President Obama speaks at Del Sol High School, Las Vegas. Nov. 21, 2014 (whitehouse.gov)
"Our immigration system has been broken for a very long time -- and everybody knows it."
-President Barack Obama, addressing Las Vegas high school students whose families are affected by his use, this week, of executive authority on immigration reform
The Republicans know it. The conservative cabal that pulls the party's purse strings knows it. They would have you believe that getting in the "back of the line" is the only fair way to handle immigration reform. The problem is, some people are doomed to wait in line for almost 25 years, and the more people we put in the line, the longer that line gets.
Maybe that's what the far right wants, a broken system where, as the president said, Friday, families are "stuck in line for years." After all, it fits in with their narrative of a broken and incompetent government.
The State Department has three major categories of visas it considers: family members of U.S. citizens, employment based visas (for which there is a relatively short waiting period) and diversity visas (a quota system for global regions that is only good for the fiscal year in which the application is filed).
"There are so many different lines. It's very hard for people to understand that there are so many different categories and that each wait time is different," Mary Giovagnoli, of the solutions oriented Immigration Policy Council, told the Washington Post in January.
A year ago, according to the State Department, there were 4.3 million people with family sponsored visa requests. The latest bulletin from Foggy Bottom says that the last family visas for siblings it was considering from Mexico were applied for in February, 1997. For married children of U.S. citizens, the last visas approved for Mexicans were applied for in November, 1993. If you are a citizen and want a visa for your sister in the Philippines, the last visas granted were for people who applied in May, 1991!
And just because someone applied for a visa back then doesn't mean they are next on the list, because only a limited number of employment based and family requested papers are available every year to applicants from each country.
"The idea that the people can simply get in the back of the line is a little bit simplistic in practice," Madeleine Sumption, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan immigration policy think tank supported by philanthropic and government policy advocacy groups, told the Fiscal Times, this past spring.
At least one Republican considering a 2016 presidential run seems to understand the difficulties of the "wait in line" concept. At a panel of GOP governors who are seen as contenders for the nomination, Ohio Gov. John Kasich went counter to the crowd and the rigid stance of his on-stage colleagues in Boca Raton, Florida, when he admitted:
"My sense is I don't like the idea of citizenship when people jump the line, [but] we may have to do it. It may be a laborious and tough process. I would never say we would never do it. ... At the end of the day it may be necessary."
President Obama's executive action acknowledges that reality, and he admits he can't do anything about the wait, right now. His order, though, is neither amnesty nor a path to citizenship. That, he admits, requires Congressional action. The only thing it does is keep law abiding, tax paying folks who have children who are citizens or are otherwise here legally, from being deported. As he said on Friday:
"If you’ve been in America for more than five years; if you have children who are American citizens or legal residents; if you register, you pass a background check, you are willing to pay your fair share of taxes –- then you’re going to be able to apply to stay in this country temporarily without fear of deportation. You can come out of the shadows, get right with the law."
The only line that may be getting shorter is the one for employment based visas.
Both the memoranda the president signed are geared to spur the executive branch to find means and methods, with the help of immigration advocacy groups and technology companies, to expedite repairing the broken process for everyone. That is well within his authority. It is unrealistic to expect the Republicans in the upcoming Congress to have the political courage to do any meaningful immigration reform, that takes into account the affect our inaction has on millions of families.
"The U.S. is kind of torn between wanting to be generous, yet not wanting to be too generous," Sumption said in May, "And that means that on paper U.S. laws pretend to give people the right to come to the country, but in practice they have to wait so long that many of them may as well not have that right."
- PBG
As with most of my diaries, this post originated on my blog, proseandthorn.net.
