To immigrants, US reform bill is unrealistic

For the Senate reform plan to work as intended, illegal immigrants would need to embrace its rules – not opt for business as usual.

from the May 21, 2007 edition

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As the details of the plan emerged last week, anti-immigration groups have been the most critical, calling the proposal a capitulation rather than a compromise, and denouncing the new "Z Visa" program and its eventual promise of a green card as amnesty.

"This is just an amnesty dressed up with some provisions to make it more appealing to skeptics," says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that supports immigration restrictions. In addition to the path to legalization for current undocumented immigrants, the proposal includes increases in legal immigration, he notes: "A compromise would be keeping one and getting rid of the other."

Pro-immigrant groups, meanwhile, have been more warily optimistic, hailing the agreement as an important achievement even as they lobby to alter some of the stricter measures, particularly the future changes that would shift preferences for visas from family connections to skills, education, and English language ability.

"That is an incredibly radical change, which undoes the basis of our legal immigration system," noted Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for the office of research, advocacy, and legislation at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group, in a press briefing.

Still, she and others praise the bill for providing both a path to citizenship as well as a plan to reduce the backlog of current family-based visa applications – an estimated 4 million applications from families who have been waiting as long as 22 years.

"Any deal will be criticized as amnesty by people who want to kill it, and some groups will fight anything that reduces family-based categories," says Deborah Meyers, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute. "But at the same time there are 12 million people here who would benefit now, plus millions of people in the backlogs, plus legal channels for future workers. You're talking about trade-offs for now versus later."

It's those workers themselves – far away from the difficult policy negotiations of the Senate floor and less aware of the political trade-offs that get a bill passed – who are in some ways the most skeptical. Even as they yearn for a way to earn legalization, and therefore security, many are inherently distrustful that a law that requires them to return to their native country would also guarantee them re-entry, and the $5,000 fine seems, to some, as out of reach as if it were $50,000.

"We would never be able to raise that kind of money to start the process," says Desmond, a girl who attends John Muir High School in Pasadena, Calif., and didn't want to give her last name, speaking through an interpreter. She has lived in America since kindergarten, with her uncle, grandmother, cousin, and aunts, and says she doesn't know any undocumented immigrants who could afford that amount. "Even more important, I would be scared that they are lying to us…. That they are just saying whatever they could to get all the illegal people and deport them."

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