For House Republicans, new momentum on immigration reform

By David Nakamura,

Published: January 24

Recent signals from House Republican leaders that they will pursue their own vision of immigration reform have presented the White House with an opening to achieve a major legislative deal this year that has eluded lawmakers for decades.

Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) is expected to release a brief outline of immigration principles to his caucus as soon as its annual retreat next week. The goals would include strengthening border security and creating new visas for foreign workers, while providing a path toward legalizing the status of the nation’s 11 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants, according to people briefed on the deliberations.

Obama administration officials and congressional Democrats expressed optimism that new momentum in the House could yield results after months in which the issue languished in the lower chamber. But they cautioned that it is far too early to determine whether a compromise could be reached between the House and Senate, which approved a bipartisan plan to overhaul border-control laws last June.

“It’s a very big deal, and there’s a path here that could get it done,” Cecilia Munoz, the White House’s director of domestic policy, said of the potential for an immigration agreement.

White House officials view immigration as the best chance President Obama has to pass a major piece of domestic legislation in his final three years in office, largely because some GOP leaders believe their party must broaden its appeal to Latinos and Asian Americans. Obama won reelection in 2012 with the support of more than 70 percent of those voters.

At the same time, the president is facing mounting pressure from immigration advocates to halt deportations, which are on pace to soon top the 2 million mark during his tenure — more than the George W. Bush administration deported in eight years.

Five House Democrats from Obama’s home state of Illinois, led by Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez, announced they will each bring an immigration advocate as their guest to the president’s State of the Union speech in the House chamber Tuesday. The AFL-CIO, which has supported Obama’s immigration push, called on him to use the speech to announce administrative action “to ease the deportation crisis that is wrecking workforces, families and communities.”

But White House aides and Democratic allies said that Obama is mindful of the challenge Boehner faces in coalescing his caucus around an immigration plan and that the president is unlikely to harshly criticize House Republicans or make unilateral demands. Instead, he is expected to highlight the economic benefits of immigration reform, tying it to his broader goal of boosting the middle class and framing the debate in a light that might appeal to Capitol Hill conservatives.

“The White House understands that the House is moving in a positive direction, and they’re playing this very smart. They’re not going to be heavy-handed,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a key architect of the Senate’s immigration bill.

Carlos Gutierrez, a commerce secretary during the George W. Bush administration who is leading a GOP immigration reform group, said he is “encouraged” by signals from the House.

“They’re coming up with principles, and both parties are saying the right thing,” Gutierrez said during an immigration discussion in Washington on Friday that also included former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I), Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and U.S. Chamber of Commerce Vice President Randel Johnson. “This is the right time, and we hope that they seize the moment.”

The next steps are largely up to Boehner, who has continued to insist that the House will pursue small-scale immigration bills that independently address many of the major components of the Senate’s comprehensive plan.

Democrats and immigration advocates said they are cautiously optimistic that Boehner and other House leaders are serious about trying to get bills onto the House floor for a vote in late spring, after the filing period for most of the Republican primaries in congressional races.

The question, however, is what Republicans are prepared to propose on the critical question of how to treat immigrants who entered the country unlawfully.

Last year, House committees approved five bills to increase border security, add visas for high-skilled foreign workers and agricultural workers, and improve verification systems to ensure companies do not hire undocumented immigrants.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, have said they are working on a proposal called the Kids Act, which would offer a path to legal status and, potentially, citizenship for young immigrants brought to the country by their parents as children. That population is estimated to be up to 1.7 million.

House Republicans have not said how they would address the remaining undocumented immigrants, but Boehner’s “principles” are expected to call for trying to find a way to legalize their status under conditions that could include paying taxes and fines, learning English and ensuring the federal government meets increased border-security benchmarks.

The crux of the issue for Democrats is how many of those immigrants would be able to earn citizenship. The Senate plan would put undocumented immigrants on a path to achieving legal status, known as a green card, within 10 years and citizenship three years later. Federal agencies have estimated that 7 million to 8 million immigrants would reach that goal.

But that number could be reduced significantly under the House proposals, immigration advocates said.

Obama and congressional Democrats have said they want as many immigrants as possible to have a chance at an “earned path” to citizenship.

“The question is, are Democrats willing to kill legalization without a special path to citizenship?” said Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, which supports immigration reform.

Aguilar pointed to a Pew Hispanic Center poll last month that which found 61 percent of immigrant Latinos believe ending deportations is more important than a path to citizenship.

If Democrats oppose a Republican offer to legalize most undocumented immigrants under the belief that Latino voters will blame the GOP, Aguilar said, “that could backfire.”

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Obama to Dems: Boehner will pass immigration reform in 2014

By Alexander Bolton - 01/17/14 06:00 AM EST

President Obama has told Senate Democrats he expects Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to pass immigration reform this year, defying predictions the issue is dead for 2014.

Obama believes Republicans will feel politically vulnerable, if they fail to advance the issue, a high priority among Hispanic voters, according to Democratic senators who met with the president this week.

Obama sees immigration reform as a source for optimism in what has otherwise shaped up as a tough year for Democrats.

“He predicted the House would pass something this year,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who attended the meeting.

Obama cautioned senators to brace themselves for difficult negotiations with House Republicans later this year.

“He said we’re then all going to have a challenging conversation,” Kaine added. “He said it was more likely than not the House would do something.”

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the lead sponsor of the Senate-passed immigration bill, described Obama as “cautiously optimistic” after the meeting.

Boehner has made several recent moves giving Obama and his Democratic allies hope, such as hiring Rebecca Tallent to serve as his new director of immigration policy. She previously worked for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a co-sponsor of the Senate immigration bill.

Boehner plans to unveil a set of Republican principles for immigration reform before Obama’s Jan. 28 State of the Union address.

He and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told House colleagues at a closed-door meeting early this month immigration reform would be a priority in 2014. 

A spokesman for Boehner declined to comment.

A Senate Democratic aide said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) would take the lead on the trickiest element of reform, legislation to legalize an estimated 11 million illegal residents.

“The path will likely be a legalization bill that offers a path to citizenship through existing channels,” said the aide.

Senior Republicans, such as Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.) and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla.), are working on plans to grant legalization through existing channels, such as H-1B visas, agricultural worker permits and family connections.

Issa, however, expressed pessimism earlier this year that immigration reform could pass before 2015 because of the partisan atmosphere in Congress.

House Republicans have signaled they would not support any proposal that creates a special path to citizenship for millions of illegal residents. House conservatives rejected the Senate bill because it includes a special 13-year pathway.

Left-leaning advocates of immigration reform say a proposal that would use existing processes to grant citizenship to a greater number of immigrants could serve as a viable alternative.

“Yes, with the provision that the existing channels are large enough,” said Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

“The analogy would be, if you have a crowded store, and the fire marshal says you have to create a new exit or enlarge the existing one, but the bottom line is everyone has to get out,” he said.  

Boehner has stipulated the House would not act on a comprehensive bill but instead pass a series of measures.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a co-sponsor of the Senate bill, says enacting a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants is far from a slam dunk, but he believes the House could build up momentum by passing a series of piecemeal bills.

Wilkes said that would be acceptable to proponents of comprehensive reform, as long as the House addresses each of the areas covered by the Senate legislation. 

“These things may sound arbitrary, but they give different members in tough districts the ability to vote against different parts of immigration reform,” he said. “If some members need to take a walk on certain aspects of it, House leaders will let them do it.”

Obama expects these bills would add up to a series of reforms that could then be negotiated with the Senate.

“He feels good. He thinks we’re going to be able to get something on immigration,” said a Democratic senator who met with Obama at the White House Wednesday. “He just thinks that Republicans are not going to want to be hanging out on that.”

The lawmaker requested anonymity to discuss the private meeting. 

Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas), the former chairman of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, thinks the GOP could probably succeed in the 2014 election without passing immigration reform but would face problems in 2016.

“We can win in 2014 without resolving it. We can’t win in 2016 without resolving it,” he told National Journal.

Read more here.

Republican Ideas on Immigration Could Legalize Up to 6.5 Million, Study Says

January 14, 2014

By JULIA PRESTON

Between 4.4 million and 6.5 million immigrants illegally in the United States could gain an eventual pathway to citizenship under proposals being discussed by Republicans in the House of Representatives, according to an estimate published Tuesday by the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.

 

The estimate is based on policy ideas that have been put forward by Representative Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia, a Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Mr. Goodlatte has said he would not support legislation with a “special” or direct pathway to citizenship for 11.5 million immigrants in the country without legal papers, such as the 13-year pathway in a broad bill the Senate passed last June.

 

House Republicans have rejected the sweeping approach of that bill and said they would handle immigration in smaller pieces. Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio has said that Mr. Goodlatte is helping him to prepare principles that will guide House action on this issue this year.

 

Mr. Goodlatte has said he would instead offer a provisional legal status to illegal immigrants, then allow those who can demonstrate they are eligible to apply for permanent residency — a document known as a green card — through the existing system, based on sponsorship by a family member or an employer. Obtaining a green card is the crucial step toward American citizenship.

 

The foundation’s report, prepared by Stuart Anderson, its executive director, finds that even without major changes to current immigration law, 3.1 million to 4.4 million immigrants now illegally in the United States would be eligible for green cards because they are parents of American citizens. As many as 600,000 could gain green cards as spouses of citizens and legal residents, and up to 45,000 could receive green cards within two decades as low-skilled workers.

 

The estimate assumes the House would pass legislation creating new green cards for young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, who call themselves Dreamers. Mr. Anderson calculates that 800,000 to 1.5 million of those immigrants would gain a pathway to citizenship.

 

Mr. Anderson’s calculation, based on figures from the Department of Homeland Security among other sources, is the first effort to put numbers on proposals emerging from House Republicans. On a conference call Tuesday with reporters, Mr. Anderson stressed that the estimates were imprecise because no Republican has so far offered a specific legalization bill.

 

Under the foundation’s projection, at least two million immigrants would have to wait a long time — as much as two decades — before they could apply for naturalization. As many as five million immigrants would remain here with legal status but no prospect of becoming citizens.

 

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that eight million illegal immigrants would gain a pathway to citizenship under the Senate bill. Many Democrats and immigrant advocates have rejected any legislation that excludes large groups of residents from citizenship.

     

Tamar Jacoby, a Republican who is president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a small-business organization that supports an overhaul of immigration laws, said on Tuesday that proposals for a bill with no separate path to citizenship for most illegal immigrants were gaining ground among House Republicans, as the basis for negotiations with the Senate. She said Mr. Anderson’s estimates were higher than many immigration analysts have predicted.

 

“The half a loaf is more substantial than many people would have thought,” she said.

 

See the entire article here. 

Prosecutorial discretion on the rise in immigration courts

By Cindy Chang

January 15, 2014, 3:27 p.m.

 

Immigrants facing deportation are increasingly likely to have their cases dismissed because of mitigating factors such as having U.S. citizen children, according to an analysis by researchers at Syracuse University.

In some courts, at least 20% of case closures involved prosecutorial discretion. Of the roughly 35,000 cases closed in Los Angeles over the last two years, nearly 24% were prosecutorial discretion cases.
In Houston, however, only 1.7 % of immigration case closures were due to prosecutorial discretion. In New York City, the rate was 3.7%.

The tallies do not include cases closed in earlier stages, before reaching the courts.

“A high PD court closure rate may be a sign that inadequate review of cases is taking place before officials file an action in court seeking a removal order,” wrote researchers at Syracuse's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

The use of prosecutorial discretion was formalized by John Morton, then director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in an October 2011 memo.

Morton directed immigration officials to consider factors like how long a person has lived in the U.S., whether he or she came to the U.S. as a young child and whether family members have served in the military. Community ties, such as spouses, parents or children who are U.S. citizens, should also be considered, Morton wrote.

Since then, some of the mitigating factors have received special attention. Many young immigrants who came to the U.S. as children are now eligible for two-year reprieves from deportation. In November, ICE announced that close relatives of military service members and veterans could apply for temporary reprieves.

Deportations in fiscal year 2012 were down 10% from a record high of 409,849 the previous year. Under federal policy, officials are supposed to prioritize the deportations of people with criminal records or multiple immigration violations.

With immigration reform stalled in Congress, immigrant advocates have urged President Obama to enact a broader freeze on deportations.

See the entire article here.

Deportations of parents can cast the lives of U.S.-citizen kids into turmoil

 

By Michael Alison Chandler

Published: December 29

Twelve-year-old Jason Penate spent the holidays hanging close by his father. They picked out a Christmas tree and decorated the front window of their Gainesville, Va., home with candy canes, and Jason tried very hard not to think about whether his father would still be here in the new year.

Jorge Penate, a Guatemalan national who came to the United States illegally in 1997, has a hearing scheduled Monday that will determine whether he can stay in the country. A drunken driving arrest two years ago launched deportation proceedings and cast his family’s future into uncertainty.

Jason wrote a letter to the immigration judge, explaining that the three days his father was detained in 2011 “were the worst days of my life” and asking not to be separated from him again. “If he does have to leave I think every day of my life is going to be the worst,” Jason wrote.

More than 1 million illegal immigrants were deported in the past three years, a record number reflecting increased enforcement efforts under the Obama administration. The crackdown has spun the lives of hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens — including children like Jason — into upheaval.

In fiscal 2012, an estimated 150,000 U.S.-citizen children had a parent deported, according to a study by Human Impact Partners, a health advocacy group.

Concerns about the fate of these children are adding an emotional pitch to the call for comprehensive immigration reform. Advocates are urging Congress to create a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, allowing divided families to be reunited and preventing children from having to live with the daily fear that they could lose their parents.

Young people are themselves calling for change. This month, more than a dozen children and teenagers delivered thousands of letters to members of Congress from children whose lives have been — or could be — upended by deportation. Some spoke at a news conference, their faces barely visible over the lectern.

“What if immigration broke up your family? Would you like it?” asked 11-year old Charlie Hoz-Pena, a U.S. citizen from Homestead, Fla., whose father was deported to Mexico last year.

Emboldened by President Obama’s authorization of temporary legal status for young undocumented immigrants, many of these “Dreamers” are now saying they can’t be satisfied without a more secure future for their parents, too.

The president’s program “should not just be for students, it should be for families — to stop this pain,” said Hareth Andrade-Ayala, 20, an Arlington County resident who secured a work permit through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012. Now she is organizing a campaign to prevent her father’s deportation.

 

Crime and consequences

Those who oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants say these are the consequences of illegal activity. Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said that committing any kind of crime has ramifications for families and that immigration violations should not be exceptions.

“Children should not be used as human shields,” Mehlman said. “Just because you have kids does not mean that they should shield you from the consequences of your own actions, which is knowingly violating the laws of the United States.”

Immigration officers have discretion to show leniency to law-abiding people who have been in the country a long time and are raising children who are citizens. In August, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a “parental interest directive” to help manage cases involving detained parents and to clarify when officers may, on a case-by-case basis, seek alternatives to detention, with children’s welfare in mind.

“ICE is focused on smart, effective immigration enforcement that prioritizes the removal of criminal aliens, recent border crossers and egregious immigration law violators, such as those who have been previously removed from the United States,” said Nicole Navas, an ICE spokeswoman.

The deportations have a ripple effect, advocates say. A 2010 Urban Institute study looked at the consequences of parent arrest, detention and deportation on nearly 200 children from 85 families in six locations. Most families lost a working parent, and housing instability and food insecurity were prevalent. About two-thirds of the children experienced changes in their eating and sleeping habits in the months afterward. More than half said they cried a lot and were more fearful. A third showed more anger or aggression.

Most deported parents leave their children in the United States with a spouse or another caregiver. About 5,100 children are in the foster care system at any given time, according to an estimate by the Applied Research Center, which advocates for immigration reform.

“At the end of the day, there’s no good outcome for a kid who has a parent detained or deported,” said Wendy Cervantes, vice president for immigration and child rights policy at First Focus, a children’s advocacy group. “No matter what, you are causing harm to that child and turning their world upside down.”

 

Changing laws

From the outside, the Penates seem like a lot of their upwardly mobile suburban neighbors. Their lives are built around work, long commutes and their son’s busy soccer schedule.

Dianne Twinam Penate, a U.S.-born citizen, knew that Jorge Penate was undocumented when they fell in love in 2001. But the couple thought his status could change after they married.

They applied for legal residency in 2002, by then parents with a newborn, only to learn that the laws had changed and there was no path to citizenship for someone who had entered illegally, as Jorge had. Back in 1997, he was twice turned away at the border trying to enter from Mexico before he successfully crossed into the United States.

They resolved to make the best life they could. From an entry-level job in commercial real estate, Twinam Penate rose to become a senior vice president of a major company.

Jorge Penate started a home-maintenance business, giving him the flexibility to be Jason’s primary caregiver. He’s the one who wakes with his son, makes sure he’s dressed and ready for school, walks him to the bus stop and helps him with his homework. Jason is a nearly straight-A student in a gifted program at school.

But all their forward momentum lurched to a stop when Penate was arrested for misdemeanor drunken driving in November 2011. Police determined he had a blood-alcohol content of 0.08, the legal limit in Virginia. Authorities checked his immigration status against an FBI database, and he was transferred to ICE custody.

He said he understands the potential consequences of drinking and driving and called the arrest “the biggest mistake of my life.” But, he wrote to the court, he hopes the one-time lapse in judgment does not result in permanently tearing his family apart. In the months that followed, Penate pleaded guilty to a lesser reckless-driving charge and lost his license, making it more difficult to work. An immigration hearing was set.

The family talks about the possibility of moving to Guatemala together if Penate has to leave, but they worry about the violence and the uncertainty of finding work or good schools.

They hired a lawyer and solicited 60 letters of support from neighbors, co-workers and friends. They also launched an online petition, which has more than 1,000 signatures.

Twinam Penate said she and her husband have always tried to make the best life possible for their son. She now dreads that her husband might have to leave and the effect it would have on her son.

“I’m just worried that he would never recover,” she said.