Some Principles for Immigration Reform

By John Miano on February 7, 2014

The term "comprehensive immigration reform" has become a euphemism for a package that includes amnesty for illegal aliens plus unlimited cheap foreign labor for business plus money for special interests. The salient feature of comprehensive immigration reform bills is their complete lack of reform.

The focus on amnesty for illegal aliens is a major distraction from actual reform. If your boat springs a leak, the first thing a rational person does is plug the leak. Next he starts bailing. An amnesty as part of immigration reform is like trying to bail while water is rushing in.

The Republican leadership in the House has released its principles for immigration reform. Sadly they are vapid and near meaningless.

I present below my own principles for comprehensive immigration reform, in the hope of starting a real discussion on what immigration reform should look like.

I. Comprehensively reform.

If the immigration system is broken to the point that comprehensive reform is needed, such reform should truly be comprehensive. The first line of any real comprehensive reform would be:

"The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 as amended is repealed."

Without such a repeal, a reform bill is simply piling more complexity on to an already broken system.

The Schumer/Rubio bill merely takes our current system and adds over 1,000 pages of tangle to it. That is not reform.

II. Reform should be understandable.

A comprehensive immigration reform bill should be fewer than two hundred pages of understandable text.

If a reporter cannot understand the bill, a potential immigrant cannot either.

The true measure of a reformed immigration system is that it should not take a lawyer to do a visa application. That means immigration lawyers cannot write the bill.

III. Abolish immigration queues.

The immigration system should make decisions. A potential immigrant should get a decision on immigration applications within a short period of time.

The current system places applicants who cannot be admitted in queues. In some cases, these queues can extend for years. Be honest and tell those who cannot be admitted that they have been rejected. Let them reapply after a waiting period.

IV. Abolish employment-based immigration.

While employment-based categories have the theoretical appeal of ensuring that the immigrant has a job, they are unfair to those who want to live in this country. Employment-based immigration puts the potential immigrants at the mercy of their employer to process the visa application.

The people of the United States through their government should confer immigration benefits. There should not be employment benefits granted by corporations. In fact, go to nearly any job board and you can find green card processing being listed as a fringe benefit by employers.

Let the potential immigrant be in complete control of his immigration application. Having a job could be a factor in granting the application. However, the potential immigrant makes the application on his own behalf and has control over the process.

V. Set an immigration budget.

It is not practicable for the U.S. to admit everyone who wants to come here. The immigration system must make choices. There must be clear limits on the number of immigrants.

One way to do this would be for the U.S. to set a target population. At regular intervals, the Census Bureau could calculate how many immigrants are required to reach that target. That would be used to set annual limits on immigration.

VI. Establish immigration priorities.

The immigration system needs to establish what skills and attributes the country needs from immigrants and select applicants based upon those criteria.

The current immigration system is primarily family-based. A family-based system is out-of-date.

VII. The system should be rational.

A rational system needs to be predictable and workable. How do you create workable immigration system that creates immigration paths for people who violate the law? Amnesties for people who flout the immigration system create a system that is inherently irrational. How do you create a workable immigration path based upon something as unpredictable as entrepreneurship? It simply is not possible.

VIII. Have clear paths for aliens.

Aliens should either come to the U.S. to visit or to immigrate. They should know where they stand when they arrive at our shores. Visitors should be required to return to their home before applying to be an immigrant.

The current system of dual intent that permits "temporary" workers to apply for permanent immigration is inherently irrational. Allowing those admitted under the lower standard of non-immigrant (tourists, students, etc.) then allowing them to apply for the higher standard of immigration creates backlogs by its very nature. It's like the New Jersey Turnpike merging from 10 lanes to six lanes.

IX. Guest worker quotas should be based upon economic need.

Current guest worker quotas are fixed. Most proposals to change this have been based upon the even more flawed system of setting quotas based upon visa demand – not economic need. Before permitting guest workers in a field, the Department of Labor should certify that there is an actual shortage of workers based upon economic measures such as unemployment and wage growth. Those measures should be used to determine the extent of any labor shortage and should set guestworker limits.

X. Any amnesty must be accompanied by a Never Again clause.

One of the most glaring omissions from the Schumer/Rubio immigration bill is the lack of a "never again" clause – after this amnesty anyone who enters illegally or overstays a visa becomes a felon and such aliens are ineligible for any public benefit and for any form of legal admission in the future. Without cutting off illegal aliens in such a way, the Schumer/Rubio bill sets the country up for more illegal aliens and a future amnesty, just as the 1986 amnesty did.

XI. The process for creating a reform bill should take place in public.

The Schumer/Rubio bill represented the worst of Washington incest. The public was completely excluded while Washington lobbyists wrote the bill.

The needs of the American public should dictate the priorities of our immigration system. The public should have a say in what immigration reform looks like. This can only happen if the process is transparent and open to the public.