magazine, which conducts a weekly survey of the most frequently discussed issues on talk-radio stations nationwide.

According to the magazine’s weekly survey, immigration was the No. 1 issue on talk radio at the end of January, when a bipartisan group of eight senators, including Republicans John McCain and Jeff Flake from Arizona, announced a set of principles for crafting a reform bill.

The “Gang of Eight” plan includes creating a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, contingent on making sure the border has been adequately secured.

But since then, immigration has been overshadowed by other issues such as the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester, gun-control legislation and rising gas prices. Last week, immigration did not even rank among the top 10 issues, according to the Talkers survey.

“That is not to say that it could not flare up again, and it’s not to say that it’s not an important issue,” Harrison said. “It hasn’t fallen off the radar. It’s still there.”

In February, several angry constituents told McCain during a town-hall meeting in Sun Lakes that they are opposed to his support of immigration reforms that include a pathway to citizenship.

But polls indicate there is strong support among Americans for that type of reform.

A Fox News poll said that 72 percent of registered voters surveyed Feb. 25-27 favored allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the country and eventually qualify for citizenship as long as they meet certain requirements such as paying back taxes, learning English and passing a background check.

Democrats favored a pathway to citizenship by 82 percent and Republicans by 63 percent, the poll said.

In recent weeks, immigrant-advocacy groups have been mobilizing to keep pressure on lawmakers to introduce a bill that includes a pathway to citizenship. They have held regional bus tours and rallies and are planning their own campaign to get 1 million supporters to call their representatives in Congress and urge them to support reform.

Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a Washington, D.C., group that advocates for comprehensive immigration reform, doesn’t think opposition will be as strong this time because the influence of “anti-amnesty” groups has been diminished by the November election, when Obama swept more than 70 percent of the Latino vote. Romney campaigned on a strident, anti-immigrant message, saying he favored self-deportation and was opposed to letting illegal immigrants gain legal status.

“You’ll see strong opposition, but I don’t think it will be anywhere near the kind of volume or visibility of 2006 and 2007, in large part because I think Republicans have realized that by branding themselves as anti-Latino, it hasn’t been very good for them electorally,” Sharry said.

Even if opposition from “anti-amnesty” groups is strong, Republicans are likely to pay less attention than in 2006 and 2007, said Matthew Garcia, a history professor and director of comparative border studies at Arizona State University. “I think there are enough Republicans now who understand they need Latino votes,” Garcia said. “And they understand the political calculus, so they are going to have to accept pathways to citizenship.”

Contributing factors

High unemployment could help fuel opposition from Americans who are concerned that letting undocumented immigrants gain legal status will hurt the millions of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who are out of work, Beck said.

The U.S. Labor Department Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that as of January, there were 12.3 million unemployed people.

Having a Democrat in the White House could also help fuel opposition, Beck said. The last time Congress considered passing immigration reform, a Republican, George W. Bush, was president. Bush supported comprehensive immigration reform.

Beck said members of his group already have sent more than 1 million faxes to members of Congress since the start of the year. The group also posted a petition on its website opposing a proposal by the bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of Eight to legalize undocumented immigrants “in a time of budget-deficit crisis and high unemployment.”

More than 190,551 people have signed the petition, according to the group’s website.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington, D.C., group also opposed to reforms that include a pathway to citizenship, is urging members to sign a petition on its website telling Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., to “reject amnesty.”

Rubio, a member of the Gang of Eight, once opposed allowing undocumented immigrants to gain legal status but came out in favor of comprehensive immigration reform after the election.

“Looking back at the experience of 2006 and 2007, the other side did a very good job of turning people out onto the streets,” said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for FAIR. “The people who were opposed to the legislation, what they were able to do was get their message across in a different way: Calling their members of Congress, going to town-hall meetings. So, I suspect (for opponents), it is going to be much of a repeat of what we saw.”

Giovanni Peri: The Economic Windfall of Immigration Reform – WSJ.com.

After months of acrimony, it now appears that immigration reform, and a comprehensive one at that, is within reach. While most of the debates have been about the immediate consequences of any change in policy, the goal should be to promote economic growth over the next 40 years.

Immigration is a powerful engine for bringing skills, workers and ideas into the United States. Yet if history is any guide, this country gets a chance at substantial immigration reform only every four to five decades. Thus the economic gains from “getting the immigration system right” will be large and long-lasting.

Much of the reform debate has centered around granting legal status to undocumented immigrants, conditional upon payment of fees and back taxes. From an economic point of view, this will likely have only a modest impact, especially in the short run.

Most of the undocumented are already working. Probably with legal status they will be able to obtain somewhat higher wages, 5% to 10% higher, most studies say, and consume and spend more. The fees and back-taxes paid to achieve legal status also will be a welcome source of revenue for the government.

The really significant payoff will be when newly legal immigrants are more willing to invest in training, and to move between employers as they participate fully in the economy and feel more certain about their future. The younger among them will be more likely to pursue an education. These investments will increase their human capital, wages, productivity and taxpaying ability, with positive effects on the economy.

Yet the problem of undocumented immigrants is likely to come back unless we find better ways to legally accommodate new immigrants. Much larger economic gains are achievable if we reorganize the immigration system to do that, following three fundamental principles.

The first is simplification. The current visa system is the accumulation of many disconnected provisions. Some rules, set in the past—such as the 7% limit on permanent permits to any nationality—are arbitrary and produce delays, bottlenecks and inefficiencies. There are many different kinds of temporary visas, each with specific provisions, numeric limits, requirements and fees. The disconnect between temporary and permanent visas implies that people who have worked for years and are well integrated in the U.S. have no guarantee of obtaining permanent residence.

A more rational approach would have the government set overall targets and simple rules for temporary and permanent working permits, deciding the balance between permits in “skilled” and “unskilled” jobs. But the government should not micromanage permits, rules and limits in specific occupations. Employers compete to hire immigrants, and they are best suited at selecting the individuals who will be the most productive in the jobs that are needed.

The second important principle is that the number of temporary work visas should respond to the demand for labor. Currently the limited number of these visas is set with no consideration for economic conditions. Their number is rarely revised. In periods of high demand, the economic incentives to bypass the limits and hire undocumented workers are large.

Temporary work visas that are responsive to labor demand would make enforcement of the immigration laws easier. The government should concentrate on checking that the immigrants admitted are law-abiding citizens and that companies follow the rules. In a study for The Hamilton Project written with Pia Orrenius (of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank) and Madeline Zavodny (at Agnes Scott College), we propose that temporary permits to hire immigrants should be made tradable and sold by the government in auctions to employers. Such a “cap and trade” system would ensure efficiency. The auction price of permits would signal the demand for immigrants and guide the upward and downward adjustment of the permit numbers over years.

The third principle governing immigration reform is that scientists, engineers and innovators are the main drivers of productivity and of economic growth. A 2002 study in the American Economic Review by Stanford economist Charles I. Jones found that half of the productivity growth in the U.S. since 1950 was driven by the increase in the number of scientists and engineers doing research and development. Chad Sparber (Colgate University), Kevin Shih (University of California, Davis) and I have found in a study published in January that foreign scientists and engineers brought into this country under the H-1B visa program have contributed to 10%-20% of the yearly productivity growth in the U.S. during the period 1990-2010.

This allowed the GDP per capita to be 4% higher that it would have been without them—that’s an aggregate increase of output of $615 billion as of 2010. Our study also found that these immigrants did not hurt but helped wage and employment perspectives of U.S.-born scientists and engineers. More scientists and more innovation in the U.S. mean more labs, universities and companies doing research and creating jobs for Americans too. There is abundant other research showing that foreign scientists and engineers contribute substantially to science, innovation and productivity growth in the U.S., with benefits spreading well beyond the lab and research facility where they work.

President Obama is right when saying, as he did in Las Vegas on Jan. 29, that allowing foreigners trained in science and technology to remain in the country “will create American businesses and American jobs. . . . help us grow our economy . . . and strengthen our middle class.” If we can get our immigration system corrected, this will likely be true in the next 40 years as well.

Immigration-Reform Plans Offer a Path for Students – Government – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

President Obama and a bipartisan group of senators announced separate but similar immigration-reform plans last week that would ease the path to citizenship for students who are in the United States illegally, and would make it easier for some foreign graduates of American universities to remain in the country to work.

The plans would allow immigrants who came to the country illegally to apply for legal status, though they would be granted green cards only after every other individual who was waiting for such a card received one. But the plans would create a faster process for students who were brought to the country as children, a group known as “Dreamers” after a long-stalled bill to grant them citizenship.

In addition, both plans would grant more green cards to people who have received master’s and Ph.D. degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. In a statement describing its plan, the bipartisan Senate “Gang of Eight” argued that it “makes no sense to educate the world’s future innovators and entrepreneurs only to ultimately force them to leave the country at the moment they are most able to contribute to the economy.”

The plans don’t say if Dreamers would be eligible for federal student aid, as some versions of the proposed Dream Act would do. Congress last considered that bill in 2010, when it fell just five votes short of the 60 needed to overcome a Senate filibuster.

While the bill has languished, President Obama has taken steps to help students who are in the country illegally. In June he announced that young immigrants who had come to the United States illegally as children would no longer be deported and would be eligible for work permits. Thousands of students have applied for the reprieve, known as deferred action, since August, at a rate of almost 4,000 a day. As of January 17, 394,533 had been tentatively approved, pending background checks, and only 13,366 had been rejected, according to government data provided by Michael A. Olivas, director of the Institute of Higher Education Law and Governance at the University of Houston.

One successful applicant, Alan Aleman, was invited to the president’s speech on immigration proposals and held up as an example. Mr. Aleman, who was brought to the United States from Mexico as a child, was one of the first people in Nevada to receive approval.

“He’s working hard every single day to build a better life for himself and his family,” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Aleman, who is in his second year at the College of Southern Nevada, studying to become a doctor. “And all he wants is the opportunity to do his part to build a better America.”

It’s unclear if legislation based on the twin plans would have the votes to pass Congress. Although the Republican Party has softened its stance on immigration in the wake of the 2012 presidential election—in which Mr. Obama won roughly 70 percent of the Hispanic vote—many individual lawmakers remain staunchly opposed to “amnesty” for people who entered the country illegally. Moreover, more than half of the Republican members of the House of Representatives serve districts that are more than 80 percent white, according to the National Journal, a Washington publication; if their constituents aren’t pushing for legalization, those members may have little incentive to stick their necks out and risk defeat in their next primary.

Even supporters of the plan are skeptical that it will move quickly. As Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of law at Cornell University, put it, the nation’s immigration system “took 20 years to get broken; it can’t be fixed overnight.”

In his speech, President Obama acknowledged the challenges facing his proposal, saying that “immigration has always been an issue that inflames passions.”

“The closer we get, the more emotional this debate is going to become,” he said. He urged Congress to “remember Alan and all those who share the same hopes and the same dreams.”

“Remember that this is not just a debate about policy,” he said. “It’s about people.”

How to make immigration reform work this time | Fox News.

Immigration reform is coming. Let’s get it right.

What counts as getting it wrong? The 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act, signed by President Reagan. It granted amnesty to the then 3 million illegal immigrants and promised border enforcement.

Amnesty came. Enforcement never did. Reagan was swindled.

Americans are a generous people. They don’t want 11 million souls living in fear among them. They would willingly, indeed overwhelmingly, support amnesty — as long as it is the last. They don’t want another Simpson-Mazzoli, another bait-and-switch that lets in another 11 million illegal immigrants — and brings us back where we began.

There is an obvious solution: enforcement first. Hence the attraction of the bipartisan Senate deal reached by the Gang of Eight, led by Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republicans John McCain and Marco Rubio. It is said to feature border enforcement first, then legalization.

Not quite.

It is true that only after some commission deems the border under control do illegal immigrants become eligible for green cards and, ultimately, citizenship. But this is misleading because on the day the president signs the reform — long before enforcement even begins — the 11 million are immediately subject to instant legalization.

It is cleverly called “probationary” legal status. But the adjective is meaningless. It grants the right to live and work here openly. Once granted, it will never be revoked. Consider:

Imagine that the border-control commission reports at some point that the border is not yet secure. Do you think for a moment that the 11 million will have their “probationary” legalization revoked? These are people who, in good faith, would have come out of the shadows, registered with the feds and disclosed their domicile and place of work. Do you think the authorities will have them fired, arrested and deported?

Inconceivable. “Probationary” in this context means, in reality, “forever.” (Unless, of course, you commit some crime.) It means they can stay and work here freely for the rest of their lives.

True, they must await the “enforcement trigger” before they can apply for Green Cards. But they already have the functional equivalent of a Green Card. They got that on Day One. That matters more than anything to those living here illegally: the right to continue living here without fear. Forever. That’s the very essence of amnesty.

And all this happens before the first scintilla of extra enforcement takes place. Which brings us to the second problem. What does this extra enforcement consist of?

When I heard McCain talk about (among other measures) new high-tech border control with advanced radar and drones, my heart sank. We’ve been here. In 2006, Congress threw a ton of money at a high-tech fence. Five years, $1 billion and a pathetic 53 (out of 2,000) miles later, Janet Napolitano canceled the program as a complete failure.

That was predictable. And some of us predicting it were pleading for something infinitely cheaper and simpler: a prosaic, low-tech fence. Of the kind built near San Diego (triple-layered) that resulted in an astounding 92 percent drop in apprehensions. Like the Israeli fence built along the West Bank that has reduced terrorist infiltration to practically zero.

There’s a reason people have been building fences for, oh, 5,000 years. They work.

The current Senate proposal must be improved, either in the Senate or by the House. It’s not complicated. Build the damn fence. And give “probationary legal status” to the 11 million — not on the day the bill is signed but on the day the fence is completed. Have the president drive in the golden fence post at Promontory Point II and sign the amnesty right there. Great photo op.

With the sequencing — and thus the incentives — so properly aligned, I assure you the fence will go up with amazing alacrity. As it should. The point is not to punish anyone or to make things harder, but to ensure we don’t have to do this again — agonizing over the next 11 million cruelly living here in the shadows.

I know many Republicans are coming over to immigration reform because of the 2012 election results. Fine. I’ve been advocating this for seven years (“First a wall — then amnesty,” April 7, 2006). Welcome aboard.

But remember: Enforcement followed by legalization is not just the political thing to do. It is the right thing to do — an act both of national generosity and national interest. It has long been the best answer to the immigration conundrum. It remains so.

Bipartisan group of 8 senators reaches deal on immigration changes | Fox News.

A bipartisan group of eight senators plans to announce they have agreed on a set of principles for comprehensive immigration reform.

The deal, which will be announced at a news conference Monday afternoon, covers border security, guest workers and employer verification, as well as a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants already in this country.

The eight senators expected to endorse the new principles are Democrats Charles Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado; and Republicans John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida and Jeff Flake of Arizona.

According to documents released early Monday, the senators will call for accomplishing four main goals:

–Creating a path to citizenship for the estimated illegal immigrants already in the U.S., contingent upon securing the border and better tracking of people here on visas.

–Reforming the legal immigration system, including awarding green cards to immigrants who obtain advanced degrees in science, math, technology or engineering from an American university.

–Creating an effective employment verification system to ensure that employers do not hire illegal immigrants.

–Allowing more low-skill workers into the country and allowing employers to hire immigrants if they can demonstrate they couldn’t recruit a U.S. citizen; and establishing an agricultural worker program.

The principles being released Monday are outlined on just over four pages, leaving plenty of details left to fill in.

A Senate aide tells Fox News the group’s principles say important security triggers must be met before a pathway for citizenship is created for illegals. Even then, the principles explicitly state that illegals must go to the back of the line behind would-be legal immigrants, and they will not be eligible for federal benefits while in the temporary legal status.

The aide tells Fox News that although many of the details of the bill still need to be worked out, those involved are encouraged by their progress and the support of senior senators. Members of the group on Sunday said they are seeking to craft a one-step, all-encompassing bill based on the shared principles.

“We are committed to a comprehensive approach to immigration that we can live with,” Durbin told “Fox News Sunday.”

Citizenship has been a sticking point in previous efforts, particularly among Capitol Hill Republicans. However, they appear willing to accept the path to citizenship, in part, so long as the legislation also includes tighter border security.

Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker told Fox he is optimistic but “details matter.”

“We’re at the talking points stage,” he said. “We need to get to the legislation.”

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, also part of the group, said more work is needed on the legislation.

“I’m quietly optimistic we can get it done,” he told ABC’s “This Week.”

McCain, a key player in the 2007 effort on immigration reform, also acknowledged that President Obama’s overwhelming support among Hispanics in the November elections was a wakeup call to Republicans that they need to do more to reach out to that growing part of the population.

The group has been working since the November elections on the legislation and is expected to have a complete bill by March or April.

Several of these lawmakers have worked for years on the issue. McCain collaborated with the late Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on comprehensive immigration legislation pushed by then-President George W. Bush in 2007, only to see it collapse in the Senate when it couldn’t get enough GOP support.

Meanwhile, the president is scheduled to go to Las Vegas on Tuesday to talk about fixing “the broken immigration system this year,” according to the administration.

Young Immigrants Pause on ‘Deferred Action’ Offer – WSJ.com.

The flow of applications for a program allowing undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. and work legally has been slowed by concerns about what they must disclose and uncertainty about who will be the next president.

During the first three weeks that the government accepted requests for “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,” as the program is known, nearly 40,000 individuals submitted applications, according to government officials and others familiar with the situation. The government began accepting requests on August 15.

Chris Bentley, press secretary for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency adjudicating the requests, said the government will release official numbers later this week. He declined to comment further.

The level of activity so far is a fraction of the potential number of eligible immigrants.

As many as 1.7 million immigrants, 30 years old and younger who have lived continuously in the U.S. for five years, could benefit from the program, according to Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

About 1.2 million foreign-born people are eligible to apply immediately, with another 500,000 children reaching the minimum eligibility age of 15 in a few years, the institute estimates. The largest number of potential applicants—460,000—is in California. Florida, New York and Texas also have many undocumented youth.

Successful applicants have been assured they won’t be deported and will receive a Social Security number and work permit. They will not be entitled to a green card, or permanent U.S. residency, and must reapply every two years to remain in the U.S. and work legally.

Administration officials said they had expected a flood of requests, creating in turn a large caseload for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security. But several issues have prevented potential applicants from submitting forms, according to immigration attorneys and advocacy groups.

Immigration attorneys say the outcome of the election is a source of concern for potential applicants, because Republican candidate Mitt Romney has taken a tough stance on illegal immigration.

“Some people have asked if I will let stand the president’s executive action. The answer is that I will put in place my own long-term solution that will replace and supersede the president’s temporary measure,” Mr. Romney said in a June speech.

“A lot of people are waiting to see what happens Nov. 6 before deciding whether to take the plunge,” said Maurice Goldman, an immigration attorney in Tucson, Ariz. Mr. Goldman has filed only 20 applications, or only about a third of the prospective applicants who have come to his office seeking consultations.

President Barack Obama announced the immigration policy shift, a significant exercise of executive authority, after failing to convince Congress to pass an overhaul of the immigration system, which risked alienating Hispanic voters who will be crucial to his re-election. His administration has deported record numbers of illegal immigrants.

The government has said application information will not be shared with immigration enforcement. But “many people aren’t applying because they fear their families could be at risk of being deported,” said Tabbata Castillo, a 26-year-old undocumented Venezuelan in Nashville who has helped run information sessions for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

Laura Lichter, an immigration attorney in Colorado, said that the application form is simple, but can pose problems in some cases. To prove recent residence in the U.S., older applicants, in particular, might need to show work rather than school records. The problem is, undocumented immigrants typically use false identification to secure jobs, which could raise red flags.

“We still don’t have answers to issues like, if you borrowed your cousin’s name and Social Security number for a job,” which means the applicant’s real name isn’t the one on the pay stub, says Ms. Lichter.

Crystal Williams, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, isn’t surprised the influx of applications has been relatively thin. “It’s not out of lack of interest,” she said.

AILA is seeking clarification from the government on several issues related to the application process. “Nobody has done this before, so we don’t know what works for sure,” she said. Attorneys volunteering at clinics have managed to assist fewer than half of those who need help.

During the first few days that applications were accepted last month, young immigrants jammed nonprofit organizations where individuals could get help completing forms.

The cost is another barrier for families who sometimes have several eligible children. The application costs about $500, before attorney fees, which can surpass $1,000 apiece.