Should immigration laws be changed

The law also imposed sanctions on employers who hired unauthorized immigrants. Subsequent laws in , and were responses to concerns about terrorism and unauthorized immigration. These measures emphasized border control, prioritized enforcement of laws on hiring immigrants and tightened admissions eligibility. The most recent changes in immigration policy have been an exception to that pattern.

In , President Obama took executive action to allow young adults who had been brought to the country illegally to apply for deportation relief and a work permit. In , he expanded that program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA and set up a new program to offer similar benefits to some unauthorized-immigrant parents of U. In times of uncertainty, good decisions demand good data. Please support our research with a financial contribution. It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values.

Even in a polarized era, the survey reveals deep divisions in both partisan coalitions. Use this tool to compare the groups on some key topics and their demographics. By working with nonprofits and other interested groups, states can reduce their own costs in conducting oversight of the immigration system, further extending their reach in a comprehensive way. In June , dozens of major groups in the United States from humanitarian organizations to civic groups to labor unions and others signed a letter to President Trump urging an end to family separation at the border.

Interest is broad and active efforts from organizations like the Detention Watch Network, Project South, the National Immigrant Justice Center, and the ACLU have sought to understand more clearly the plight of individuals currently being detained. That barrier between relevant government information and journalists means that the public is not only less informed, but less aware of government failures. Beyond this, a lack of transparency and oversight also means that the media is deprived of important information for both standard and investigative reporting.

Coordinated efforts within and across states will assist media and broader public awareness in two ways. First, by allowing journalists to see, personally, what conditions are like in facilities housing ICE and ORR detainees and by allowing journalists to speak to detainees, those journalists will be better positioned to write accurate and detailed stories about the relevant policies and their effects on individuals.

Second, by coordinating vast amounts of investigative and oversight information at the state level and making that information public, journalists will be able to distill it in ways that makes it easier and more time efficient for the public to consume. That lack of public information means that fewer people are fully informed and thus are ill-equipped to put pressure on democratic institutions to reform that system.

The federal government, quite obviously, lacks an interest in comprehensive public disclosure, and so, states have not only an opportunity but an obligation to do what they can to assist. This process will shed light on which agencies are responsible for the adults and children being held in facilities in that state, how facilities are licensed and under what standards, and the capacity of current law to ensure the safety and well-being of detainees.

This review will expose where state agencies are failing to maximize their authority to address a policy problem and identify where statutes can be strengthened to empower those agencies. States also need to understand whether contractors including municipalities or federal agencies have had an inappropriate degree of influence over the regulatory process, and whether simple expediency during record-high flows of migrants have created loopholes via emergency regulations.

In the case of Texas during the Obama administration, expediting the licensing process preserved lucrative contracts and ensured adequate ICE capacity to detain families, and in the process left persistent questions about detention conditions and human rights violations.

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services proposed to license two family detention centers as child care facilities via emergency rules , a process that allowed them to proceed without public comment. A judge later ruled that licensing under the emergency rule would have allowed reduced standards. State officials insisted that this form of licensing was an effort to preserve oversight by child welfare authorities, but emergency licensing categories merit increased scrutiny for whether they, in practice, maintain detention capacity at a human cost.

An illustrative case comes from a ProPublica investigation of medical neglect by a shelter in New Jersey that housed immigrant children. This creates a policy situation in which current statutory and regulatory environments do not provide sufficient or perhaps even the intended outcomes to reflect the needs of populations and the facilities in which they are held.

Gubernatorial leadership can play a significant role in this space. Those recommendations for reform should identify where agencies can accomplish such goals via their own regulatory processes, where unilateral gubernatorial authority can ameliorate a bureaucratic challenge, and where state legislatures must act to deal with statutory barriers to change. Arrangements between ORR and its contractors over the last two years have been opaque.

The flow of unaccompanied children into its custody has created a growing industry of contractors to house and transport migrant children. Sometimes these facilities only come to light because a neighbor sees children being led into and leaving a local office building. By sharing inspection and audit information, they can more effectively target oversight of both local companies and those that cross state lines.

Institutions that seek to coordinate interstate information can also facilitate the flow of information to interested NGOs and media, as we recommend above happening via a czar at the intrastate level. It would require assistance to Mexico and Central American countries that maintain environments so unlivable that citizens of those countries flee north for economic opportunity, freedom, security, and safety from violence. It is a complex problem with an even more complex set of solutions.

Moving the courts out of the executive branch would remove them from political interference. A professional and independent immigration court would be more efficient and would encourage immigrants to trust that the system will produce fair results, incentivizing their appearance in court. One important benefit of a functional legal immigration system is that it will reduce immigration violations by facilitating compliance with the law. The purpose of the legal immigration system is to allow Americans to associate legally with people from other countries—whether they be their employees, employers, investors, customers, family members, parishioners, friends, or otherwise.

Congress should reform the immigration system to maximize the ability of Americans to benefit from these relationships without harming others in the process. No single policy has done more to reduce illegal immigration than expanding these types of work visas.

Visas reduce illegal crossings in two ways: first, workers who obtain visas no longer need to cross illegally and second, workers who fail to obtain visas still have a reasonable prospect of obtaining them in the future if they choose not to enter illegally. Even if not every worker who wants to come receives a visa, the existence of the visas incentivizes waiting for one rather than crossing illegally.

While guest workers only rarely overstay their visas, 31 Congress should offer green cards i. The program is numerically uncapped, but it is among the most complex and expensive visa programs. Farmers must follow a lengthy process that is often delayed by duplicative reviews by the three agencies in order to prove that U. Employers should be able to at least split the cost of these items with their employees 12, appendix Table A. The cap of 66, has been filled every year since and guarantees that open jobs go unfilled, costing U.

This oversight became the primary driver of permanent illegal immigration. It would increase economic growth and create new jobs for U. The United States is party to multiple treaties that obligate it not to send people back to countries where they could face persecution for their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Congress should clarify that the U. The law divides the asylum process at the border into two stages: first, asylum seekers must demonstrate within hours of crossing a credible fear of persecution—a relatively low standard to prevent the immediate removal of genuine asylees.

If asylum seekers wish to obtain asylum status and legal permanent residence with the eventual ability to apply for U. But application and release at ports of entry would eliminate all need to cross the border illegally to request asylum and incentivize applying only at a port of entry. Since , the United States has welcomed nearly 3. Unfortunately, U. Unfortunately, because the government has a virtual monopoly on refugee resettlement, the president also has discretion to select refugees in a very restrictive manner.

For this reason, Congress should also allow individuals and nonprofits to sponsor refugees as they can in Canada without a numerical limit 24, appendix Table A. Similarly, any refugee who is sponsored for a green card by a U. Interestingly, the notion of sanctuary itself grew out of a similar period of time in the s, when federal authorities were bending and breaking laws to deny protections to individuals seeking asylum.

It should therefore come as no surprise that during the Trump era, when many people view U. It is long past time to recognize that the dysfunction of the current immigration system only begets further dysfunction.

But the formal and informal workarounds used by the Obama administration and previous administrations to paper over that gap—while themselves largely insufficient for the task—now have been shredded. This is a problem yearning for a real solution.

The nation must move to a system that meets the actual needs of Americans and that can meet those needs by operating as designed. Recognizing that legislative reforms of immigration laws appear to be generational affairs at best, the system must be generous in anticipation of a growing need to welcome more immigrants into the country.

Such a reform would include four parts: changes to the legal pathways for entry into the United States; a return to sensible and humane refugee and asylum policies; a restoration of due process in the immigration enforcement system to achieve fair and just outcomes; and legalization of those here without status. The U. Although the latest White House plan for a so-called merit-based immigration system is short on details, one virtue is its call for a dramatic increase in the number of green cards available each year for certain people looking to come to—or permanently remain in—the United States for work or to start a business.

It also appears to do nothing to expand migration opportunities for traditionally considered lesser-skilled individuals who nonetheless play an essential role in the U.

Additionally, the plan fails to acknowledge that many skilled and highly educated immigrants already come to the country through both family-based and diversity channels. Rather than be beholden to an artificial and inflexible position that rules out numerical increases in immigration and opens new avenues only when existing ones are closed, policymakers should adopt a plan sufficiently robust and flexible to meet the actual needs of the country and the economy—one that recognizes that merit comes in many forms.

More than 10 years ago, the Migration Policy Institute MPI recommended that Congress create an independent and permanent Standing Commission on Labor Markets, Economic Competitiveness, and Immigration to make recommendations about adjusting employment-based immigration pathways based upon real data and analysis.

McLarty III—endorsed the MPI proposal and praised the idea that the president be authorized to make adjustments based upon the recommendations of the standing commission, subject to the possibility of congressional override. Given ample evidence that Congress is incapable of making timely changes to immigration policy in response to the changing needs of the country, serious consideration should be given to the creation of an independent and data-driven entity to help guide evidence-based policymaking regarding the U.

They would also be better able to focus their efforts on promoting national security and enhancing public safety. America, both as a country and as an idea, has long played an outsize role on the global stage. For years, the country stood as a leader in the protection of refugees worldwide, partnering successfully with nonprofit organizations around the country to successfully resettle refugees and integrate them into U.

America must once again lead by example and increase refugee admission targets in response to the growing need for resettlement around the world. The country similarly needs to restore its commitment to protecting refugees who arrive at its doorstep to request asylum.

And while a discussion about what an adequate and durable response to the migration challenges in the Americas would look like is beyond the scope of this report, it has been discussed in greater detail elsewhere. An important goal in reforming the U. But that is not enough. In order to build a system that reflects rule of law principles, the rules that defend that system must support clear, consistent, and fair enforcement.

It can be challenging in the current social and political environment to have a rich discussion about what immigration enforcement should look like, largely because the current system is one that many people think is not worthy of defense. Moreover, the mechanisms for enforcement that exist today frequently provide little due process and no consideration of proportionality in the imposition of a sanction.

Nevertheless, enforcement is essential to defending the integrity of any system. The following paragraphs lay out some initial steps to reform enforcement and increase accountability in agencies such as ICE and Customs and Border Protection that are on the front lines of this enforcement.

First, U. In the immigration system today, there is no opportunity to consider the concept of proportionality—that is, whether the punishment fits the offense. If the judge finds this to be the case, banishment, and all of the consequences that flow from that, is the only option on the table despite being the harshest, most existential punishment conceivable in such a proceeding.

Only after the finding of removability can an individual request whatever form of relief from removal may be available to them. Over the years—and especially as a result of the immigration laws—the circumstances in which an individual might have grounds for relief from removal have narrowed considerably.

Because the stakes for immigrants in removal proceedings—which are, essentially, deportation proceedings—are so high and the opportunities for immigration judges to mete out just and proportionate outcomes are so low, the system places an unsustainable amount of pressure on discretionary decisions by immigration enforcement personnel about whether to place a person in removal proceedings in the first place and, when a final removal order is issued, whether to execute it.

Immigration courts should be given a range of sanctions that they can issue short of removal from the country. Where removal may be an appropriate—though harsh—sanction, immigration judges should be empowered to do justice by considering the individual equities of each case. While deportation would remain a potential sanction in such a system—particularly for criminal convictions evidencing a disregard for the general public order or repeat or flagrant violations of U.

Second, much like in the U. Because these are almost entirely absent from U. Army veteran and who received his green card at the age of 11—based upon two simple marijuana possession convictions from the s and one from four years earlier in Finally, in order to restore respect for the rule of law in the U.

Under the current administration, immigration judges face the constant threat of disciplinary action if they do not maintain unrealistic case completion goals that necessitate giving short shrift to the due process rights of individuals who appear before them.

Additionally, though every person in immigration court is entitled to due process under the Fifth Amendment to the U. Constitution, current law allows even a 3-year-old child to appear without counsel unless that child can secure an attorney—by him or herself—at no expense to the government. Indeed, the way in which counsel is now secured by many people in immigration court is an example of the workarounds currently employed to shield the public, policymakers, and the system itself from the fundamental unfairness at the heart of the immigration court system.

Today, counsel is frequently provided to immigrants in removal proceedings only by virtue of nonprofit providers; extensive pro bono and so-called low bono networks; and representation initiatives funded by state and local governments.

But civil society should not be required to shoulder the burdens of due process in a just society governed by the rule of law.

And given the important liberty interests at stake, the system also should rely far less heavily on final orders of removal issued by enforcement personnel without meaningful court involvement. There are today an estimated Replacing this extralegal immigration system with a legal system that truly works as designed is necessary to restore respect for the rule of law, but it will never be sufficient if it leaves millions of American residents in a second-class status.

Undocumented immigrants in the country today must be given the opportunity to come forward, register with the government, pass a background check, and be put on a path to permanent residence and eventual citizenship. Passing H. America is a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws, and it needs a system that reflects that reality. It is not sustainable to have an immigration enforcement apparatus that lacks popular support; operates without the most basic features of fairness, accountability, and proportionality; and increasingly exposes to the threat of detention and deportation people who have been part of U.

Because of the significant and protracted failings in the U. But it is also not sustainable—after decades of legislative inaction—to continue to rely on enforcement discretion alone as the magnitude of the challenges grow and people on all sides of the issue become increasingly distrustful of the system. Prior to joining the Center, he served as chief counsel on the Immigration Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.

In that capacity, Jawetz devised and executed strategies for immigration-related hearings and markups before the House Judiciary Committee as well as legislation on the House floor. District Judge Kimba M. Wood of the U. The author thanks Philip E. Wolgin and Scott Shuchart for their help in drafting and editing this report. Arelis R. See FWD. The fact that people frequently believe correctly that the U.

Office of Rep. Demetrios G. This concept also arose in S. Rather than grant a static number of W visas in perpetuity, S. See U. See, for example, Jill E. Incidentally, this also helps to explain the tremendous pressure on state and local officials considering how and under what circumstances they should cooperate in the enforcement of federal immigration laws, because the lack of proportionality and flexibility available in immigration court proceedings means that once a person has been placed in the custody of immigration enforcement personnel the die has often already been cast.