Forum Post: The Immigration Reform Bill Should Not Pass
Posted 9 years ago on May 17, 2014, 9:30 a.m. EST by DouglasAdams
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This content is user submitted and not an official statement
The Immigration Reform Bill – Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act should not pass. Can millions of Americans illegally enter a foreign country take advantage of higher paying jobs, housing and other entitlements? No.
Obama said that deporting 11 million illegal immigrants was impractical. The current law is to legally deport illegal immigrants. Is it more practical to create a new law that creates a path toward citizenship for illegal aliens? No.
The current state of the new immigration reform bill- http://www.schumer.senate.gov/forms/immigration.pdf
Can anyone say this new law is an improvement over the current law? No.
As one reads the proposal, the question arises, how many people understand the law? It is over 800 pages. Presidents have signed laws without knowing what they are signing, without understanding the short term ramifications, nor the long term implications. Hoping for the best and preparing for the worst is not a solution or a plan of action. Signing legislation has to mean more than a historic photo opportunity showing the US President and politicians doing something.
Who Repealed Glass Steagall?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0k2PmF-o5Q
The legislation is huge. It is a monstrosity. There are parts on increasing border security and parts reducing barriers to naturalization. This law should be 3 separate and distinct pieces of legislation for Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization.
It is not obvious how this helps US Citizens. One of the keywords is practicality.
Remembering that the USA spends more on defense, and armament than the rest of the world combined, yet on 9/11/2001 jet airliners were allowed to crash into the New York City Twin Towers before the WTC buildings collapsed in a pyroclastic cloud of dust, a strong inclination toward skepticism is healthy.
Professor Daniele Ganser (Switzerland) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fUT7XgLiTY
Professor Laurie Manwell (Canada) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCY_vopQbRk#t=339
The practical idea would be to simplify the process not complicate it.
SEC. 2. STATEMENT OF CONGRESSIONAL FINDINGS.
Congress makes the following findings:
(1) The passage of this Act recognizes that the primary tenets of its success depend on securing the sovereignty of the United States of America and establishing a coherent and just system for integrating those who seek to join American society.
(2) We have a right, and duty, to maintain and secure our borders, and to keep our country safe and prosperous. As a nation founded, built and sustained by immigrants we also have a responsibility to harness the power of that tradition in a balanced way that secures a more prosperous future for America.
(3) We have always welcomed newcomers to the United States and will continue to do so. But in order to qualify for the honor and privilege of eventual citizenship, our laws must be followed. The world depends on America to be strong — economically, militarily and ethically. The establishment of a stable, just and efficient immigration system only supports those goals. As a nation, we have the right and responsibility to make our borders safe, to establish clear and just rules for seeking citizenship, to control the flow of legal immigration, and to eliminate illegal immigration, which in some cases has become a threat to our national security.
(4) All parts of this Act are premised on the right and need of the United States to achieve these goals, and to protect its borders and maintain its sovereignty.
The Congressional findings paint a rosy history of immigration to the United States. This is an inaccurate historical assessment. The United States was still developing concepts about human rights in the period before the American Civil War. The premises for the legislation are flawed. This legislation should not pass.
The history of immigration is not about the great nation United States is today, but a smaller nation still evolving, expanding and developing.
The earliest decades of the new nation saw relatively little new immigration. During the 1780's, while the nation was governed under the Articles of Confederation, the loosely joined states went through difficult economic times, and the future of the independent country seemed too insecure to encourage new immigration. However, even as the nation began settling into a more stable form after adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, immigration was still well below the levels it would later reach. Europe's Napoleonic Wars, which lasted until 1815, and the War of 1812 between Great Britain and the United States made it difficult for emigrants to leave Europe.
The Pennsylvania immigrants who were part of an enormous wave of Europeans who landed in the United States in the 1840s and 1850s were fleeing political upheaval, persecution and, in the case of the Irish, a great famine brought on by a potato blight.
Throughout the North, these immigrant groups faced a whole new set of challenges and, despite being impoverished or non-English speaking, played an important role during the years preceding the war.
Two historical events in particular drove this new period of immigration: the Irish Potato Famine, which began in 1845, and the European revolutions of 1848. The largest two ethnic groups by far were Irish-Catholics fleeing starvation and eviction in Ireland and Germans of various religious and political affiliations (Catholics, Protestants, “freethinkers,” liberals, and conservatives) fleeing the revolutions or subsequent repressions that swept across Germany in the late 1840s.
These recent arrivals from Germany joined a much older and well-established community of “Pennsylvania Dutch” (Germans who had immigrated earlier during colonial times), thus making German one of the most common languages spoken in Pennsylvania. By 1860, there were more than four million foreign-born citizens living in the United States. Of the 400,350 in Pennsylvania, more than 200,000 were from Ireland and nearly 140,000 were from the German states. Nearly 15 percent of Pennsylvania's population, and almost 29 percent of Philadelphia's, was foreign-born by 1860.
http://pacivilwar150.com/people/immigrants/Overview.aspx
Most southern slave-holding states had very low immigration rates during the first half of the nineteenth century. Their slave-based economic systems did not offer the same economic opportunities that the industrializing, nonslave states of the North could offer to immigrants.
http://salempress.com/store/samples/american_immigration/american_immigration_history.htm
During the 1880's, the United States entered into a remarkable period of economic expansion that would begin to transform the nation into one of the world's greatest industrial powers. This period also saw a dramatic rise in immigration as part of this economic expansion. Between 1871 and 1880, U.S. Census records show 2,812,191 entering the country. Over the next ten years, that figure almost doubled, to 5,246,613 immigrants, despite the law excluding Chinese immigrants after 1882. The sources of immigration also began to shift, from northern and western European countries to southern and eastern European countries. For example, whereas only 11,725 Italians immigrated to the United States during the 1860's, that figure rose to 307,309 during the 1880's. During these same decades, immigration from Russia and Poland grew from 4,539 to 265,088 persons.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Alien Contract Labor laws of 1885 and 1887 prohibited certain laborers from immigrating to the United States. The general Immigration Act of 1882 levied a head tax of fifty cents on each immigrant and blocked (or excluded) the entry of idiots, lunatics, convicts, and persons likely to become a public charge.
The Immigration Service continued evolving as the United States experienced rising immigration during the early years of the 20th century. Between 1900 and 1920 the nation admitted over 14.5 million immigrants.
Concerns over mass immigration and its impact on the country began to change Americans’ historically open attitude toward immigration. Congress strengthened national immigration law with new legislation in 1903 and 1907. Meanwhile, a Presidential Commission investigated the causes of massive emigration out of Southern and Eastern Europe and the Congressional Dillingham Commission studied conditions among immigrants in the United States. These commissions’ reports influenced the writing and passage of the Immigration Act of 1917.
Among its other provisions, the 1917 Act required that immigrants be able to read and write in their native language, obligating the Immigration Service to begin administering literacy tests. Another change, the introduction of pre-inspection and more-rigorous medical examinations at the point of departure saved time for people passing through some American ports of entry and reduced the number of excluded immigrants.
The outbreak of World War I greatly reduced immigration from Europe but also imposed new duties on the Immigration Service. Internment of enemy aliens (primarily seamen who worked on captured enemy ships) became a Service responsibility. Passport requirements imposed by a 1918 Presidential Proclamation increased agency paperwork during immigrant inspection and deportation activities.
A reality check on early immigration to the United States before the 20th century is long over due. The High Cost of Cheap Labor is one of the first studies to estimate the total impact of illegal immigration on the federal budget. Most previous studies have focused on the state and local level and have examined only costs or tax payments, but not both. Based on Census Bureau data, this study finds that, when all taxes paid (direct and indirect) and all costs are considered, illegal households created a net fiscal deficit at the federal level of more than $10 billion in 2002. The study also estimates that, if there was an amnesty for illegal aliens, the net fiscal deficit would grow to nearly $29 billion.
Households headed by illegal aliens imposed more than $26.3 billion in costs on the federal government in 2002 and paid only $16 billion in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of almost $10.4 billion, or $2,700 per illegal household.
Among the largest costs are Medicaid ($2.5 billion); treatment for the uninsured ($2.2 billion); food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches ($1.9 billion); the federal prison and court systems ($1.6 billion); and federal aid to schools ($1.4 billion).
With nearly two-thirds of illegal aliens lacking a high school degree, the primary reason they create a fiscal deficit is their low education levels and resulting low incomes and tax payments, not their legal status or heavy use of most social services.
http://cis.org/High-Cost-of-Cheap-Labor
Instead of amending our immigration laws to create a one size fits all solution, the United States Congress should determine why all of the immigrants are coming here illegally and what their national origin is. If they achieve that then legal deportations are the most practical approach.
This immigration reform legislation is probably the most complicated law written since Dodd Frank. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is a massive piece of financial reform legislation passed by the Obama administration in 2010 as a response to the financial crisis of 2008. The act's numerous provisions, spelled out over thousands of pages, are scheduled to be implemented over a period of several years and are intended to decrease various risks in the U.S. financial system. The act established a number of new government agencies tasked with overseeing various components of the act.
Was it necessary or more practical or beneficial to the American public to write Dodd Frank legislation or simply reinstate Glass-Steagall?
Securing the southern border is a separate issue and should have nothing to do with economic opportunity and immigration modernization. These should be three separate pieces of legislation. This legislation should not pass.