Campos Andres Campos Rhetoric and Writing Studies 305 Dr.

Catherine Hoffman May 12, 2009 Word Count: 2461 Immigration Reform

The United States of America is a country that has always opened its doors to people from other countries and other backgrounds, it has represented a land of freedom and opportunity since its creation at the end of the 18th century. According to Ilias, Fennelly & Federico at this moment there are an estimated twelve million foreign-born residents living in the United States who have either entered the country without border inspection or overstayed their visas. To put this into perspective, this means that if all of the illegal immigrants could create a state of their own, it would be the seventh largest state in the United States, only after CA, IL, FL, NY, TX and PA. So the question of is there a problem with the current immigration policy? must be answered with a resounding yes. This is why the U.S. should act to implement policies that enable a more tightly controlled border, a path towards legalizing existing immigrants, and a better way to admit temporary workers in the future. However, there are some people who want to keep some things just the way they are. To them legalizing the millions of immigrants who illegally entered this country seems preposterous, as if the United States is rewarding illegal behavior. According to Waldinger, who reports on a 2006 survey of national opinion conducted by the Pew

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Research Center, only a minority of respondents supported the idea that 'immigrants now living in the U.S. illegally should be granted some kind of legal status that allows them to stay here,' with most instead wanting the undocumented to 'go home.' Additionally, some oppose the idea of a temporary worker program because of past negative experiences with these types of programs. According to Romo, in past attempts employers exploited guest workers and created conditions similar to peonage or even slavery for them. Also, because of the current economic situation, President Obama has recently mentioned that it is unlikely that he will have a bill on his desk by the end of this year, like he had promised during his presidential campaign. However, giving hard working illegal immigrants the opportunity to become legalized and become a part of this great nation is hardly preposterous, also the minority represented in Waldinger's report is not outstanding enough for it to stop any policy changes, and past failed experiences serve as learning experiences, and finally, there is no time like the present to resolve any problem, let alone one as important as this one. Needs Although some people do not feel as strongly about an immigration reform, few can argue that there exists a staggering problem in need of reevaluation. This problem exists because of a faulty system that needs to respond to the fact that the current border security situation is impressively bad, to the situation of already-here illegal immigrants and the lack of legal hard workers in the U.S. First, the core problem with any immigration issue is border security and monitoring. The border between the United States and Mexico is almost 2000 miles long

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and is the most heavily transited international border in the world. Yet, mixed among the legal trade and visitations are smuggled goods and the infiltration of illegal migrants. (Aguilar-Millan, et al). This directly puts light on the fact that the borders are not being appropriately monitored. During a recent press conference, President Barack Obama stated that "if the American people don't feel like you can secure the borders.. then it's hard to strike a deal that would get people out of the shadows and on a pathway to citizenship who are already here, because the attitude of the average American is going to be, 'Well, you're just going to have hundreds of thousands of more coming in each year.' " (Dinan). What President Obama is pointing out is the fact that security and monitoring in the U.S. - Mexico border is in dire need of reenforcement and this needs to be dealt with before even thinking of finding a solution for any other immigration issues. Another problem is the current situation of the approximately 12 million illegal immigrants already living and working in the United States. These are the workers who do America's hard work, constituting over one-tenth of the U.S. labor force in sectors such as agriculture, construction, maintenance, and food services (Ilias, Fennelly & Federico). One of the proposed solutions for this is a temporary worker program, this program would accord temporary legal status to large numbers of unauthorized residents working in the United States ( Ilias, Fennelly & Federico).The current solution is to simply look for them and take them out of the country. This unreasonable method also brings impossible costs of identifying and returning all workers currently in the United States without authorized documents. (Romo). There is a need to enforce a program where proven hard working illegal immigrants can obtain legal status in the

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United States. Said program also needs to have harsh repercussions for those who do not comply with its requirements, to send a message of assurance to naysayers and of caution to future prospects. Perhaps the most controversial issue with the current immigration policy has to do with the guest worker programs. There are some programs of this kind already functioning in this country, most notably the H-2A guest worker visas, which are used by seasonal agricultural workers (Edwards). But many of these workers have no previous work experience or access to social networks in the United States, face extreme isolation at work sites, are beholden to contractors, fear losing their jobs if they complain, and are generally unaware of their basic rights (Sarathy & Casanova). As Ruhs and Martin point out, the result of these guest worker programs should be 'winwin-win' outcomes, as migrant workers win by earning higher wages abroad, migrant receiving countries win with additional workers who expand employment and economic output, and migrant-sending countries win via greater remittances and the return of workers who gained skills abroad. But the sad story is that mostly the workers end up losing because of low salaries and slave-like conditions. We can now appreciate how these immigrations reforms are in dire need of reforming. Slow working bureaucracy is also something that needs to be removed from the system. Many immigrants who actually do have a chance to become American citizens get discouraged when they learn that those processes are both expensive and slow. According to Cheryl Wittenauer from the Bay Ledger News Zone, name-check delays and backlogs can slow down the citizenship process, keep out foreign workers, disrupt

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study-abroad programs, block access to U.S. citizenship benefits and impede deportation of applicants who pose a national security threat. The immigration policy as a whole needs to be corrected from within in order for it to function properly on the outside. Yet another issue needing revamping is the identification system used by employers in the United States. This is yet another problem that could be taken care of with the implication of money and political support. Employers need to have a database where they can check if the people who they are employing are legal workers. This would protect employers from committing a federal crime (employing illegal aliens) and also protect legal immigrants and their jobs. President Obama championed this idea during his presidential campaign with a proposal to create a system so employers can verify that their employees are legally eligible to work in the U.S. according to his 2008 campaign web page. Although this need of a national ID system may not be covered in the next couple of years, it is going to happen in the future, as it provides Government with a better control over the working population. Policy The presence of a large number of issues with the current immigration policy signal a need for change. The changes need to be specifically addressed to deal with the problems of providing the American people with a better, more secure border, of providing an opportunity for hard working illegal immigrants already in the United States and of faulty guest worker programs that are currently being exploited by many companies. The first priority is to invest money and human resources to make the U.S. Mexico border as safe as it can be. It will be a the first step towards a full

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immigration policy makeover. If we can reduce the number of illegal criminals and substances entering the United States we can genuinely expect public support for a much stronger and aggressive immigration policy. One solution is investing in technology because in the long run surveillance technology is more cost effective than border patrol agents, which in turn are more cost effective than work-site inspectors (Wein, Liu & Motskin). This first step is already being made by the Pentagon and Homeland Security who are developing contingency plans to send National Guard troops to the US-Mexican border under a $350 million initiative that would expand the US military's role in the war on drugs (Sheridan & Hsu). Another step being taken to alleviate this problem is the naming of Alan D. Bersin as the new border czar or official, who according to an article by The New York Times is in response to the Obama administration pledging to crack down on violence linked to drug cartels along the United States-Mexico border and on illegal immigration. With these structured and strong policies we may see positive results in the very near future. President Obama vowed to keep immigrant families together during his presidential campaign, and the best way to achieve this is by granting amnesty to these people. This is why as of late Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) has been on a non stop program called the Family Unity Immigration Outreach Tour across the U.S., describing it as an effort to "document the harm caused to citizens across our nation in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform.", according to an article published through U.S. Newswire in Washington. This is

Campos intended to pressure the President into keeping his campaign goals.

Funding for better technology must undoubtedly come forth by the government. In this day and age, information is golden and in order for it to stay golden it must be reliable, fast and actualized. A policy that would assure financial support for a technological overhaul would prove useful not only for the revamping of American bureaucracy, but also for the creation of a future worker database. According to Wittenauer from the Bay Ledger News Zone, the FBI processes about 86 percent of the name-check requests within two months. The remaining 14 percent can take months to three years to complete. this is simply unacceptable in modern times. Also, this policy will target high process costs, securing a more accessible fee for immigrants applying to become U.S. citizens. With this in mind, President Obama, while still in the Senate, joined Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) to introduce the Citizenship Promotion Act to ensure that immigration application fees are both reasonable and fair., this according to President Obama's 2008 campaign web page.

There also needs to be a better Guest Worker Program. This satisfies the need for skilled and hard-labor workers. Although there already are programs that provide temporary work visas to some workers, a policy change has to come into effect to provide better protection of these workers and also ensure that they go back to their home countries. According to Ilias, Fennelly & Federico, despite safeguards written into guest worker laws, in practice past programs were associated with a host of human rights abuses. But, like it or not, workers will

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continue to come to the United States, with or without documents, as long as there are jobs for them. (Romo). The U.S. must take the necessary steps to ensure these workers are legal, temporary workers. Benefits The successful implementation of these policies would lead to a much improved immigration system. Immigration reform always seems to come in second or third place for Americans, but in reality, these are issues should have been resolved a long time ago. The relationship between illegal immigration and the U.S.'s economy is very important yet very faulty, these policy changes should alleviate the problem and create a working system that represents higher revenues, a stronger national security and lower levels in illegal immigration. By providing the American people with a tighter and overall better border security we have a better chance at finding and implementing solutions for the other immigration problems. As it was stated before, this should be the first step in any immigration reform, simply because it creates public support and approval and opens up a time frame for the other policies. Spending on better security equipment and personnel will only produce positive results. Creating a better system that enables illegal immigrants in the United States, who are working and raising their families, with the possibility of obtaining citizenship is a very beneficial policy. A program that could provide legal status to 12 million or more people would require the hiring of a large number of federal employees; the forging of public-private partnerships; and the development of technology for online applications,

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systems of document verification and record keeping according to U.S. Newswire in Washington, thus creating thousands of jobs for the American people. Also, by nationalizing these immigrants, the U.S. would increase tax revenues exponentially, and as a result would have a better spending budget. Bringing up the current identification system and the slow citizenship process up to date will produce a more secure feeling for the American people as well as it will speed up every bureaucratic process within the system. The Citizen Promotion Act brought forward by then Senator Obama and Rep. Gutierrez also creates a more accessible path within the tedious citizenship process, taking care of some of those high costs benefits everyone because it encourages the correct way to do things. So in conclusion, faster and cheaper processing is better for everyone and a complete and actualized national worker identification system would alleviate the problem of illegal workers. The United States will always be the promise land for many Mexicans, Central and South Americans, Asians and Africans, and many more, there will always be some number of illegal immigrants in this country and there is probably nothing that can be done about that. But what we can do is provide real solutions to the problems that affect us the most today, we can ensure a safer border, we can provide the best technology available and we can create better programs to provide the U.S. with hard working people.

Campos Works Cited

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Aguilar-Millan, Stephen, Joan E. Foltz, John Jackson & Amy Oberg. Global Crime Case: Drugs and the U.S.-Mexico Border. The Futirist 42 (2008): 42-43. ProQuest. Web. 11 May. 2009. Congressman Luis Gutierrez Travels on National Amnesty Tour While U.S. Workers Stand in Unemployment Lines. U.S. Newswire [Washington] 5 Mar. 2009. ProQuest. Web. 11 May. 2009. Dinan, Stephen. Obama Reverses Stance on Immigration. McClatchy-Tribune Business News [Washington] 8 May. 2009. ProQuest. Web. 11 May. 2009. Edwards, Lynda. Farmers' Friend. ABA Journal 95 (2009): 34-35. ProQuest. May. 2009. Ilias, Shayerah, Katherine Fennelly & Christopher M. Federico. American Attitudes Towards Guest Worker Policies. The International Migration Review Journal 42 (2008): 741-66. ProQuest. Web. 11 May. 2009. Immigration. Barack Obama: Organizing America. n.d. Web. 11 May. 2009. New U.S. Border Official. Nytimes.com. New York Times, 15 Apr. 2009. Web. 11 May. 2009. Romo, Harriett. Immigrants, Workers, and Policy Issues: Perspectives on Mexican Transnationalism. Latin American Politics and Society Journal 51 (2009): 14965. ProQuest. Web. 11 May. 2009. Ruhs, Martin & Philip Martin. Numbers VS. Rights: Trade-Offs and Guest Worker Programs. The International Migration Review Journal 42 (2008) 249-66. Web. 11

Campos ProQuest. Web. 11 May. 2009.

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Sarathy, Brinda & Vanessa Casanova. Guest Workers or Unauthorized Immigrants?: The Case of Forest Workers in the United States. Policy Science Journal 41 (2008): 95-115. ProQuest. Web. 11 May. 2009. Sheridan, Mary Beth & Spencer S. Hsu. Plan Would Put Troops on U.S.-Mexico border; Pentagon Initiative Expands Military Role in Drug War. Boston Globe [Boston] 25 Apr. 2009. ProQuest. Web. 11 May. 2009. Waldinger, Roger. Will the Followers Be Led?: Where Union Leader Stand in Immigration. New Labor Forum Journal 17 (2008): 43-54. ProQuest. Web. 11 May. 2009. Wein, Lawrence M., Yifan Liu & Arik Motskin. Analyzing the Homeland Security of the U.S.-Mexico Border. Risk Analysis Journal 29 (2009): 699-704. ProQuest. Web. 11 May. 2009. Wittenhauer, Cheryl. Audit Says FBI Name-Check Process Problematic. blnz.com. Bay Ledger News Zone, 9 Jun. 2008. Web. 11 May. 2009.