A way forward for immigration reform

A common sense proposal that can work

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The Menendez bill, similar to the bipartisan outline, is a good framework.  It proposes to end illegal immigration in the US by placing the burden on employers to hire only people who are legal. A verification system for all employers would be in place within five years and employers would have to verify a person’s legal status before hiring them.  Non-compliant employers would face stiff fines and possible criminal prosecution. This coupled with enhanced border security and domestic enforcement would, according to the plan, dramatically reduce illegal immigration.  Also under this bill, the estimated 12 million undocumented already here would be given a path to citizenship, a process that would involve security clearances, fines and paying back taxes.  The bill includes humanitarian sections such as the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act, which grants legal status to children who have graduated from high school in the US.  Most Americans would probably agree with this and many other ideas in the bill.  

As a practicing immigration lawyer for more than two decades, I believe that it is time to take the anger and misinformation out of the debate and look at the stories of real people to understand how our immigration system needs to be fixed.              

Take the case of Lucy Sanchez. (All clients’ names have been changed.)  Lucy was brought to the United States from Ecuador illegally as a six-year-old by her parents. The Sanchez were part of the wave of foreign workers who came to the US during the economic boom of the nineties and ended up staying and working here illegally.

Lucy excelled at the local public high school, scored astronomic numbers on the SATs, and at seventeen, was accepted with a full scholarship at one of the country’s top universities. Ostensibly, Lucy is a normal and very bright American high school student. She has no memory of her native Ecuador and was on the threshold of a great future. However, there is a problem. Lucy is an illegal alien. This came as much of a shock to her as it did to the university’s admission office.  Like many illegal aliens, Lucy’s parents never explained to their daughter their precarious status in this country. Over the years, they had hoped against hope for some kind of solution or path to becoming American citizens.

Lucy could not take up her scholarship and was working a minimum wage job at a fast food restaurant, experiencing severe depression.  In a few years, she could have been your or my cardiologist, or a famous scientist. There was nothing that I, as an Immigration lawyer, could do for Lucy, when I was consulted by her parents. The law simply does not provide any relief for her.

Lucy’s parents worked two jobs: her father in a factory and driving a cab at night, her mother as a nurse’s aid and cleaning offices at night.  Although Lucy’s parents have held jobs that are essential to the local economy for more than eleven years, the present immigration system does not provide them and their children with any option for becoming legal. One of Lucy’s teachers was even willing to adopt Lucy if that would allow her to become an American citizen and take up her scholarship. Unfortunately, that was not an option. Even being adopted by an American citizen would not have made her an American citizen. (Only if the adopted child is under sixteen and adopted directly from a foreign country, will the child be able to claim American citizenship.)

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