Of the many thorny issues Congress will take up when they return from the August recess, immigration could be the most contentious.
President Donald Trump, who has made immigration reform one of his top priorities, recently endorsed the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act, sponsored by U.S. Sens. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, and David Perdue, a Republican from Georgia. This bill would make sweeping changes to the nation’s immigration policy.
The RAISE Act proposes a merit-based system, makes a sharp reduction in the current family-based system, ends the annual 55,000 visa lottery program and puts a 50,000 annual cap on the number of refugees resettled in the country. The merit-based system is similar to the immigration systems in Australia, Canada and Japan.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. John McCain has promised to bring back “comprehensive immigration reform.” This could be similar to the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act that passed in the U.S. Senate in 2013.
It would deliver the same results as the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, a bipartisan bill sponsored by U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson, a Republican from Wyoming, and U.S. Rep. Romano Mazzoli, a Democrat from Kentucky. The bill, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, promised border security and a one-time amnesty. It gave amnesty to approximately 3 million illegal immigrants but did nothing to strengthen border security. The failure to control the border has resulted in the number of illegal immigrants in the country estimated at 11 million.
The RAISE Act and the 2013 measure represent different approaches to immigration policy. Our current family-based system has been in effect since the enactment of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, and we have seen our foreign-born population increase from a low of 4.7 percent of the total population in the 1970s to 13.7 percent in 2015.
It is time to cut back and focus more on the merit-based system and a reduction in levels of immigration.
Funding for the border wall will be another contentious issue. The U.S. House voted to include $1.6 billion for border security in the Defense Appropriations bill. What happens when the Senate takes up the measure may be an entirely different story. Already, it’s shaping up to be a fierce debate.
Trump has threatened a government shutdown if Congress does not approve the border wall funding. In another twist, Trump aides are pushing for the president to offer protection for 800,000 people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the so-called Dreamers, in exchange for funding for the border wall and other immigration security measures. This deferred deportation program was instituted by former President Barack Obama with a stroke of the pen. Trump promised to abolish the program if elected but has not yet done so.
“Sanctuary cities” have surfaced as another critical issue as the Trump administration is trying to crack down on them with a threat to withhold federal law enforcement funds to the more the more than 300 counties and municipalities designated as “sanctuaries.”
The case of Kate Steinle bears repeating. She was shot dead by an illegal immigrant with a lengthy criminal record in San Francisco in 2015. Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez had been deported five times, but he was not turned over to immigration authorities before his release from a San Francisco jail after a court dismissed a marijuana charge against him, a story that is not anecdotal.
The Center for Immigration Studies reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement released 36,007 illegal immigrants with criminal records from its custody in 2013, and as of September 2014, 5,700 of them had been arrested again for subsequent crimes.
All in all, immigration is a veritable Shakespearean witches brew, with the outcome very much in doubt. The bipartisanship that enabled the passage of the 1986 immigration bill seems sorely lacking in today’s political climate.
Bob Casimiro is executive director of Mainers for Responsible Immigration. He lives in Bridgton.