This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 17, 2013: WASHINGTON – After months of negotiations, a bipartisan group of senators, including U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, released details Tuesday of a compromise bill to revamp the nation’s immigration system and pave a 13-year citizenship pathway for millions who are living in this country without legal documents.
If approved by Congress, the plan would be the most sweeping overhaul of U.S. immigration laws in a quarter century. It would bolster border security, create work opportunities for tens of thousands of new high-tech and low-skilled workers and crack down on firms that fail to check the legal status of their employees.
President Barack Obama, after meeting with two of the "gang of eight" senators -- U.S. Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and John McCain, R-Ariz.-- said in a statement that the bill “is clearly a compromise, and no one will get everything they wanted, including me.“ But Obama added that the legislation “is largely consistent with the principles that I have repeatedly laid out for comprehensive reform.”
Durbin, D-Ill., a champion for more than a decade of the Dream Act path to citizenship – which failed to gain congressional approval – was waiting to comment until the bill was formally introduced in the Senate. A news conference, originally scheduled for Tuesday, was delayed in the wake of Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing.
On Wednesday, Durbin said, "The time is for this debate is now, and I look forward to helping lead it." He added:
"For the first time in the history of this debate, there is broad, bipartisan agreement on a comprehensive, long-term solution that fixes our broken immigration system once and for all and reflects where we are as a nation.
"Our immigration system is broken. Today’s bill introduction is the first step towards fixing it. There will be hearings, amendments, and a full and fair debate on the Senate floor.
Proponents said the compromise outlines a balanced approach that meets the concerns of both lawmakers whose priority is to legalize the status of the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants as well as the goals of other members of Congress who are pressing for more border security and a greater emphasis on legal immigration.
“There's a realization among most Republicans and Democrats that this issue needs to be addressed,” said U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a key GOP negotiator on the bill. “You can't have 11 million people living in the shadows forever.”
The bill’s initial “provisional legal status” and the subsequent 13-year path to possible citizenship – which would cost undocumented immigrants $2,000 in fines plus other fees – would be implemented only after the Homeland Security secretary certifies that several major steps have been taken by the U.S. government to secure the border further.
The plan includes funding for 3,500 additional customs agents nationwide and would authorize the deployment of the National Guard to the border to help build secure fencing and augment border surveillance systems. The greatest focus would be on “high-risk” border areas, where guards now apprehend about 30,000 illegals a year.
Meanwhile, a revamp of legal immigration regulations would be designed to lessen the current immigration backlogs and speed up many cases. And employers would face tougher new sanctions if they fail to check the legal status of all their workers.
Obama urged the Senate to take up the bill, and the Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled the first hearing on the bill later this week. However – as with any major immigration bill – it will take a while to debate and amend the legislation.
So far, Missouri’s senators have made no commitments on the bill, saying they need to study its details. “If this was easy, we would have solved it in the last 20 years,” said U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., in a statement to the Beacon.
A spokesman for U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said Tuesday that the senator “can't comment on the legislation until she's had a chance to read it thoroughly, but she agrees that our immigration system is broken, and she's going to take a hard look at this proposal.”
The spokesman, John LaBombard, added: “Any immigration overhaul Claire supports will have to meet three criteria: It must build on our success in bolstering border security, punish employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, and it must include consequences for those who came here illegally.”
Overhaul of immigration rules, border security
In his statement, Obama said the plan “would modernize our legal immigration system so that we’re able to reunite families and attract the highly skilled entrepreneurs and engineers who will help create good paying jobs and grow our economy. These are all commonsense steps that the majority of Americans support.”
But some congressional Republicans expressed concerns Tuesday, even though they had not yet seen the entire bill. “The Senate proposal issues an open invitation to enter the country illegally,” claimed U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, in a House speech. He contended that the plan would “dramatically increase illegal immigration.”
But U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asserted on several talk shows Sunday that such fears are unwarranted. Arguing that the plan would not “give” citizenship automatically to anyone, Rubio told ABC’s “This Week” that it simply “allows people access to the legal immigration system. No. 2, some people won't qualify. They haven't been here long enough; they've committed very serious crimes. They won't be able to stay.”
Rubio added that “all people will get [is] an opportunity to apply ... for a legal status, which isn't awarded on Day One. ... You have to pay an application fee and a fine, and you are going to have to stay in that status while you pay taxes and prove that you are not a public charge.”
Trying to make the bill’s approach palatable to conservative Republicans, the senators added a series of “triggers” – or markers – along the pathway to possible citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Those include the extensive border security programs – costing $5 billion over a decade – to extend fencing and bolster border enforcement.
According to a summary, the bill would require the Homeland Security secretary to submit a plan within six months that includes surveillance systems, fences, drones and other steps to control illegals in high-risk areas of the U.S.–Mexico border.
Only at that time would the government start allowing undocumented immigrants to register for “provisional legal status” – that would allow such immigrants who have lived in this country since Dec. 31, 2011, to work for any employer and travel outside the U.S. – but not be eligible for federal benefit programs. Such immigrants would be automatically disqualified if convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors.
In the meantime, after a five-year phase-in period, all employers would be required to use the federal “E-Verify” system to detect undocumented workers. The bill also requires a new system that would better track people with visas when they leave the country.
The bill would create a visa for foreigners starting new companies in this country and it would increase the available number of the current H-1B visas for highly skilled workers.
Another provision, considered important in some regions, would allow some farm workers and some undocumented immigrants who had been brought to this country illegally as children to obtain green cards in five years.
And the bill would establish a new “W” visa specifically for low-skilled workers, often called guest workers. Each year, a new federal agency would set a yearly cap for W visas, based on U.S. employment conditions and shortage in some types of agricultural labor.