Landmark immigration bill headed for the history sheets, for the wrong reasons.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: The immigration reform bill deliberated upon by the Senate Judiciary Committee may well turn out to be one of the most divisive bills ever in the history of the United States in the 21st century. President Obama is hoping for a repeat magic of Reaganomics of the 1980s, to enact broad immigration reforms of 1986 that happened after a recession and unemployment in the double digits, manufacturing and automobile industry slumps, followed by rapid growth.
If enacted to law, the immigration reforms are likely to create fissure on a variety of issues: open a wider chasm between the haves and the have-nots, employed and the unemployed; increase racial discrimination in offices; stark difference of opinion on gay marriage, rights for same sex partners; and add confusion and bickering amongst the ranks of the Capitol Hill Democrats and the Republicans on how to fight terrorism, pass effective policies, surveillance methods to create barriers, hinder illegal immigrants from the borders of Mexico and Canada to the US.
With over 300 tedious amendments to be discussed, along with the more than 800 pages to be perused and scrutinized in the coming weeks before the bill reaches the Senate floor – with the House a distant horizon – the bill may well meet the same fate as the failed legislation on gun control.
But what transpired on Thursday – the first day the Committee met on the bill – is that it’s pandering to ridiculousness, taking to flights of fancy, trying to broker peace between two feuding clans in the form of Democrats and the Republicans with promises and resolutions made of smoke castles.
Analyze this for a bill that also intends to create new pathways for legal immigration but seems to be all about illegal immigrants: an amendment by Republican Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa that requires continuous surveillance of 100 percent of the United States border and 90 percent effectiveness of enforcement of the entire border, was accepted, with Democrats gloating over the bipartisanship shown.
The question to be asked is, how can the combined borders of Mexico and Canada with the US, and the general coastline, that roughly is equivalent to over 20,000 miles be monitored continuously? When was the last time you heard of an H-1B worker getting into the US by crossing the Rio Grande?
Also, the important question to be asked is what would be the point of building a grandiose fence or other forms of barriers and surveillance over a decade or two at great expense, when by 2039, racial and ethnic minorities will make up a majority of the U.S. working-age population; more than one in four people ages 18-64 will be Latino? If a Latino origin American becomes President, if there is an overwhelming number of Latinos in the US’ border states like Texas, New Mexico, what would stop the people from both sides of the border, to tear down the fence, like the Berlin Wall was pulled down by jubilant East and West Germans. That wall too was meant primarily to deter the poor East Germans from crossing over to savor the luxury lifestyle of Western Europe,
Some sanity was reflected in the remarks of Illinois Democrat Sen. Richard Durbin, who noted the government spent $18 billion on border security in 2011, which is more than the US spend on all other federal law enforcement combined. The US is likely to spend more than $4.5 billion in additional border security funding for the Grassley amendment, which has as its prime motive to be able to detect potential terrorists, apart from turning back illegal immigrants.
In many respects the bill seeks to do things similar to the immigration reforms enacted in 1986 that gave amnesty to around three million illegal immigrants – even though the word amnesty is off the table now. The reforms then had ordered stringent border patrolling regulations and a system to hinder employers from hiring illegal aliens.
But the world of 2013 is very different from the Reaganomics world of 1986, has changed drastically on several key fronts.
In 1986, IBM unveiled the world’s first laptop computer; the Human Genome Project was launched; there was a breakthrough in US-USSR Arms Talks between Reagan and Gorbachev that led to commitment to disarm, ending a long period of instability caused by the Cold War. The year also marked the end of the age of innocence – as far as the IRS was concerned – after a sweeping tax reforms act that ended the practice of parents claiming tax deductions for children doing so on the honor system not to lie about the number of children they supported. It was a year when the country was resurgent on growth, and jobs creation, with unemployment dipping from over 10 percent to less than six percent by the time Reagan’s presidency came to an end in 1989.
In contrast, the year 2013 is full of uncertainty. Despite the booming stock market, jobs growth is weak, the economy is still being talked about as teetering, there were no major tax reforms for the middle class and the rich, unlike the landmark 1986 tax reform bill that lowered taxes on the rich and the middle class, and the threat of terrorism looms large with the US being engaged in troop deployment on multiple fronts around the world; the world of innovation and industry is dictated by globalization.
Yes, the Human Genome Project has been mapped. The new-fangled concept of introducing the concept of sub-contractors to hire workers for companies, in 1986, has now blossomed to the system known as work visas, encompassing H1B, L1 visas, that many fear if expanded under the proposed bill, will create havoc in US offices. They fear the current crop of ageing American workers would be displaced by younger foreign workers willing to work for lower wages, lose health care coverage.
What the bill of today is trying to propose is like a quaint, fragile, wooden bridge over a pond in a park for legal immigrants to come to the country, and a rope bridge over a raging river for illegal immigrants – both have dire possibilities of collapsing.
One has the possibility of a soft landing in shallow water for educated, moneyed legal immigrants who may yet go back to their country of origin and resume life again in case they don’t get the job of their liking here, or the economy flounders.
The other has the disturbing possibility of the disastrous fall that await many lower class, uneducated immigrants who would have staked their entire life’s savings to come to the land of opportunity to only find that it was a mirage, jobs are not there and are deprived of social handouts like food stamps and subsidized housing, are catapulted to extreme poverty. The provisions of the bill make it clear that illegal immigrants, who would benefit from the proposed reforms, wouldn’t be eligible for benefits.
There are several features of the bill that will create deep discord between the two parties – as if they didn’t need enough issues to fight on. If the issue of offering a path to citizenship to 11 million illegal immigrants, that many feel will be the deal breaker, is not enough, the fight over gay marriages will resume in gusto once the bill reaches the Republican-controlled House.
Democrat New York Sen. Chuck Schumer was quoted by The New York Times as saying on the issue of giving a green card to partners of the same sex: “This one is something, you know, I worry about all the time, even — I’m a good sleeper, but I wake up in the morning thinking of these things, sometimes early in the morning,” he said. “And so how we resolve this remains to be seen.”
Even as the bill was being wrangled on in the Committee, the first government evaluation of the effect of the immigration proposals said that it would put about eight million illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship, boost the economy and stop about two million would-be illegal immigrants from entering the U.S. in the next decade, according to a report by Stephen Goss, Social Security’s independent chief actuary.
Goss also predicted that about 3.5 million more workers will be granted visas over the next decade and an additional 625,000 family members will get visas, according to The Washington Times. He added that newly legalized immigrants and future workers will benefit Social Security in the first 10 years, paying more in payroll taxes than they claim in benefits.
Goss’ estimate is in contrast to a study by the Heritage Foundation which said the bill becomes a bad deal for taxpayers in later decades. Over 50 years, newly legalized immigrants and future workers will pay $3.1 trillion more in taxes, but will take $9.4 trillion in all benefits, including Social Security, Medicare and welfare.
The proposed bill also has several other glaring, contentious issues, including the provision for over 400 waivers that can be granted by the Department of Homeland Security at their discretion, including giving permanent residency to illegal immigrants, and pardoning crimes by illegal immigrants which would under present rules have them deported.
Where the bill is going wrong is that it has tried to encompass the issues of legal and illegal immigrants under the same umbrella of residency.
It would be better for piecemeal legislation to be done to resolve the issues of legal immigrants, as right now it seems both the parties are keen to tackle the issue of illegal immigrants with an eye on the vote bank. Don’t be surprised if at the end of all the mayhem on Capitol Hill, consensus is reached on a bill to tackle the issue of illegal immigrants, with legislation for the legal immigration limbo put off for another day.
(Sujeet Rajan is the Editor-in-Chief of The American Bazaar).
To contact the editor, e-mail: sujeetrajan@americanbazaaronline.com