5 myths about amnesty for illegal immigrants in Senate bill

Under a bipartisan Senate immigration bill, immigrants who have come to the United States illegally are given a "path to citizenship." On close inspection, each of the following five claims about the requirements for illegal immigrants to earn amnesty are not what they seem.

2. They must learn English

The 1986 amnesty also required some applicants to “learn English,” but in practice, attendance at a handful of classes was sufficient for the majority of them to meet this requirement. After the law’s passage, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) weakened the language requirements administratively, substantially reducing the number of people who had to meet the requirement.

The INS decided that illegal immigrants who were over 64 years old or under age 16 did not have to prove they could speak English, nor did illegal immigrants over age 50 who claimed to have been in the country for 20 years. Those with at least a high school diploma were also exempted.

The INS also decided that completing 40 hours of an English/civics program met the amnesty’s requirements. While it is unclear how the Obama administration would interpret the language requirements in the current Senate immigration bill (which include exemptions similar to those found in the 1986 amnesty), it is unlikely that any illegal immigrant will be denied amnesty for not knowing how to properly conjugate a verb.

2 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.