CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
Nov. 24, 2008 – 7:05 p.m.
Options Abound for Executive Action on Immigration
By Caitlin Webber, CQ Staff
Even if comprehensive immigration legislation is a low priority in the 111th Congress, President-elect Barack Obama will have plenty of tools at his disposal for altering the border security and interior enforcement landscape.
The new administration can use executive orders, departmental reviews, regulations and personnel appointments to affect policy without Congress having to weigh in.
And having apparently settled on a Homeland Security secretary in Gov. Janet Napolitano , D-Ariz., viewed as possessing border security credentials, such a strategy makes sense, with the president otherwise engaged in confronting economic troubles at home and war and terrorism abroad.
Likely to be high on the immigration to-do list: re-examining the stepped-up worksite enforcement conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in recent months.
Human rights and immigrant advocates have blasted the raids, which are effective at netting large groups of illegal workers but can create public relations problems.
“I think that the Obama administration is definitely going to dial back on workplace raids, but I don’t see them putting it that way,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates reduced immigration levels. “They’re going to say ‘we’re re-assessing workplace raids.’”
Obama and his Homeland Security Department leadership will also need to decide if they will enforce, rewrite or ditch a Bush administration rule that would allow Social Security “no-match” letters to be used as evidence of knowingly employing illegal workers for prosecution purposes.
Another Bush administration enforcement scheme that uses Social Security data is E-Verify, DHS’s electronic employment verification tool. Obama has said he supports E-Verify, but he will inherit the tool’s largest mandated expansion in January, when most federal contractors will be required to use it for new hires. Critics, which include businesses and civil libertarians, say the tool is error-prone, burdensome for employers and could lead to the misidentification and firing of legal workers.
Napolitano’s signed into law perhaps the toughest employer-sanction statute in the country, but has expressed concerns about its effect on commerce.
Two other areas of concern to immigrant advocates that could see relatively quick action are asylum and health care.
Marshall Fitz, director of advocacy at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, says he can see the Obama administration “being more proactive in their policy guidance [for ICE] in the use of parole, in particular for vulnerable populations, asylees and refugees.”
And if the new administration wants to tackle another contentious immigration issue, it “could take a careful look at [ICE] medical standards to make the detention system operate more humanely, without sacrificing community safety,” Fitz said. ICE and the Department of Immigrant Health Services came under fire in the last year after several detainee deaths were linked to improper treatment in custody.
When it comes to legal immigration, reducing application backlogs and the management of a huge, recently awarded contract to overhaul customer service at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services could be another big undertaking for Obama.
Options Abound for Executive Action on Immigration
Some of the policy on that issue can be handled administratively. But to ramp up hiring or the purchase of new technology, Congress will have to come up with more money.
Sending Signals
If Napolitano is indeed appointed, as several news outlets reported last week was likely, that would be a clear signal of an executive branch focus on immigration.
“Right off the bat you have, at the top of the department, somebody who was selected to signal that the immigration portfolio is going to be taken seriously in this administration,” said Doris Meissner, head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service under President Bill Clinton and currently a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.
Her public image is one of toughness on the issue, as a two-term Democratic governor of a Republican state sharing a long border with Mexico. But illegal immigration hawks are skeptical of Napolitano’s enforcement credentials. Krikorian said she cultivated a tough image to appeal to her conservative, anti-immigration Arizona constituents, but didn’t deliver much on the ground.
Whichever view reflects reality, Napolitano’s mandate for action — and the accompanying controversies — will grow considerably if she takes over DHS.
Meissner said Napolitano will likely perform an in-depth review of departmental border security policies early in her tenure.
“I would think that border enforcement and how it is promoting national security and achieving better immigration results would be very high on her list,” Meissner said.
Another option: promoting national identity.
Audrey Singer, a senior fellow of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, sees an opportunity for Obama to zero in on better assimilation for new immigrants.
The administration “could organize something like a national ‘new Americans initiative’ to fund or provide seed funding to states for local municipalities to fund programs” that aim to help new immigrations with language, housing and job training.
Caitlin Webber can be reached at cwebber@cq.com.
Comments
SUPPORT THE ALL-AMERICAN STIMULUS PLAN!!! THE ALL-AMERICAN STIMULUS PLAN WILL PROVIDE JOBS FOR 8.7 MILLION UNEMPLOYED AMERICAN WORKERS AND IT WON'T COST ANYTHING!!! MANDATE E-VERIFY, FOR ALL EMPLOYEES, AND FOR ALL EMPLOYERS, AND IT WILL GENERATE 8.7 MILLION JOBS FOR UNEMPLOYED AMERICAN WORKERS!!! Illegals, using forged, and/or stolen identities, have illegally obtained up to 8.7 million jobs; these are jobs that Americans will do, jobs in food processing, jobs in manufacturing; these are jobs that rightfully belonged to American workers in the first place. THE ALL-AMERICAN STIMULUS PLAN WILL SAVE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS 300 BILLION DOLLARS EACH, AND EVERY, YEAR (the estimated annual cost of illegal immigrants to American taxpayers)!!! SUPPORT THE ALL-AMERICAN STIMULUS PLAN!!! REMEMBER, IT WON'T COST ANYTHING!!!
I'm a lifelong labor Democrat and have two native-born Hispanic nephews in Michigan, one unemployed and the other working on the line at GM and perhaps about to be unemployed. Pres.-elect Obama should realize that he can and will alienate many Democrats by refusing to enforce immigration laws. That's the reason that the amnesty didn't get through last year: we've already seen that government has no intention of enforcing laws if it gets amnesty. He's already said he supports enforcement against employers and eVerify and SS no match letters are two of the best ways to do it (AND they're color blind). Should he stop workplace raids without following through on enforcement against employers, he'll prove that he really isn't in favor of change when it comes to enforcing immigration law.
Americans in Virginia are being sold down the river on illegal immigration law enforcement. A "panel" made up of who knows who, just decide to "relax" illegal immigration enforcement. In other words, these people have decided to take existing immigration laws as being nothing to worry about. They are a law unto themselves, apparently. When Oh, when , will the American citizenry awaken and fight for their laws. The very laws they created to serve them.
The American people have spoken on illegal immigration time and time again and we are getting sick of being ignored. Prop. 187 sent a loud and clear message to our Reps and it was shoved up our noses! A few months ago Americans voiced their opinion loud and clear that we wanted no further amnesties! Now if Obama relaxes anything about illegal immigration he is going to hear of us American citizens LOUD AND FREAKING CLEAR! We are sick of illegal aliens! And the stinking politicians that push them on us! Is that clear enough?
We need the SAVE ACT and E-verify used for every business. E-verify does not discriminate against RACE, Religion, SEX or physically capability only your Citizenship and your LEGAL right to be and work in United States. If we can stop Predatory business owners from hiring then the Illegal Aliens will not Stay and return to their native Countries. This ISSUE is not about RACE, but Governments Federal/State/LOCAL not doing their jobs, because big and small business owners want cheap workers and no labor laws to bother with. Its called GREED! The only RACISTS are the single RACE agenda GROUPS like La RAZA, Mecha, Aztlan and ETC....Whose main goal is take our Western States back to Mexico. Liberal and Conservatives take some pride in your Country and protect it from all invading nations citizens and corporate greed. Contact your government Officials that you will not accept Amnesty for Illegal Aliens. www.numbersusa.com for Free Faxes - No immigrant bashing! Hate only feeds the Open Borders Supporters
The raids will end, when they are no longer needed. The illegals must pack up their family and leave the USA. Find some other nation to live in and use contraception.
ask yourself first who buld the houses you live in and if u r so lazy to go and get the job don"t blame the immigrants would you go down the road and wash dishes in olive garden for a 4$ un hour when you gona do it I: gona suport your prop 187.
Katherine, what you don't seem to understand, or refuse to accept is that once that illegal alien gets a legal status, he won't want to work at OG for $4 an hour. He will want to move to a better job (maybe yours) and compete with American citizens and legal immigrants for employment. Not only will it create more competition for a decreasing number of jobs, it will create a viod in low level jobs to be filled by, you guesed it, more illegal aliens.
Katherine is Right, Stop blaming the poor Dish washing, food pickin, chicken ,room cleaning migrants for YOU WON INCOMPETENCY. If you as a US Citizen cannot Succeed, THEN go to teh Mirror and slap HARD the person you see in the mirror, YOU ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN ECONOMIC, MENTAL, PHYSICAL and EMOTIONAL HEALTH. NOT THE GOVERNMENT GET IT!!!?
If President-elect Obama has any mandate, it is to fix the economy. He has absolutely NO mandate too push any type of amnesty "pathways" or "earned legalizations" (which we all know mean amnesty). If tries to shove amnesty down our throats when there are over 10 million Americans out-of-work and jobless claims are at a 16-year high, he will be for one heckofa fight despite what Senate Majority Leader Reid says. (Does "gays in the military" ring any bells?) Moderate Deomcrats should tell Obama, Sen. Menendez and La Raza to back off any talk of amnesty.
Native American, So is it equally appropriate for Americans to say to the illegal alien population here in our country: "If you as a (fill in your native country) Citizen cannot Succeed in your own country, THEN go to teh Mirror and slap HARD the person you see in the mirror, YOU ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN ECONOMIC, MENTAL, PHYSICAL and EMOTIONAL HEALTH. NOT THE GOVERNMENT OF (this or any other country) GET IT!!!? Just wondering, because before the illegal invasion and the onslaught of the foreign worker visa fiasco, we here in America were incredibly successful. In fact, and correct me if I'm wrong, our phenomenal success is exactly what brought you all here in droves. By the way, have you noticed that your dead weight is sinking the ship? Rhetorical question.
Katherine wrote:"November 25, 2008 11:54 PM ask yourself first who buld the houses you live in and if u r so lazy to go and get the job don"t blame the immigrants would you go down the road and wash dishes in olive garden for a 4$ un hour when you gona do it I: gona suport your prop 187." First, my house was built 40 years ago by AMERICAN workers who were getting paid union wages. American workers STILL do most construction jobs, but the sheer number of illegals willing and able to work for less undercuts them. As for illegal aliens working for $4 an hour, most of US could afford to work for a lot less IF WE DIDN'T HAVE TO PAY TAXES to support medical care and education for illegal aliens and their kids and IF WE DIDN'T HAVE TO PAY INTO SOCIAL SECURITY because we were paid under the table. As it is, I have two native-born HISPANIC nephews, one in a blue collar job that may well go away if the auto industry collapses and the other basically unemployed and doing maintenance work where he lives. Now, why should THEY have to compete with illegal aliens or worse yet, pay for services for them, when they have their own young families to support?
The majority of Americans do NOT want mass deportation, but want some kind of earned legalization program for people here without papers. All of the enforcement only candidates fell by the wayside in the last election (including Tancredo, Romney, Thompson, Huckabee) leaving only McCain and Obama, both of whom supported comprehensive immigration reform. Illegal immigrants are not taking jobs away from Americans. Ask Lindsey Graham, Michael Chertoff, the Commerce Secretary, or any other number of experts in the Bush administration. Besides being the humanitarian (and American) thing to do, granting some sort of earned legalization makes sense from both a security perspective and an economic perspective. By the way, Obama clearly articulated supprt for comprehensive immigration reform (meaning path to legalization for undocumented persons) in his platform and to expect him now to adopt an enforcement only mentality is blind hope. You may scream the loudest but you don't represent most Americans. Most Americans want a pragmatic and compassionate solution to the problem. I was glad to see that John McCain today again pledged his support for comprehensive immigration reform and will make it one of his agenda items in his next senatorial session.
Don't you know Their talkin' about a revolution... It sound like a whisper Don't you know... They're talkin' about a revolution It's sounds like a whisper...
Native American, no one is blaming the poor for washing dishes, pickin food, or cleaning hotel rooms. I used to do two of those things. No sir, nothing wrong with that at all, except for the fact that I was a legal citizen when I did it, and guess what THEY AREN'T. ENOUGH SAID, TO THOSE WHO ACTUALLY BELIEVE THE LAW MEANS SOMETHING IN THE UNITED STATES. IT DOES IN MEXICO, AND EVERY OTHER COUNTRY, DOESN'T IT?
Mr. Obama, Please view these current videos of illegal aliens flooding across the border day and night before you issue any executive orders that will discontinue fence building along the border. www.borderinvasionpics.com. This is happening as we speak.
Roger919 's analysis is seriously flawed and recites the typical talking points used by the open-borders lobby: -We do not need "mass deportation" ("round them all up") or "earned legalization" (AKA amnesty) schemes for illegal aliens. This is the false choice often spouted by pro-amnesty politicians and blindly repeated in the mainstream media. In fact, the major anti-illegal immigration groups do not push for "mass deportation." Rather, if our existing laws are enforced and benefits cut off, many if not most illegal aliens would return to their home countries over time through attrition. This is the humane, cost-effective, and true middle-ground way to solve this crisis. -McCain won the GOP nomination for a host of reasons (including open primaries and Huckabee splitting the conservative vote), but his support of amnesty was not one of them. In fact, McCain flooded the airwaves with tough sounding ads about border security during the primaries and was able to hide his support of amnesty. (Furthermore, his pandering to La Raza and support of amnesty did not help him at all with the Hispanic vote during the general election. This is the lesson for Republicans.) -Illegals aren't taking jobs way from Americans?? Ask drywall installers, construction workers, high school kids looking for summer jobs etc. The list goes on. To say that working class Americans (including African-Americans and second generation Mexican-Americans) are not impacted by illegal alien labor is flat wrong and incredibly insensitive. -Studies have outlined the national security and economic nightmares that would result from another amnesty. For example, a Heritage Foundation study estimated the cost of amnesty at $2.6 TRILLION. -Valid polling (Rasmussen, Zogby) using neutral language and offering the choice of enforcement or amnesty pathways consistently show that Americans overwhelmingly support and prefer enforcement. Politicians ignore this at their own peril. Just ask Chris Cannon. -If President-elect Obama tries to gut E-Verify, back off the no-match letters etc., he will be working against the interests of working class Americans that the Democratic Party claims to represent. Americans were promised enforcement after the (failed) 1986 mass amnesty. It is time for our elected officials to finally live up to these promises.
America spoke, alright. The Republicans rejected the hostile anti-immigrant candidates. Then America voted for the most liberal, son of an immigrant candidate and made him president. Accept that MOST of America has rejected population control freak John Tanton and his groups FAIR or Numbers USA... or worse... Chris Simcox and his scam for stealing money from scared folks to build a cow fence on the border. We want a fix and that requires compromise.
President Obama, If you end workplace raids, does this mean you will replace this enforcement tool with another such as E Verify for all employees and stiffer fines for employers that hire illegals? Or will you allow amnesty for 12-20 million lawbreakers that will further bankrupt this country and solidify the democrat vote? Let your elected know how you feel about this serious issue http://numbersusa.com
We compromised in 1986, remember Beth? We granted amnesty to 3 million, and immediately thereafter 30+ million waltzed right in as though they had a right to do so. We reject amnesty because we are now suffering the result of its after effect. We cannot afford to do it again. Why is it that you interpret the outcome of this election by evaluating it based only on that one issue (there are countless many others that were taken into consideration with this election), while you completely ignore America's resounding demand for "NO AMNESTY" with regard to that very same issue? And we did it twice!!! Given the two pathetic choices we were given, don't attribute Obama's election to anything other than America's revulsion for the last eight disastrous years of George W. Bush. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If this country had a fair untainted media, this would actually be a democracy, and one of those true American candidate's would be president elect. As for FAIR, NumbersUSA, ALIPAC, and a host of many others, Americans thank God every day for them. They are a powerful weapon, we are thankful for them and we embrace them all. America spoke, alright. There will never be another amnesty.
I hope that Obama does not stop enforcement actions against illegal aliens. This would be contrary to the wishes of the vast majority of Americans. I wonder if he knows that Arizona voters (including 56% of Hispanic-Americans) defeated the bogus Prop 202 (funded by cheap labor interests) that would have gutted immigration enforcement against employers.
I know this may be self-serving but I hope you will all read my new book "Immigration Chaos - Solutions to an American Crisis." It will surprise all of you - the right, the middle and the left - because it has REAL solutions to our immigration crisis, instead of nebulous words like "amnesty", guest workers" and "earned Citizenship." I spent twenty-six years enforcing the immigration laws of the United States and there are solutions to appease all concerned. Whether Congress has the guts to enact workable laws (like mandatory E-Verify for every employer) - and whether the new administration will properly implement the laws are the real issues.
306.000.000 Americans, 11.000.000 of illegal that is equal to a 3% of people, that's equal to 3 people of 100, Right? let said that, there is a factory of a 100 good employees, that work hard to have a good salary, and let say that three of them are working illegally, getting paid less of what they should and going to the doctor if they get sick, would you dumb ass think that, the factory will go on bankruptcy for those three poor guys that clean your bathrooms when you don't want to do it? Al these comments are of you the minority racist of America, let me tell you this, you will not succeed, America will keep being built by immigrants, not by racist like you! America is the big factory, and you DO NOT REPRESENT ME!!!!
Mr. Cramer, your book is out of stock on Amazon and I cannot find reviews of it. I would like to read it. BTW, what is the status of Operation Streamline? Has or was it effective as a deterrent, and have the cheap labor and pro-amnesty ethnic advocates challenged & gutted this? (like they do or try to do with many enforcement measures). This and other reasons are why I believe they ("they" = La Raza, Chamber of Commerce etc. ) should not be appeased anymore. Their side has had their way for decades, which has led to overpopulation and millions of more illegals as you know, who now -- surprise -- want another amnesty. As mentioned in an earlier post, attrition through enforcement of laws (along with a fence, E-Verify, jail time where appropriate, end to birthright citizenship etc.) is the humane, logical way to solve this crisis over time IMO.
Judging by your english Danny, my guess is you are illegal yourself. In that case, America most certainly DOES NOT represent you. She represents Americans, and we have spoken. Absolutely, positively, NO AMNESTY!! As for being built by immigrants, yes she was. My great-grandparents on both sides were immigrants. Having made the ultimate sacrifice of giving up their heritage, and having entered the country legally through the front door with permission, I am proud of all they have done both for me and for MY COUNTRY. However, whether you or any other foreigner in the world or in this country likes it or not, this is no longer a nation of immigrants. This is a nation of Americans. No one else gets to define it, or reinvent it, or fashion it anew. It is already a masterpiece. If you really feel the need to "reinvent the wheel," go back home and see what you can accomplish there. As for what you've done here, we've all had enough.
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