EDITORIAL: Our broken immigration system (04/16/06)

EDITORIAL

Our broken immigration system

The U.S. immigration system is broken. There's no one out there who will dispute that statement. The big question is what to do about it.

The House of Representatives came up with one answer back in December, when it passed a bill that would erect hundreds of miles of fencing along the country's southern border and make illegal immigrants felons, without giving them a chance at legalization or eventual citizenship. That draconian measure - there's just no other way to describe it - is a disgrace for our country of immigrants.

The Senate, meanwhile, was working on a different solution: one that would have allowed undocumented workers in the United States to become legally employed and offered them a chance to become permanent residents and, ultimately, citizens. The Senate proposal would have established a guest worker system and would have enabled those illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. for five years or longer to embark on the road to legal status. Those here two to four years would have to apply for legal status after returning to a border crossing to have their documents processed; others would be subject to deportation.

It appeared that a bipartisan deal had been reached among the senators, but then it all fell apart. There's enough bipartisan blame to go around for that failure...

In the wake of the Senate's inaction, immigrants around the country - a fraction of the more than 11 million illegal immigrants now in the United States - came out to publicly make their case. As one demonstrator told The Washington Post, "We decided not to be invisible anymore."

Americans had seen these illegal immigrants in their local communities. We saw them, but we didn't really see them. That's because they exist in the shadows, where they work in landscaping, construction, restaurants, as domestics and cleaning people. Many of them are exploited by greedy employers who are happy to get cheap labor and, we might add, workers who are afraid to stand up for their basic rights because of their uncertain legal status in this country. We've all heard and read stories about the day workers picked up by landscapers in our neighborhoods who put in a tremendous day's work only to be shortchanged, or about the home care aides who are practically slaves, working seven days a week and on duty 24 hours.

Many of the latter are our fellow Ukrainians who arrive on a temporary basis to earn some money to send back home to their financially strapped families. There is no doubt their services are needed, but there is also no doubt they deserve to be protected from unscrupulous employers. They deserve to be treated as we all would like to be treated.

And then there are the cases like that of the Karnaoukh family which recently made headlines here in New Jersey. They were a hard-working family that lived in the U.S. for 15 years, bought a home, sent their sons to college - all the while thinking they were on the road to legal status in this country. Thanks to the work of incompetent and unprincipled lawyers, they were deported in February.

We've heard over and over again about lawyers who "guarantee" a green card for $10,000. These are the criminals who deserve to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law - not the poor immigrants who believe their empty guarantees.

Clearly, our immigration system has to be fixed. And the sooner Congress stops playing politics and gets down to serious business, the better. It's time our political parties stopped worrying about losing support in the upcoming congressional elections and started worrying about the well-being of our country. In short, they must do the right thing - not the politically expedient thing.

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