2015 Old Blog

After over two weeks of the U.S. government in partial shutdown, the United States is on the brink of extreme financial crisis if Congress cannot come to an agreement and fully reopen U.S. federal services by October 17. Just a day before the Treasury Department will run out of emergency funds, it looks like the Senate has come up with a plan that will be voted on this evening. House Speaker John Boehner says that he will not block this proposal from coming to a vote in the House of Representatives, which is a hopeful sign that the proposal will succeed and government services (including certain types of immigration services) will be restored to their normal functions before the week ends.

During an interview with Univision this week, President Obama took time to rekindle the topic of immigration reform, stating "Once [the fiscal crisis] is done, you know, the day after I'm going to be pushing to say, call a vote on immigration reform. I'm going to do so because I think it's really important for the country."

Obama has taken an increasing amount of heat from immigration reform activists for his hard line stance on deportations, which have doubled over the last ten years. During his administration, an average of 400,000 immigrants have been deported each year. In addition to deportations, another hot topic has been the widespread increase of holding immigrants in for-profit detention centers. Many of these issues could be addressed with a commonsense, comprehensive immigration reform bill.

The President has been promising to deliver on immigration reform since he used it as a major selling point during his 2012 reelection campaign. Putting immigration reform back at the top of his priority list would help strengthen his credibility and satisfy the voters who are still waiting for him to deliver.

Congress might not be ready to agree on Obamacare and many other types of government spending, but immigration reform is a topic that has real potential to succeed with bipartisan support. Just last week, 8 House members were arrested at an immigration reform march on the National Mall. Due to the shutdown, approval of Republican congressmen has fallen substantially in comparison to their Democrat colleagues, and immigration reform would be a sure bet in securing more Hispanic and Asian voters for the next Presidential election. Hopefully the silver lining of the shutdown will be Congress' new found motivation to pass real, bipartisan reform laws, with immigration reform as their first and easiest choice.

The last time a major piece of immigration reform legislation was passed by the U.S. government was 1986. Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) on November 6, 1986 as means to secure the border and establish a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Will the 2013 immigration reform bill ultimately arrive at the President's desk, almost thirty years after its counterpart passed under Reagan?

If the past is any indication, the 2013 version of reform still has hope in passing through the legislative branch, despite more than a few recent setbacks. Examining the similarities between the 1986 and 2013 bills help us understand that reform is still possible.

Both bills came at a time of desperate need for reform, decades after the most recent major reform laws

In 1986, the most recent prior immigration legislation was the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, an important set of laws that completely restructured the demographic makeup of U.S. immigrants. However, after the influx of unauthorized immigrants in the 1970s and early 80s, it was clear the Immigration and Nationality Act wasn't enough.

We are seeing the same issues with IRCA in 2013, 27 years later: it does not address the needs of the current U.S. economy and immigrant population. The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (referred to here as the 2013 bill) is an attempt to modernize immigration policy for a U.S. economy with great demand for high-skilled immigrant workers and attempts to address the now 11+ million undocumented immigrants living here as a second class, with no laws currently in place to realistically solve the problem.

The 1986 and 2013 bills are both derived from several previous unsuccessful attempts at reform

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter proposed new legislation that would secure the border, impose fines on employers who hired undocumented workers, and grant a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. His efforts were shot down by Congress, but led to the formation of a commission led by Reverend Theodore Hesburgh that made recommendations for new immigration policy in 1981.

In 1982, the first iteration of what would become IRCA was introduced to Congress, and it ended up dying in the House of Representatives. The bill was reintroduced and subsequently died again in the House in 1984. The bill was finally revived in the fall of 1986 and passed into law, and it is still the basis for most of our immigration policies today.

U.S. political leaders and legislators had/have extreme doubts about both bills passing

Many were shocked by the 1986 bill's final success after years of heated debates and setbacks. U.S. labor groups were mostly opposed to IRCA: they very concerned about the new I-9 form requirements and employment enforcement policies, which harshly punished employers for hiring undocumented workers for the first time in U.S. history. Employers and civil rights groups were also concerned about a possible national ID system stemming from these new enforcement policies, which never ended up happening.

The 1986 bill was declared practically dead just weeks before it was signed. Thanks to several last-minute compromises, it passed. U.S. Representative Dan Lungren said the following about IRCA's passing, "It's been a rocky road to get here. We thought we had a corpse. But on the way to the morgue, a toe began to twitch." In the face of all the issues and doubters, the 1986 Congress found a way to get the bill to the President's desk, thereby changing the course of immigration and impacting immigrants' lives for years to come.

Despite being in the midst of a U.S. government shutdown, House Democrats gathered on Capitol Hill today to announce their own comprehensive immigration reform bill. The 78-page bill is based on the Gang of 8's bill that passed this summer. The new bill drops the controversial Corker-Hoeven border security amendment that was added to appease certain opponents of the original Senate bill. In its place is a provision for the Department of Homeland Security to establish a plan for arresting at least 90% of immigrants who try to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the New Democrat Coalition, House Minority Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and many other House Democrats joined together to present this bill at a time when it seems that Democrats and Republicans can't or won't see eye to eye on any legislation.

The Democrats' emphasis was on bipartisanship, with multiple representatives repeatedly stating that each part of the bill had bi-partisan support and therefore should be acceptable for House Republicans to consider.

Less than two weeks ago, a bi-partisan group was supposed to produce an immigration reform bill for the House but fell apart due to two Republican members of the group dropping out.

How viable is the Democrats' immigration reform bill?

Those who monitor the immigration debate are predicting this bill will go ignored by Republicans and is meant more to make a statement about the need for reform than to actually pass legislation. DREAMer activist organization DREAM Action Coalition released a statement today in response to the bill's release, saying they were "skeptical" and warning that "the path to citizenship should not be used as a political weapon to hurt the other party or kill any chance of reform, including piecemeal legislation."

The consensus seems to be that Republican House members will not consider an immigration reform effort led by Democrats, but there have been no official statements released from House Speaker John Boehner or other GOP leaders in the House.

Stay tuned for more updates on the House Democrats' immigration reform bill on Facebook and Twitter.

By Jake VanKersen, VISANOW Video Production Specialist

In just a few hours, the U.S. government will most likely be forced to shut down. We won't know for sure until tomorrow what will happen to each individual service that falls under the umbrella of U.S. immigration, but we do know a few things based on past government shutdowns and policies in place to protect certain government operations.

The harsh reality of U.S. immigration is if you want to start a new life in the United States, there is virtually no way for you to do it without immediate family or employer sponsorship. At best, you might be able to visit the United States through a B-2 visitor visa, which is a temporary (non-immigrant) visa that requires you to leave the country after a maximum stay of 6 months. These visas can be difficult to get approved, with rejection rates for certain countries as high as 60%. Citizens of nations of the Visa Waiver Program can temporarily enter the United States without a visa, but they are subject to the discretion of the border patrol officer and may have their visit cut short or denied at the entry point.