Avoid Piecemeal Immigration Reform

When anti-immigrant zealots were on a roll the past couple of years, introducing various "enforcement-only" measures to fix the nation's broken immigration system, they were wrong. The fix has to be comprehensive.

And when they tried to promote Draconian state laws and local ordinances to crack down on illegal immigrants, they were wrong, too. States and municipalities should not be doing a job that belongs to the federal government.

But now that conservative zealots have suffered some political defeats; Democrats have a larger majority in Congress; and the White House soon will have a liberal president, who has vowed to fight for pro-immigrant reforms, immigrant advocates are talking about piecemeal changes in state and local laws.

Wrong again!

Only a comprehensive package of federal government reforms — some harsh and some compassionate — can finally produce a system that works. But it has to be a game changer, an awesome cure-all. Band-Aids will not do it.

In fact, piecemeal reforms can be counterproductive. They would lead to many bitter and divisive fights over whether illegal immigrants should be given driver's licenses, access to higher education, and other such privileges.

Just as the conservatives couldn't wait for Congress to act on immigration and tried to implement federal laws at the local level — cracking down on landlords and employers of illegal immigrants — the liberals are looking for local piecemeal measures that could have us all fighting over immigration for the next couple of years.

In New Jersey, for example, Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, has a "Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Immigrant Policy," which is considering some pro-immigrant yet controversial measures, including creating a special "driver privilege card" for illegal immigrants and allowing undocumented students to attend state colleges at in-state tuition rates. In Texas, lawmakers on the other side of the political spectrum are trying to reverse a law that allows undocumented college students to pay in-state tuition.

They also have more than a dozen other Draconian bills — including some that are clearly unconstitutional — designed to challenge the citizenship of U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, penalize employers who hire undocumented workers, require public schools to keep records of their students' immigration statuses, impose fees on money wired to Latin America, and make it a crime for illegal immigrants to enter the state.

Passing any of those measures through any state legislature would entail many heated, arm-waving debates, which can be prevented easily.

In fact, all these little wars across the country can be avoided if one big battle finally is won in Congress. Once our lawmakers agree on a plan to legalize most of the nation's undocumented immigrants — as part of a package that truly would secure our borders and crack down on visitors who overstay their visas — there will be no need for most of these local Band-Aid measures. Once we give our hardworking illegal immigrants the amnesty they deserve, their driver's licenses, college tuition, and right to housing and employment will no longer be issues for local governments to debate.

Once we have no illegal immigrants, we will have no illegal immigration problem! Starting with a clean slate and a new system that allows for additional legal immigration, our federal authorities would be able to concentrate on future illegal immigration by really securing our borders and creating a system for tracking down legal immigrants who stay here illegally once their visas expire.

Instead of wasting time and energy on changing city and state laws to alleviate only some of the hardships of the undocumented population, pro-immigrant advocates should be pressuring their federal representatives — from their local members of Congress to President-elect Barack Obama — to fulfill the immigration reform promises they have been making.

Immigrant rights advocates should be sending all their forces to Washington. That's where the big battle needs to be fought. And with an allegedly pro-immigrant president and Congress, this is the year to fight it.

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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