Registry: Another Approach to Immigration Reform
Posted on | September 11, 2009 | No Comments
There are two major elements of the immigration issue that must be addressed: (1) regulations for future immigration (legal and unlawful) and (2) treatment of current undocumented immigrants. The latter issue is the thornier one—with critics blaming everything from the sub-prime fiasco to the outbreak of swine flu on illegal immigrants, no politician wants to be seen as “giving a pass” to the estimated twelve million undocumented immigrants who have violated the law.
Proposals for addressing this aspect of reform usually range from offering full amnesty (as in 1986 when an estimated 2.7 million people became legal residents) to giving unlawful immigrants a path to legalization that includes hefty fines. Both have political consequences, since amnesty is too weak for some while exacting large penalties from people already living on the margins of society seems unfair to others.
The fact of the matter is that the individuals in question already carry on their lives under the radar, and measures that seek to penalize them (even setting fairness aside) are unlikely to draw them out in large numbers. Hence the appeal of amnesty, despite its political explosiveness.
But there is an alternative to amnesty. Registry is an immigration concept that dates back to 1929, and it allows immigrants who have lived continuously in the U.S. and who entered the country before a certain date to register as lawful permanent residents. This is essentially instant amnesty for anyone who meets the criteria. The effective date has changed several times over the last century, and it is now January 1, 1972.
Setting another date that could help immigrants arriving after 1972 would have a great impact, permitting millions who have been in the country for years to become lawful permanent residents. According to Census 2000 data, of the 18.6 million non-citizen, foreign-born people in the United States, only 2.5 million entered before 1980. (And only some of these entered before 1972). During the 1980s another 4.7 million came, but from 1990 to 2000 a huge wave of nearly 11.5 million non-citizens entered the country. If we extrapolate from these figures to undocumented immigrants, then updating the registry effective date—to 2000, perhaps to 2005—would instantly change the status of nearly 90% of the undocumented immigrants who have come to the country since 1980.
Immigration reform is unusual among domestic policies because politicians’ stances on the matter do not always follow party lines: geography, demographics, and regional industries can all be stronger factors than ideology or partisanship when it comes to dictating how a member of Congress will act on immigration issues.
As ongoing fights over various domestic issues continue to entrench partisan competition in Washington, the ultimate fate of undocumented immigrants is unclear. Previous posts have maintained that reform is likely, yet the amnesty issue remains a very difficult one. Updating the registry effective date would be a minor change with big effects, and it could also remove much of the politics from reform and make it easier to pass tough sanctions punishing the very recent (and future) undocumented immigrants.
Tags: Amnesty > Illegal Aliens > Immigration Reform > Permanent Resident > Registry
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