QUOTE
May 20, 2007
Illegal Migrants Dissect Details of Senate Deal
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and JULIA PRESTON
TUCSON, May 19 — Under the shade of a mesquite tree here one morning this week, waiting for work that did not come, Elías Ramírez weighed the hurdles of what could be the biggest overhaul in immigration law in two decades.
To become full legal residents, under a compromise Senate leaders announced Thursday, Mr. Ramírez and other illegal immigrants would have to pay a total of $5,000 in fines, more than 14 times the typical weekly earnings on the streets here, return to their home countries at least once, and wait as long as eight years. During the wait, they would have limited possibilities to bring other family members.
“Well, it sounds difficult, but not impossible,” said Mr. Ramírez, 24, a native of Chiapas, Mexico, who has been here a year. “I would like to be here legally in the future, so these things are what I might have to do.”
Another man among the group gathered outside a church here that serves as a hiring site for day laborers overheard Mr. Ramírez and approached with disdain.
“It’s almost impossible to bring your family,” he said, rattling off information he had gleaned from a Spanish-language newspaper. “You have to go back first, and what are you going to do in Mexico while you are there and there is no work? I’ve been here 20 years and I still work and support my family, so why would I do any of these things?”
The compromise bill has offered a glimmer of hope to illegal immigrants here, 60 miles from the border, and elsewhere. But they and others, through news reports, advocates and lawyers, are just now learning the fine print.
Advocacy groups here said they would lobby lawmakers to reject the bill, saying it would place onerous restrictions on illegal workers who want to win legal status and also hurt efforts to unify immigrant families.
“This is an unprecedented shift from family unity being the cornerstone of our immigration policy,” said Isabel Garcia, a lawyer and a chairwoman of Derechos Humanos, an advocacy group here. Ms. Garcia also objected to what she called “insurmountable” obstacles in the bill.
The compromise Senate bill proposes an initiative to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. It also portends a major shift in the priorities and values of American immigration for the future. It would gradually change a system based primarily on family ties, in place since 1965, into one that favors high-skilled and highly educated workers who want to become permanent residents.
In the future, low-skilled workers like the men waiting for work here would largely be channeled to a vast new temporary program, where they would be allowed to work in the United States for three stints of two years each, broken up by one-year stays in their homeland.
“This is a different architecture,” said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, and commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000.
Illegal workers already here would gain a provisional legal status, known as a Z visa, fairly quickly. But to become permanent residents they would have to pay the big fines and get in an eight-year line behind others who have already applied legally for green cards, as permanent resident visas are known.
Still, despite the outcry from immigrant advocates, a reading of the details of the legislation suggests important benefits for relatives of legal immigrants and naturalized American citizens who have been waiting for green cards for as long as 22 years in some cases.
A first step is to eliminate, within eight years, the backlog of 4 million people who have applied to come legally to the United States, allotting 440,000 visas a year for that purpose, according to summaries provided by the Department of Homeland Security and the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who was a chief author of the bill.
“We are adding to our family-based system, we are not substituting merit for family,” said Laura Capps, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy.
After the backlog is cleared, a slowly increasing number of permanent visas would be approved through a merit system, based on points granted for English language proficiency (an acute hurdle for the men waiting for work here, as none spoke English), level of education and job skills, among other factors.
Siblings and adult children of legal immigrants will no longer be able to apply for visas, and visas for parents of United States citizens will be limited to 40,000 a year.
In his weekly radio address on Saturday, President Bush said that the measure “will improve security at our borders. It will give employers new tools to verify the employment status of workers and hold businesses to account for those they hire.”
Mr. Bush added, “The legislation will clear the backlog of family members who’ve applied to come to our country lawfully, and have been waiting patiently in line. This legislation will end chain migration by limiting the relatives who can automatically receive green cards to spouses and minor children. And this legislation will transform our immigration system so that future immigration decisions are focused on admitting immigrants who have the skills, education, and English proficiency that will help America compete in a global economy.”
The immigration debate has long stirred politics, sometimes dividing members of the same party and forcing lawmakers to reconsider positions. This bill is no different.
Last year, as he sought re-election, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, a Republican, was critical of giving illegal immigrants legal status. But this week Mr. Kyl stood with John McCain, Arizona’s senior senator and a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, as the compromise was announced, saying ideological sacrifices had to be made.
The proposal, though, divided the two Democratic members of Congress from here in southern Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords and Raúl M. Grijalva.
Ms. Giffords called it a positive step while Mr. Grijalva, whose father was a migrant farm worker, told The Arizona Daily Star it was “tentative and unfinished.”
In south Tucson, outside the Southside Presbyterian Church, where immigrants — mostly men — have gathered for decades to find work, the immigration debate is also playing out as the men wait for jobs.
There are people like Mr. Ramírez, who spent several years just over the border in Sonora before finally coming to Arizona for construction and other work. He has not seen his family, he said, for 10 years.
Sipping from a bottle filled with ice as the day’s heat soared, Mr. Ramírez occasionally broke away when pickup trucks and other vehicles approached, joining others begging for a day’s work.
The biggest obstacle, Mr. Ramírez said, would probably be paying the $5,000 in fines on the way to permanent legal status. He does not have health insurance now, which he would be required to provide for his family if he decided to return to Mexico and come back as a temporary worker. “I don’t know who sells that or what it costs,” he said.
Still, all in all, “the important thing is saving. The fines are similar to what we pay polleros,” Mr. Ramírez said, using a Spanish slang term for the smugglers who guide people across the border.
Teoforo Valdés, 32, nodded in agreement. He has lived in and around Tucson for 10 years and still makes occasional trips home to Sonora, evading the Border Patrol.
But Mr. Valdés has grown tired of the journey, he said, and, at least upon first look at the proposal, sees reason for optimism.
“Right now, we have nothing, no real way to legalize ourselves,” he said. “This government is giving us steps and so we have to think how we can take them.”
As the morning wore on, the number of potential employers driving past grew thin. The workers began to disperse, though some stayed behind to use the bathroom and a shower at the church.
Jesús Antonio Rodríguez, 49, who said he was a legal resident and acts as an informal adviser to the men, summed up the dilemma.
“People do not believe it but we really do come to work,” Mr. Rodríguez said. “We are not delinquents here. We have to work. And we want to cooperate, but everything is always so hard here.”
Randal C. Archibold reported from Tucson, and Julia Preston from New York.
Illegal Migrants Dissect Details of Senate Deal
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and JULIA PRESTON
TUCSON, May 19 — Under the shade of a mesquite tree here one morning this week, waiting for work that did not come, Elías Ramírez weighed the hurdles of what could be the biggest overhaul in immigration law in two decades.
To become full legal residents, under a compromise Senate leaders announced Thursday, Mr. Ramírez and other illegal immigrants would have to pay a total of $5,000 in fines, more than 14 times the typical weekly earnings on the streets here, return to their home countries at least once, and wait as long as eight years. During the wait, they would have limited possibilities to bring other family members.
“Well, it sounds difficult, but not impossible,” said Mr. Ramírez, 24, a native of Chiapas, Mexico, who has been here a year. “I would like to be here legally in the future, so these things are what I might have to do.”
Another man among the group gathered outside a church here that serves as a hiring site for day laborers overheard Mr. Ramírez and approached with disdain.
“It’s almost impossible to bring your family,” he said, rattling off information he had gleaned from a Spanish-language newspaper. “You have to go back first, and what are you going to do in Mexico while you are there and there is no work? I’ve been here 20 years and I still work and support my family, so why would I do any of these things?”
The compromise bill has offered a glimmer of hope to illegal immigrants here, 60 miles from the border, and elsewhere. But they and others, through news reports, advocates and lawyers, are just now learning the fine print.
Advocacy groups here said they would lobby lawmakers to reject the bill, saying it would place onerous restrictions on illegal workers who want to win legal status and also hurt efforts to unify immigrant families.
“This is an unprecedented shift from family unity being the cornerstone of our immigration policy,” said Isabel Garcia, a lawyer and a chairwoman of Derechos Humanos, an advocacy group here. Ms. Garcia also objected to what she called “insurmountable” obstacles in the bill.
The compromise Senate bill proposes an initiative to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. It also portends a major shift in the priorities and values of American immigration for the future. It would gradually change a system based primarily on family ties, in place since 1965, into one that favors high-skilled and highly educated workers who want to become permanent residents.
In the future, low-skilled workers like the men waiting for work here would largely be channeled to a vast new temporary program, where they would be allowed to work in the United States for three stints of two years each, broken up by one-year stays in their homeland.
“This is a different architecture,” said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, and commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000.
Illegal workers already here would gain a provisional legal status, known as a Z visa, fairly quickly. But to become permanent residents they would have to pay the big fines and get in an eight-year line behind others who have already applied legally for green cards, as permanent resident visas are known.
Still, despite the outcry from immigrant advocates, a reading of the details of the legislation suggests important benefits for relatives of legal immigrants and naturalized American citizens who have been waiting for green cards for as long as 22 years in some cases.
A first step is to eliminate, within eight years, the backlog of 4 million people who have applied to come legally to the United States, allotting 440,000 visas a year for that purpose, according to summaries provided by the Department of Homeland Security and the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who was a chief author of the bill.
“We are adding to our family-based system, we are not substituting merit for family,” said Laura Capps, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy.
After the backlog is cleared, a slowly increasing number of permanent visas would be approved through a merit system, based on points granted for English language proficiency (an acute hurdle for the men waiting for work here, as none spoke English), level of education and job skills, among other factors.
Siblings and adult children of legal immigrants will no longer be able to apply for visas, and visas for parents of United States citizens will be limited to 40,000 a year.
In his weekly radio address on Saturday, President Bush said that the measure “will improve security at our borders. It will give employers new tools to verify the employment status of workers and hold businesses to account for those they hire.”
Mr. Bush added, “The legislation will clear the backlog of family members who’ve applied to come to our country lawfully, and have been waiting patiently in line. This legislation will end chain migration by limiting the relatives who can automatically receive green cards to spouses and minor children. And this legislation will transform our immigration system so that future immigration decisions are focused on admitting immigrants who have the skills, education, and English proficiency that will help America compete in a global economy.”
The immigration debate has long stirred politics, sometimes dividing members of the same party and forcing lawmakers to reconsider positions. This bill is no different.
Last year, as he sought re-election, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, a Republican, was critical of giving illegal immigrants legal status. But this week Mr. Kyl stood with John McCain, Arizona’s senior senator and a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, as the compromise was announced, saying ideological sacrifices had to be made.
The proposal, though, divided the two Democratic members of Congress from here in southern Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords and Raúl M. Grijalva.
Ms. Giffords called it a positive step while Mr. Grijalva, whose father was a migrant farm worker, told The Arizona Daily Star it was “tentative and unfinished.”
In south Tucson, outside the Southside Presbyterian Church, where immigrants — mostly men — have gathered for decades to find work, the immigration debate is also playing out as the men wait for jobs.
There are people like Mr. Ramírez, who spent several years just over the border in Sonora before finally coming to Arizona for construction and other work. He has not seen his family, he said, for 10 years.
Sipping from a bottle filled with ice as the day’s heat soared, Mr. Ramírez occasionally broke away when pickup trucks and other vehicles approached, joining others begging for a day’s work.
The biggest obstacle, Mr. Ramírez said, would probably be paying the $5,000 in fines on the way to permanent legal status. He does not have health insurance now, which he would be required to provide for his family if he decided to return to Mexico and come back as a temporary worker. “I don’t know who sells that or what it costs,” he said.
Still, all in all, “the important thing is saving. The fines are similar to what we pay polleros,” Mr. Ramírez said, using a Spanish slang term for the smugglers who guide people across the border.
Teoforo Valdés, 32, nodded in agreement. He has lived in and around Tucson for 10 years and still makes occasional trips home to Sonora, evading the Border Patrol.
But Mr. Valdés has grown tired of the journey, he said, and, at least upon first look at the proposal, sees reason for optimism.
“Right now, we have nothing, no real way to legalize ourselves,” he said. “This government is giving us steps and so we have to think how we can take them.”
As the morning wore on, the number of potential employers driving past grew thin. The workers began to disperse, though some stayed behind to use the bathroom and a shower at the church.
Jesús Antonio Rodríguez, 49, who said he was a legal resident and acts as an informal adviser to the men, summed up the dilemma.
“People do not believe it but we really do come to work,” Mr. Rodríguez said. “We are not delinquents here. We have to work. And we want to cooperate, but everything is always so hard here.”
Randal C. Archibold reported from Tucson, and Julia Preston from New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/us/20immig.html?hp
