Immigration Blog

After spending the summer holding public meetings around the country on the need for immigration enforcement, Republicans in the House of Representatives are now under pressure to show some results.  That pressure is behind House Republican leader Dennis Hastert's announcement last week that the House GOP will attempt to add immigration enforcement measures to one of several appropriations bills that Congress has to pass before the October recess.  Appropriations bills are necessary to fund government operations and are therefore difficult to vote against.  The measures mentioned by the House Republicans reveal how fruitless the House's summer hearings have been:  adding Border Patrol agents, adding fencing and surveillance at the border, and granting greater state authority to enforce immigration are all measures that are part of the Senate bill against which the House spent the summer condemning.

 

Sheriff Daron Hall announced yesterday that he has issued a request to Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) for a full-time immigration officer to be stationed with the Davidson County Sheriff's Office.  Sheriff Hall's goal is to check the immigration status of every inmate for possible deportation.  Don't count on Sheriff Hall getting his request.  ICE simply does not have the manpower and resources to effect the deportation of every person arrested with no immigration status.

 

Governor Phil Bredesen signed an executive order today that makes a law passed by the most recent Tennessee Assembly immediately enforceable.  The law aims to hold private companies with state contracts responsible for the immigration verification of all employees, subject to inspection by state monitors.  Contractors and subcontractors are now required to submit quarterly reports affirming that they do not employ unauthorized workers.  Violations of the law can lead to suspension of state contracts.  Ironically, while the executive order commented on the burden of unauthorized workers on state resources, the state's resources are about to be much more burdened by the absence of unauthorized workers in the form of higher costs and longer work schedules.

 

Immigrant groups around the country are planning Labor Day events to continue to press for comprehensive immigration reform.  In Knoxville, the event is planned for Monday, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. at Victor Ashe Park.  There will be major gatherings occurring in Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, and other major cities as well.  September is the last month that the current Congress will be in session and, though few hold any expectation of something happening in September, it is important to continue to advocate for positive change.

 

U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services has announced that it has changed the manner it which it provides processing time reports.  Processing Time Reports are monthly reports indicating the filing dates that USCIS is currently working on at its respective locations.  For example, the August 2006 Processing Time Report for the National Benefits Center indicates that as of the date of the report, that office was processing I-131 applications filed on May 11, 2006.  In the past the Processing Time Report reflected the actual filing date of petitions being worked.  The change announced by USCIS is that the Processing Time Report will now reflect the longer of the actual filing date of petitions being worked or the USCIS processing goal for that type of petition.  In other words, if the USCIS goal for I-131 applications is 90 days but the actual processing time is 60 days, the Processing Time Report will now show 90 days rather than 60 days.  The given reasoning behind this change goes something like this:  1) if USCIS bests its own goal in a particular category it is likely to adjust its resources to help meet the goals of other categories; 2) as a result, customer expectation is best aligned with USCIS processing goals which are likely to be more consistent than actual processing times due to resource adjustment.

 

Here we are at the end of August with next to nothing to show for the 30+ immigration hearings conducted by Congress in the past two months and the extensive Senate debate earlier this year.  Congress returns to Washington for one month before taking October off to campaign for the November elections.  Shortly thereafter we get into the end of year holidays.  In short, don't expect any major news before next spring.  Absent a September shocker, immigration reform will almost certainly be put on hold for at least another four to six months.  That being said, I also believe that the November elections will be extremely important for future reform efforts.  Many Republican and some Democrat candidates are running on platforms of restrictionism.  If these candidates are successful, immigration reform will become even more difficult in the next Congress.  A resounding defeat of restrictionist candidates, however, will push lawmakers to a more reasonable approach on the immigration issue.

 

In the run-up to November elections, Republicans vying for state offices are following what has become the national Republican strategy for re-election this fall.  The Tennessean reported yesterday that a press conference will be held today by "top statehouse Republicans" to discuss their "proposals on what to do about illegal immigration."  The press conference comes two days before Marsha Blackburn, Republican U.S. Representative from Franklin, heads one of the House of Representative's congressional immigration hearings in Brentwood.  Republican candidate for governor, Jim Bryson, kicked off his campaign against Phil Bredesen two months ago with a press conference on immigration (see earlier post).  Election season political attention on immigration will eventually alienate both sides that really care about the issue:  immigration advocates by the "get tough" posturing now and immigration restrictionists by unfulfilled expectations after election season is over.

 

A new trend has emerged in immigration law that increases the scrutiny of U.S. citizens who submit immigration petitions for family members.  Last year's International Marriage Brokers Act (IMBRA) and the newly-enacted Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act both require the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services agency to inquire into the criminal history of the U.S. citizen petitioner.  Foreign nationals who would benefit from such immigration petitions have long been submitted to criminal background checks to determine whether or not they should be admitted to the U.S.  Scrutiny of the U.S. citizen petitioner, however, is a new phenomenen rising both from a concern of the safety of the foreign national and from a desire to penalize the U.S. offender.  Under these two laws, U.S. citizens' names will be checked against a criminal database in search of domestic violence and sexual crimes.  If any history does exist, U.S. citizens will have to provide criminal records and may be required to submit fingerprints.  Once reserved for the foreign national, inquiry into the criminal history of the U.S. citizen is now a necessary element of the immigration analysis.

 

The Bush Administration's border enforcement efforts were strengthened today with the announcement of twenty new Assistant U.S. Attorneys for the four southern border states.  These twenty new U.S. Attorneys will work exclusively on immigration matters such as alien smuggling, human trafficking, alien gun possession, illegal entry and re-entry, unauthorized employment, and document fraud.  Five additional new U.S. Attorneys will focus on narcotics smuggling across the southern border.

 

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