IMAGE: CNS photo/Lucas Jackson, Reuters
By Mark Pattison
WASHINGTON
(CNS) — In 2008, Kenan Thompson of “Saturday Night Live” unveiled a “financial
expert” character named Oscar Rogers on the “Weekend Update” segment. His
advice on the economy, shouted loudly and often as the nation was careening
into the Great Recession, was “Fix it!”
That
Oscar Rogers mantra would suit U.S. immigration policy as well, as people and
advocates complain about a broken immigration system.
The
U.S. bishops in 2003 published a pastoral letter, “Strangers No Longer: Together
on the Journey of Hope,” which listed principles of reforming U.S. immigration
policy. But 15 years later, how do those principles translate into concrete
legislative proposals?
“This
year, we’ve seen the failure to pass on both sides of Congress larger-scale
bills that have fixes for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), most
recently here in the House,” said Ashley Feasley, director of policy for Migration and Refugee Services at the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops in Washington.Â
“(The
month of) June had a couple of votes that they didn’t pass and (got) broken down from
bipartisan negotiations at the beginning of June to negotiations within the
Republican Party,” which controls the White House and both houses of Congress,
Feasley added. “The bishops opposed both bills, which failed to pass.”
Currently,
according to Feasley, “there’s a lot of focus on the family separation issue
and the family detention issue” after the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance”
on border crossers caused an uproar once it was put into effect this spring.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order to reunite families, but not all children who were separated from parents have been reunited with them.
Feasley
described one aspect of the immigration system’s brokenness: “Frankly, there
has been an overreliance on administrative methods because there’s been an
absence of consensus in Congress on passing legislation on the immigration
issues that need to be solved.”
DACA,
she said, is “a perfect example. The DREAM Act was first introduced in 2001 and
it has been brought up in several iterations, either by itself or part of a
comprehensive bill, on the House and on the Senate side. The Obama administration
initiated the DACA program in 2012, and the Trump administration ended the
program in 2017, and now there’s judicial challenges.”
One suit, brought by
Texas and several Southern states, is challenging DACA’s legality. If a federal
court agrees with Texas, that could prompt a legislative fix, Feasley said. But
that is “reactive to the court case,” she added, and “there’s not a lot of
proactive action going on now.” Depending on the midterm elections, Feasley
said, a lame-duck session could see some immigration bills brought to the
floor.
“We
strongly believe that family-based immigration is one of the most important
aspects. Then, after that, humanitarian issues. Protection for people seeking
asylum, protection for people when things happen, the TPS (Temporary Protected
Status),” said Jeanne Atkinson, executive director of the Catholic Legal
Immigration Network.
“We need
to legalize the people who are here. We’re talking about people undergoing background
checks, paying fines and stepping forward. That is a component,” Atkinson
said.
“We need to look at the system that we have and say, ‘What numbers, what
level of immigration works for our country?'” she added. “Our system hasn’t
been reformed in decades. So what was set up all those years ago doesn’t serve
our country well.”
There
are labor aspects to immigration, she noted. Currently, stricter enforcement coupled
with low unemployment has resulted in fewer workers coming from other countries
to perform available jobs. “It needs to be looked at and evaluated,” Atkinson
said. “And you need to protect those people who are brought to this country to
work: seasonal workers, but also the professional visas.”
Atkinson
said, “Many people are paying taxes anyway, but (legal status means) getting
better jobs and paying more in taxes. People who couldn’t pay taxes or knew how
to pay taxes are paying taxes. So there are financial benefits for the country.”
Those benefits, she added, “will pay off for decades in the future.”
Atkinson
said the United States needs to examine the “root causes” of immigration. “The
vast majority of people want to stay where they are. Most people want to be in
a place where they know the place, they know the culture, they know the language”
but they leave due to gang violence, domestic violence or dire poverty.
She
admitted there would be a high price tag to comprehensive immigration reform. But
border enforcement, which Atkinson pegged at $22 billion a year, is “more than every
other federal law enforcement as well as state employment protection agencies.
We’re already spending massive amounts of money” — and still more “if you tried
to deport all the people who have unauthorized status.”
Moreover,
“there’s a very big price tag for inaction,” Atkinson said, the latest item on
that receipt being “the psychological impact” of family separation and
deportation of parents while their children are U.S. citizens.
“We
need to change the law. It’s a poor system,” declared Sister Mary Ellen Lacy, a
Daughter of Charity and immigration lawyer who is currently a grass-roots
mobilization specialist for Network, the nun-run Catholic social justice lobby.
In her
immigration law practice, she helped impoverished clients in Texas, Alabama and
the New York City borough of Brooklyn. “They come because they want to live,
and then they end up in the shadows. Some of them have been in here for 20
years,” Sister Lacy said. “And then they get picked up, and then they come to
you. A woman’s husband doesn’t come home. And she comes looking for him. Was he
in a raid?”
The
fees, forms and time lags in following immigration law are “punitive,” she
added. “Some people just wanted to bring their family members over. Or they fell
in love, wanted to get married, and do it legally, and it took years. … It’s
terrible when someone tells you, ‘We don’t think your marriage is legal,'”
Sister Lacy said. “We have celebrities and politicians who get married several times
over and no one questions their bona fides.”
Sister
Lacy criticized the Trump administration actions that had “eliminated all the TPS. Most
of the countries that we’ve granted TPS status to we’ve eliminated in the past
year. People who’ve made a life for themselves 10, 20, 30 years. Now we’re
saying you’ve got to go back to a country you don’t know. And they were here —
with permission! These hardship cases are hard to see.”
Comprehensive
immigration reform, “loosely quoting (House Speaker) Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) —
is the best economic package we could ever produce,” Sister Lacy said. “I agree
with Paul Ryan. But it’s been a long time since he said that,” putting that
quote in 2012, when he was Mitt Romney’s GOP running mate on the party’s
presidential ticket.
Sister
Lacy has a six-point plan to fix U.S. immigration policy. It largely mirrors
what the bishops sought in 2003.
Then,
the bishops asked for an earned legalization program; a worker program to allow
foreign-born workers to enter the United States safely; an increase in the number
of family visa and a reduction in family reunification waiting times; restoring
due process rights taken away by a 1996 immigration bill and eliminating the
three- and 10-year re-entry bars which also were part of that law; “targeted proportional
and humane” enforcement measures; and addressing the root causes of migration.
The bishops recognized a sovereign nation’s
right to control and protect its borders, but opposed “some of the policies and
tactics that our government has employed to meet this … responsibility.”
Sister Lacy’s
points are prioritizing family unity; creating a process that leads to legal
status and citizenship; improving access to the legal immigration system; strengthening
the country’s legal asylum processes and refugee resettlement program; protecting
all workers and reducing exploitation; and addressing the root causes of
migration.
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