The first days of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary debate over the immigration reform project indicated a disconcerting shift in the White House’s stand on the issue of legalizing undocumented immigrants.
Testifying in the Capitol, senators from the President’s Office – U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez – were strongly against the idea of the new legislation that offers undocumented immigrants the possibility to apply for a green card and eventually become U.S citizens.
The message being sent from the White House is loud and clear: President Bush is walking away from the idea of the new immigration reform he initially supported.
Even though the President always shied away from the term of amnesty, during the last term of Congress he spoke numerous times about the possibility of creating a path that would lead immigrants to full legalization of their status. The proposed law went through the complete legislative process in the Senate; however, it was not approved by the Lower House of the Congress.
Today it is apparent that the White House has firmed up its stand. Representatives of the President’s office are talking only about creating a new category of visas – guest worker visas. This kind of a legal solution would not provide 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States with a chance to legalize their status. Moreover, the White House has not proposed any mechanisms protecting guest workers from a possible abuse by their employers, who are in control of the workers through their visas. A side effect of the new guest worker visa program may very well be the formation of a new social group of “guests” who don’t have the same full rights as legal U.S. residents.
Nowy Dziennik has mentioned many times that the sine qua non condition of the immigration reform is giving illegal immigrants a chance to enjoy a full existence in the U.S. society. It’s impossible to fathom this happening without a new path leading to naturalization. Any other solution will simply push millions of people, who already reside in the United States and who want to live here, to the margins of society.
Unconditional amnesty is not what’s necessary here. The postulates that require people interested in legalizing their status in the United States to meet certain requirements, such as the basic knowledge of the language or payment of the taxes for all years of illegal work, seem most reasonable.
Even if the change of stance in the White House is only a tactic – as The New York Times suggests – aimed to put the right wing of the Republican minority at ease, it is necessary to demand from the President to fulfill the promises he made during the early years of his administration. A compromise on the new immigration reform, which would be supported by the Democrats and the moderate wing of the Republican Party, has a good chance of being worked out with the new power structure in Congress, but this political climate won’t last forever.
