Reform immigration one step at a time

Opinion: May 27, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By Stewart J. LAWRENCE

Los Angees Times

During the health care reform debate, some observers argued that the White House should focus on passing smaller and more manageable pieces of legislation rather than pushing “comprehensive” reform. We may never know if this more modest approach, dubbed “Skinny Care” by its detractors, might have proved more effective and popular than “Obamacare.” But President Obama now faces a similar crossroads on immigration. This time he should take the “Skinny” option.

The current White House approach is already DOA. That’s because it includes a sweeping legalization program that is anathema to the GOP.

House Republicans say they aren’t budging on immigration reform until stronger border and workplace enforcement measures are in place. And especially after Arizona’s new immigration law, neither are many Democrats.

There are smaller and more digestible pieces of immigration legislation that might serve as the basis for bipartisan agreement now, before the midterm elections. Time is short, but if the two parties can reach a first-stage agreement on these less contentious items, it could make their post-November debate less susceptible to gridlock.

The logic of a stripped-down immigration agreement is similar to what’s been debated with comprehensive reform, only the scale is smaller. The basic trade-off is the same: a legalization of the undocumented — some, but not all — in exchange for enhanced enforcement.

But the deal would steer clear of the most controversial elements — a general “amnesty” for illegal immigrants, an economy-wide guest-worker program and a national ID card — until after the midterm elections.

Conservatives should agree to some of the narrow legalization proposals that Democrats have put forth in the past, such as the DREAM Act, which legalizes the children who were brought here by their illegal immigrant parents and who, through no fault of their own, are now living here illegally. The bill affects only about 1.5 million people, and to qualify for a green card, applicants must either attend college or join the U.S. military.

Pragmatic approach

It makes no sense to try to send these kids back to countries of origin that they do not know, and to lose the value of the accrued investment in their education acquired here. Skillfully presented, DREAM might do for immigration what the Children’s Health Insurance Program has done for child welfare — build a badly needed bridge.

Another candidate for GOP support is the AgJOBS bill, which combines a guest-worker program for agriculture with provisions to allow these workers to transition to legal residency. It’s not an amnesty because many of the workers “imported” under the program aren’t yet living here. The numbers involved are relatively small — perhaps 2 million workers. Agribusiness desperately wants and needs the program, simply to survive. And there is little evidence that the foreign-born workers involved are competing with native-born Americans for the same jobs. Wages are low, and the work is simply too demanding and dirty, except for those long accustomed to it.

What would the GOP get in return for these concessions? A dramatic expansion of the E-Verify workplace enforcement system.

Currently, E-Verify focuses on companies that are federal contractors, a tiny proportion of the firms operating in our economy. The program’s also largely voluntary. Let’s make E-Verify mandatory and extend it to low-skill industries in which illegal immigrants typically congregate.

And let’s continue to augment border enforcement, which, in recent years, has shown measurable progress in reducing illegal flows.

The two political parties might also agree to clean up the deplorable state of immigrant detention facilities and to reduce the long delays in visa processing for legal immigrants. Even a staunch conservative such as Sarah Palin has championed this issue.

A deal of this sort will not resolve the current debate. It’s not meant to. It merely establishes a solid foundation that both parties can agree to before tackling the big-ticket items. But only a narrow legislative window remains this year to address immigration reform at all. So, rather than grandstanding and pointing fingers, the two parties should swallow their pride and strike a more modest deal.

Stewart J. Lawrence has worked as an immigration policy analyst with the U.S. Catholic Conference, the Inter-American Institute on Migration and Labor and the American Immigration Law Foundation. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune.