The chorus of voices opposed to the immigration reform bill is growing stronger by the day.
“The plan under consideration won’t change anything at all. It’s completely arbitrary,” said Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez. “Businesses won’t get anything out of it, and the undocumented will have no real chance of becoming U.S. citizens."
California lawyer Charles Scarborough believes that immigrants who entered the country illegally will have the hardest time.
“According to the bill, only those who entered the country before [January 1] 2007 can count on becoming legal residents. Most illegal immigrants do not have any documents at all, so they cannot establish their exact date of entry. It's quite possible that immigration agents will subjectively eliminate those who are uneducated and undesirable.”
And how exactly can border crossers prove their exact date of entry? Of course, some do have drivers licenses, tax ID numbers, or, for example, a record of detention by the police. But what about the rest? The bill requires specific documentary evidence of entry. This means that the “testimony” of acquaintances and former employers will not be taken seriously because it can be falsified.
One Spanish-speaking undocumented immigrant joked on an Internet forum: “I never would have thought that breaking my leg in the summer of 2006 would play an important role in my life. But now my hospital records will prove that I was in The United States before 2007, not in Mexico."
Figures show that almost two million illegal immigrants have no documents at all because they intentionally crossed the border without passports or IDs.
It's also impossible to determine how long immigrants have been in the country based on their knowledge of English. Only about 8.4 percent of undocumented Latinos know a minimal amount of English. This figure is even lower among Chinese illegal immigrants.
A mandatory requirement in the legislation is that illegal immigrants be permanently employed. However, it is still unclear how immigration agents will be able to determine whether or not an immigrant is working. In Los Angeles, for example, semi-legal agencies offering to place immigrants in jobs “for show” have already cropped up. This practice also gives light-fingered businessmen the chance to launder money.
Many human rights organizations have appealed to officials to change the touchback clause, which states that every undocumented immigrant must leave the country (even after eight years of successful work in the United States on a Z visa) and wait for a green card in their native country. The most recent figures show that almost 33 percent of undocumented immigrants entered the country legally on student or tourist visas. Their passport information, photographs, and fingerprints are part of a U.S. database.
“The touchback clause should only apply to those who crossed the border illegally,” said Kevin Witter of the National Immigration Forum. “We don’t know anything about these people, so they have to go back home. Otherwise, they might use fake documents to attain legal residency.”
As expected, members of the Spanish-speaking Diaspora have spoken out against this approach. Latinos have called the touchback clause discriminatory since the vast majority of people who have entered the country illegally are Mexican.
The touchback clause means only one thing for most illegal immigrants: going back home, applying for a green card at an American consulate, and being refused re-entry. Moreover, many illegal immigrants from Honduras, Pakistan, and Kenya say that the only way to gain entry to a U.S. consulate in their countries is with a sizable bribe or by having connections in either criminal or official circles.
Another interesting factor that was given a great deal of attention before Memorial Day is the recruitment of illegal immigrants for the army. Illegal immigrants are a nice little tidbit for the army because the strongest and healthiest of them can easily make up for the formidable shortfall of young American enlistees that grows with every year. While politicians are puzzled over what criteria should be used to select illegal immigrants for service, the real issue is what benefits immigrants will receive for their honorable service.
“I think that serving in the army is an excellent test of love for and allegiance to the United States,” said Arthur Serge, a sergeant in the Marines. “It’s better than bureaucratic checks that aren't always accurate."
Will illegal immigrants be able to reunite with their families? The bill provides a lengthy and confusing answer to this question. I won’t go into detail, but it appears that it will take undocumented immigrants almost 20 years to bring their close relatives to the United States legally. It’s a blessing that the Z visa would allow holders to invite their families here for up to 30 days every year. The real question is whether they will be able to get the visas at consulates in their countries.
As far as visas for foreign workers are concerned, the situation is more or less clear. The bill will most likely increase the number of these worker visas from 60,000 per year to 200,000 per year, but it will be remembered that this year the quota was exhausted within several hours. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) started accepting applications on April 1 and stopped on April 2. So tens of thousands of specialists needed by U.S. companies were left out in the cold.
The immigration reform bill is in need of serious revision. There are more questions than officials are able to answer. The telephone briefings of the National Immigration Forum, attended by Russian Bazaar journalists, just serve to confirm this. Senators and representatives invited to participate constantly mix up numbers and are unable to give concrete answers to the most elementary questions, demonstrating their ignorance of all aspects of the bill. It’s not without reason that Secretary Gutierrez said, “The U.S. will have one chance to find an answer to the problem of illegal immigration. The next generation will never forgive us if we don't get it right."
