Immigration Policy: A Tricky Business
Muñoz, Cecilia
Though elected officials are reluctant to admit it, migration policy is a persistent issue with strategic implications. It is intimately connected to the nation's foreign, economic and labor...
...There is a movement afoot to respond to the Zoe Baird situation by enacting legislation to provide visas for undocumented workers who provide home care for children, the elderly, or disabled people...
...The firestorm which engulfed the nomination of Zoe Baird and the candidacy of Kimba Wood provides a vivid example of the failings of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which VOL XXVI, No 5 MAY 1993 39REPORT ON US POLICY attempted to control illegal immigration through an employer-sanctions policy...
...Edward Roybal (D-CA) in the 102nd Congress...
...This represents an important breakthrough which many advocates hope will lead to opportunities to raise the migration implications of other U.S...
...On the domestic side, Latino and Asian activists as well as many civil-rights groups feel that employer sanctions must be repealed and replaced with more effective and humane measures to control illegal immigration without resorting to discrimination...
...Under the current visa allocation system, the vast majority of immigrants enter the United States because sponsors have petitioned for them...
...For example, the changing relationship between the United States and Mexico, of which NAFTA is an outcome, may create opportunities to infuse development policy with a migration agenda...
...Employer sanctions give them a rational incentive to discriminate, while the civil rights of those discriminated against are seldom enforced...
...citizens-who are legally authorized to work...
...8 As the evidence pours in that undocumented immigration continues at the same rate as before the enactment of IRCA in 1986, the Clinton Administration is faced with the challenge of reopening the painful debate on immigration control...
...policies...
...Baird's admission that she had illegally hired an undocumented Peruvian couple and not paid the requisite social-security taxes sparked a public furor that scuttled her nomination...
...In the case of those seeking political asylum in the United States, the new Administration appears poised to continue in the footsteps of its predecessors, committing itself to nominally fair processing for those who petition for asylum within the United States, while simultaneously doing everything it can to prevent would-be asylees from setting foot on U.S...
...Committee for Refugees, Running the Gauntlet...
...When it turned out that Clinton's second nominee, Kimba Wood, had also once hired an undocumented babysitter, the president quietly dropped her from contention, though Wood had not violated the law in any way...
...By intercepting Haitians at sea before they reach U.S...
...In contrast to the European Community, NAFTA does not deal with the movement of labor because both the United States and Mexico recognized that the migration issue was thorny enough to deflate the prospects for any overall agreement...
...4. Cecilia Munoz, Unfinished Business: the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (Washington, D.C.: National Council of La Raza, December 1990...
...On the other hand, some are concerned that providing employers with too many opportunities to bring in skilled immigrants decreases incentives to educate and train domestic workers...
...8. See Immigration Law Enforcement Monitoring Project, Sealing Our Borders: the Human Toll (Houston, TX: American Friends Service Committee, February 1992) and Americas Watch, Brutality Unchecked: Human Rights Abuses Along the U.S...
...and it must devise a system for allocating visas which both promotes family reunification and protects domestic labor interests within the United States...
...By including major programs with three-year lifespans and establishing a commission to look at the effects of the new law and make recommendations for future immigration policy, the bill's sponsors made it clear that they expect key issues to be revisited in the near future...
...3. "Congress to Tackle Immigration Legislation This Fall," Interpreter Releases, Vol...
...Clearly, the Clinton Administration will have to contend with the situation of hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans, some of whom wish to return to their country only when it is safe, and many of whom have lived in the United States for more than a decade, raised children here, and become a part of U.S...
...10 U.S...
...2 Moreover, Congress is likely to reconsider so-called "summary exclusion" proposals which would prevent people from petitioning for asylum in the United States when they come from certain countries deemed not to have a human-rights problem...
...Interestingly, Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari has suggested on at least one occasion to the newly elected Clinton Administration that if ratification of NAFTA is not made a high priority, Mexican migration might increase and threaten the U.S...
...13 (April 8, 1991), p. 401, 2. U.S...
...Immigration Policy: A Tricky Business 1. "INS Opens Asylum Offices Amid Large Backlogs, Charges of nadequate Funding," Interpreter Releases, Vol...
...While the discussion continues on the question of illegal immigration, the most recent legal-immigration reform measure, the Immigration Act of 1990 (IMMACT), appears to have ended an era in which immigration reform occurred only once every quarter century...
...Cecilia Munoz is senior immigration policy analyst at the National Council of La Raza...
...Instead, immigration has emerged in the NAFTA debate as a kind of weapon...
...10 Despite the clear overall economic, social and cultural benefits of a generous and humane legal immigration policy, the difficult economic times have fostered a debate which suggests that the generous mood toward newcomers which allowed significant increases in legal immigration in 1990 may be difficult to recreate...
...By the time Bill Clinton took office, he was confronted with two major crises involving immigration policy: rumors of a mass migration of Haitian refugees, and the undocumented-housekeeper controversy surrounding Attorney General-designate Zoe Baird and almost-nomi- Haitians, with a picture ol nee Kimba Wood...
...Some argue that the agreement will lead to long-term displacement within Mexico, particularly in the agricultural sector, which will in turn lead to greater migration north as those displaced head for Mexico's already overcrowded urban areas or the United States...
...Thanks to successful litigation and a great deal of advocacy, much of it on the part of the Central American solidarity movement in the 1980s, the procedures for processing asylum applications have improved in recent years...
...While some could point to death threats, murdered relatives, and other horrors in order to establish an individualized well-founded fear of persecution, still more fled the general effects of the war and are therefore not technically refugees...
...These laws not only left significant unfinished business, but they also created new problems and presented new issues which Congress and the Administration must now take up...
...immigration policy, the debate has already begun to refocus in a way which suggests that family immigrants (primarily Latinos and Asians) are less likely to benefit the United States economically than "skilled" immigrants who are sponsored by businesses, or who are brought in because of specific qualifications.' NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 40REPORT ON US POLICY While there is credible evidence that the educational status of the immigrant stream is declining, the figures reflecting this decline are drawn from a pool of newcomers-including undocumented migrants-which is much broader than the family-sponsored immigrant stream in question...
...Department of Labor, Immigration Policy and Research Report 1, 1989...
...Thanks to the difficult economic climate, restrictionist anti-immigrant groups are finding an audience ripe for scare tactics and hate mongering...
...Though Congress has reformed immigration policy three times during the past 15 years, the federal government has failed to effectively address key f deposed President Aristide, long-term issues or deal he US refugee camp in with their strategic implications...
...Roughly 30% of the total number of legal immigrants to the United States each year are from Latin America and the Caribbean-the bulk of these from Mexico...
...Clinton inherits a refugee stream that is unbalanced, with most resettlement "slots" going to people fleeing the former Soviet Union and South East Asia, with very modest representation from Africa and, with the exception of Cuba, virtually none from Latin America...
...Because of the asylees' fears of returning to the still unstable situation, as well as pleas from the Salvadoran government, the Bush Administration provided a year-long extension in the form of Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), which expires this June...
...These concerns have direct implications for domestic economic and labor policy...
...These groups will continue to support proposals to fortify the border and strengthen the employer-sanctions policy.7 On the international front, the Mexican government has made treatment of its nationals at the border a principal concern in its relationship with the United States, and human-rights groups have for the first time identified the U.S.-Mexico border as an area of concern...
...3366) introduced by Rep...
...More than 70% are sponsored by close family members, and the rest are sponsored primarily by employers who can establish that they could not find a U.S...
...economic o apply for Tem- d Status at the recovery which is critical to Center in Wash- Clinton's success...
...Except for Pat Buchanan's attempts to exploit it as a scare tactic during the Republican pri- maries, immigration policy was barely a blip on the radar screen in the 1992 presidential campaign...
...and his colleagues in the Congress will be to conduct the discussion thoughtfully, without creating unnecessary antagonisms between ethnic and religious groups concerned with family reunification, and businesses interested in ensuring speedy processing for their employees...
...In addition, the evidence of family immigrants' participation in the workforce and of their overall benefit to the economy strongly suggests that the nation has nothing to fear by continuing to make family reunification an immigration-policy priority...
...According to the U.S...
...refugee policy: the United States, at least rhetorically, prides itself in providing safe haven for those fleeing persecution, yet in practice, negative perceptions of immigrants and refugees often serve as a countervailing force...
...law in line with international standards concerning the definition and treatment of refugees...
...5. U.S...
...6 Supporters of employer sanctions argue that the solution to the policy's failure lies in strengthening it, particularly by establishing some form of national identification document and a system to thwart the black market for false working papers...
...The thinking behind the policy was that if employers checked everyone's documents, the job market for unauthorized workers would collapse, thus eliminating incentives for illegal migration...
...4 But in addition to simply being ineffective, employer sanctions have had the devastating side effect of causing massive employment discrimination against U.S...
...it must confront the failed NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 1 38REPORT ON US POLICY employer-sanctions policy and the massive employment discrimination that is its chief by-product...
...economy has benefited greatly from the immigration of people into a variety of labor markets...
...GAO, March 1990...
...Border with Mexico (Washington, D C.: Americas Watch, May 1992) 9. George J. Borjas, Friends or Strangers: The Impact of Immigrants on the U.S...
...and Mexican officials have been involved for years in efforts to prevent Central Americans from reaching the United States, without any attempt to identify those who might be legitimately fleeing persecution...
...3 Events in Central America during the last decade have also given rise to an ongoing debate about the eligibility for refugee status of people fleeing the generalized effects of violent conflicts in their home countries, but who might not be able to prove that they as individuals face persecution...
...According to the U.S...
...New versions of the legislation are expected to be introduced in the new Congress...
...Economy (New York: Basic Books, 1990...
...Haiti is not the only example of this strategy at work...
...Interestingly, though the potential effects of NAFTA on migration are hotly discussed by both proponents and opponents of an agreement, the negotiations themselves did not address the migration issue directly...
...And the Immigration Act of 1990 (IMMACT) updated and expanded the visa quota system under which legal immigrants enter the country...
...In the case of refugees who are resettled from outside the United States, the principal players-the federal and state governments and non-governmental agencies-have been struggling to provide resettlement services with ever shrinking resources and a rapidly growing worldwide population of people who fear persecution...
...While IMMACT underscored the idea that family reunification should be the cornerstone of U.S...
...1 The old system, which quite deliberately reflected Cold War foreign-policy considerations, is slowly being transformed into one in which asylum is granted on the basis of solid information about the kinds of persecution that applicants face in their home countries...
...policy in the trade or foreign-policy arenas has been linked, if only rhetorically, to migration policy...
...Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980, which brought U.S...
...Committee for Refugees, January 1991...
...This particularly affects Puerto Ricans, who despite being U.S...
...Employer sanctions made it illegal for employers to hire undocumented laborers, requiring the nation's employers to check the documents of everyone they hire...
...But much as politicians would like to avoid this often messy issue, it has a persis- tent way of challenging them at the most inoppor- tune moments...
...NAFTA marks the first time in decades that U.S...
...Unfortunately, at the same time, and in defiance of federal and international laws, the United States is focusing its energy on preventing would-be asylees from reaching the country in the first place...
...In addition to basic resource questions, a larger philosophical issue looms...
...employers, or 891,000 nationwide, admit they engage in unlawful discriminatory hiring practices as a direct result of employer sanctions...
...await processing at t Guantdnamo, Cuba...
...For instance, development could be advocated as a way of deterring migration in areas long known to be major "sending" communities, where migration has been a survival strategy for generations...
...The Central American Journey Through Mexico (Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...society...
...citizens by birth are frequently asked for green cards in order to get a job...
...It is intimately connected to the nation's foreign, economic and labor policies...
...The Spanish Catholic great challenge to President Clinton ington, DC...
...Economy and Labor Market (Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...immigrants from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines and India Salvadorans wait often wait two or three years to porary Protect reunite with spouses or children...
...Finally, though it is not a product of the immigration reforms of the last several years, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has implications for U.S...
...1 he only policy with immigration implications which appears to be somewhere near the front burner for the Clinton Administration is NAFTA and the labor and environmental protocols which appear likely to accompany it...
...5 These practices include establishing U.S.-citizens-only policies, and requesting "green cards" of any potential employee who seems "foreign" on the basis of accent, appearance or surname...
...Chief among these is the question of how many immigrants to allow into the United States each year, and who should be permitted to enter...
...34 (September 3, 1992), p. 1089...
...Unfortunately, the two immigration-related incidents which hit the Administration in its early days may be signals that Clinton is likely to consider immigration policy only when some aspect of it reaches crisis proportions...
...proponents of the agreement argue that it will decrease immigration, while opponents suggest-often vividly-that NAFTA will only lead to more Mexicans coming north...
...Undocumented workers continue to find jobs, though they are more vulnerable to exploitation and less likely to report labor-law violations when they occur...
...General Accounting Office (GAO), Employer Sanctions and the Question of Discrimination (Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...Refugees can seek protection in the United States in one of two ways: by petitioning from a third country to enter as refugees, or by finding a way to enter the United States on their own and then petitioning for political asylum within the country...
...Department of Labor, The Effects of Immigration on the U.S...
...Undocumented immigration continues at much the same rate as before the enactment of IRCA...
...While the new Administration has-probably correctly-determined that immigration policy is a dangerous business, President Clinton has an opportunity to make positive changes in the nation's policy toward immigrants and refugees which can benefit the United States economically, and at the same time lead to healthier relationships with the country's neighbors...
...territory...
...68, No...
...For more than a decade, Haitian refugees have been the most poorly treated of any refugee group...
...General Accounting Office (GAO), have found that as many as 19% of U.S...
...Others contend that the estimates of long-term displacement are exaggeratt ec ed, and that NAFTA shows real promise of expanding the economy and developing opportunities for employment within Mexico, which will reduce the traditional incentives for migration to the United States...
...After nearly a decade-long battle, Representative Joseph Moakley (D-MA), and Senator Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) won Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Salvadorans, which grants them permission to remain in the United States until conditions in El Salvador improve...
...They highlight the fact that, though elected officials are reluctant to admit it, migration policy is a persistent issue with strategic implications...
...Despite his campaign promises to the contrary, Clinton blockaded Haiti, a measure more extreme than the interdiction policy of his two predecessors...
...The Haitian refugee situation had long been ready to explode-with the Reagan and Bush administrations routinely (and illegally) intercepting boats coming from Haiti and returning the occupants...
...This tactic is most glaringly employed in the case of Haitian refugees...
...Zoe Baird's situation highlights several problems with the law, not the least of which is that it simply hasn't worked...
...While such a proposal may deal with the most immediate concern arising from the current debate, the larger questions remain unaddressed...
...Six years later, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) attempted to control illegal immigration, and provided an amnesty to those undocumented immigrants who could establish long-term residence in the United States...
...Refugee and asylum policy in the United States is based on the fundamental international principle that people who have a "well-founded fear of persecution" in their home countries have a right to a safe haven...
...Policymakers must also be careful not to give credence to arguments which come from restrictionist groups with only thinly veiled antiethnic agendas...
...Department of Labor, the family immigration stream in the 1980s reflected the overall U.S...
...Many Salvadoran immigrants to the United States fall in this gray zone...
...There is general consensus that, in the short term, a trade agreement is likely to increase migration to the United States from Mexico...
...In the wake of these legislative reforms, the Clinton Adminstration faces three major tasks: it must come up with guidelines for a generous refugee and asylum policy...
...On the one hand, the evidence is clear that the U.S...
...Reports from throughout the country, including the U.S...
...6. The Employer Sanctions Repeal Act (S.1734) was introduced by Senators Hatch and Kennedy, with a companion bill in the House of Representatives (H.R...
...immigration policy and offers the first real prospect that policymakers may begin to see migration as a strategic matter which must be considered when other domestic and international policies are on the table...
...workforce, and included large numbers of highly skilled workers...
...IA MUNOZ Though Clinton has attempted to sweep these problems under the rug, the Haitian refugee crisis and the Baird and Wood nominations are symptoms of larger problems which must ultimately be addressed...
...Their predicament is a severe manifestation of the dilemma of U.S...
...Latinos and Asians-even native-born U.S...
...However, there is substantial disagreement on the long-term effects...
...In addition, many employers, for fear of finding themselves in the same trouble as Zoe Baird, simply stay away from any job applicant with a "foreign" sounding surname or appearance...
...Committee for Refugees, U.S...
...69, No...
...There are now growing backlogs in the familyreunification categories...
...7. The most prominent such organization is the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), whose founder and board member John Tanton is the author of a memorandum which, among other things, expresses concern about the birth rates of Hispanic Catholic immigrants, and the likelihood that they will import the "tradition" of the mordida or bribe...
...worker to fill specific positions...
...11 For example, after Senate action on the Immigration Act of 1990, the American Immigration Control Foundation sent a packet to all senators which included a cartoon depicting "chain migration" of Latinos, who were drawn in a very unflattering manner, brnginng in dozens of family members, carrying switchblades and drinking alcohol...
...It is intimately connected to the nation's foreign, economic and labor policies...
...shores, the United States claims it is not obligated to give them a full hearing...
Vol. 26 • May 1993 • No. 5
