Yes, We Can Fix Immigration

The instant analysis of President Obama's speech about immigration at the Mexican border on Tuesday was that it was a naked ploy for Hispanic support.

A piece on The Washington Post's op-ed page Wednesday said, "By standing up and delivering speeches like the one in El Paso, he ensures a bumper crop of Hispanic votes."

Well ... maybe.

Hispanics should not be confused with Martians. (Though, judging from some of the comments I get about my columns, the number of undocumented Martians in this country is shocking.) Hispanics have real-life, everyday concerns just like everybody else.

A survey by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization, taken late last year before the congressional elections found that "immigration does not rank as a top voting issue for Hispanics."

The survey found that immigration "ranks as the fifth most important issue for Latino registered voters and as the fourth most important issue for all Latinos."

What were some issues they cared about more than immigration? The top three were education, jobs and health care.

Which is not to say Hispanics don't care about immigration. They do. But they have basic pocketbook concerns, too. And they also have developed pretty good BS detectors when it comes to politicians and immigration reform.

Congress will not pass comprehensive immigration reform over the next few years, and Hispanics know it. Obama wants their votes by telling them his heart is in the right place, and he wants the votes of other Americans by saying he also cares about securing our borders.

"We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement," Obama said Tuesday. "They said we needed to triple the Border Patrol. Or now they're going to say we need to quadruple the Border Patrol. Or they'll want a higher fence. Maybe they'll need a moat. Maybe they want alligators in the moat. They'll never be satisfied."

They won't be. Nor will the border ever be absolutely secure.

So do we sit around and do nothing? No. Bruce Morrison has a fix. Morrison is a former Democratic congressman from Connecticut, and was chair of the House Immigration Subcommittee, a member of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform and House author of the Immigration Act of 1990. He is now an immigration attorney and lobbies on a wide variety of immigration issues.

He doesn't agree with everything President Obama says or does — Morrison was a Hillary Clinton supporter in the last presidential election — but Morrison believes the president "is sincerely trying to find a solution" to the immigration problem.

Right now, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can cut some slack to illegal immigrants through a policy called "deferred action." (ICE is a law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security, which means it is part of the executive branch of government.)

Let's say you are fighting in Afghanistan, and your spouse gets picked up in a raid and is found to have entered the United States illegally years ago. Should we really deport her? While you are fighting for America? ICE has the discretion to leave illegal immigrants here in the United States on a year-to-year basis.

Morrison wants more deferred actions, not for new illegal immigrants, but for those already here. "What most Americans want is an end to large numbers of people coming into this country outside of the rules," Morrison said. "They are saying: 'We are sick of this crap. Fix it.'"

There are about 154 million people in the U.S. workforce, and about 60 million of them change jobs annually. Under Morrison's plan, when you change jobs you would get checked by a new electronic system to see if you are here legally. If you just arrived in the United States illegally, you would get sent back. If you are here illegally, but have a work history, you would get to stay until Congress decides what to do with you.

This system would not change the number of illegal workers already in America, but at least their numbers wouldn't grow too much.

This would not satisfy the people who want to add more alligators to the moat, but it would be an effective and compassionate response to illegal immigration. Morrison, who has worked in these trenches for 25 years and understands politics as well as he understands immigration, acknowledges that Obama has an easier path than the one Morrison suggests.

"He can just invite Republicans to beat him up for wanting to help Latinos, and that helps his Latino vote without doing much," Morrison said. "But I think he wants more than that."

Morrison mentioned that part of Obama's speech in which he talked about "E pluribus unum" — out of many, one — and how that was the story of America. Obama talked about the need for border laws, but he also talked about what immigration means to America.

"That's the promise of this country, that anyone can write the next chapter in our story," Obama said.

Morrison's plan would not require an act of Congress, only a decision by the president to let people keep writing America's next chapters.

To find out more about Roger Simon, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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