Bound in Boundaries: Where do we Stand on Immigration Reform?

After six weeks of negotiations in Congress, President Bush’s immigration reforms failed in the Senate, largely due to his own party’s rejection of the bill. But Democrats also had trouble with it, for different reasons.

In the end, though, it was calls from voters that sent the bill to its grave, proving that our representatives DO listen. Read the details of the bill below and see what YOU think. Then contact your reps and let them know if immigration reform should be revived or left to rest in peace.

Bush’s immigration reforms blocked by backlash

The legislation, supported and guided by President Bush, would have provided $4.4 billion in mandatory spending for border security and enforcement, as well as creating a temporary guest worker program.

The guest-worker program spurred much of the debate around the reforms, with some Republicans saying it amounted to amnesty and Democrats arguing that the plan should provide a path to citizenship.

The guest worker program would require employers to try to find a US Citizen to fill the job before extending an offer to immigrants. The original deal allowed for 400,000 temporary workers to serve three two-year terms filling the jobs available to immigrants. But a backlash in Congress, led by members trying to protect middle-class jobs, fought for a guest-worker program half that size at most.

.After a deluge of calls from constituents, many Republicans who supported the plan decided to back down when they saw the bill failing. Would the guest worker program increase immigration?

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, about 485,000 illegal aliens successfully immigrate to the U.S. each year and another 10.3 million live here already. Many legislators who are concerned by these numbers worry that Bush’s plan would further encourage immigration.

But proponents claim that the plan is not meant to increase the number of immigrants, but rather legalize those who are coming anyway or already here. The proposal recognizes that large sections of the economy - especially the farming, construction, hospitality, and restaurant industries - are making illegal immigration possible because they rely heavily on undocumented workers.

The plan would legitimize these industries as well as the workers themselves, requiring both parties to keep records and pay taxes. Proponents say that the program would free up border patrols, allowing them to guard against smugglers and terrorists instead of busboys and gardeners. U.S. & Mexico- the Economics of Immigration

Despite the fact that the federal government has doubled the number of Border Patrol agents and tripled the border enforcement budget to over $6 billion over the past decade, the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. has doubled over that same period. These stunning figures emphasize two fundamental economic realities that our current immigration policy fails to address adequately. First of all, the U.S. is an economic superpower that is bordered by a nation with lots of unemployed and underemployed workers willing to move north for better work.

Secondly, large sections of the U.S. economy are making illegal immigration possible because they rely heavily on undocumented workers. A recent study by the American Farm Bureau Federation found that a crackdown on illegal immigrant labor could cause production losses to U.S. agriculture between $5 billion and $9 billion in the first 1-3 years.

The essential worker

Currently, undocumented immigrant workers perform essential labor that Americans are unwilling to perform for low pay. Specifically, the agricultural and restaurant industries depend on migrant workers for efficient labor at very low cost. All Americans benefit from migrant workers -- the inexpensive labor allows farmers and restaurants to keep prices low. American taxpayers, however, pick up the cost of services for undocumented workers below or near the poverty line.

How would you reform immigration policy? Do you support the President’s immigration reforms? Should a guest worker-program be included in future immigration legislation?

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Article Posted on: 8/5/2006