U-M expert can respond to Obama’s immigration reform speech tonight

November 20, 2014
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ANN ARBOR—Ann Lin, associate professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, has studied recent federal efforts to reform immigration policies and shares her thoughts.

Q: Is an executive order delaying deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants the same as the “amnesty” granted by President Reagan in 1986?

Lin: Not at all. Amnesty, or legalization, was signed into law by President Reagan as part of comprehensive immigration reform. It granted eligible undocumented immigrants permanent residence, or “green cards.” This made them legal residents and allowed them to apply for citizenship.

Deferred deportation is very different. People who receive “deferred deportation” are acknowledging that the U.S. government has the authority to deport them. However, the government is agreeing to temporarily not deport them, usually for humanitarian reasons. As part of this agreement, the government also allows them to have a means of supporting themselves while in the U.S., so they are granted a work permit. But this “deferral” is always time-limited and it can always be revoked.

Q: Is granting “deferred deportation” to so many undocumented immigrants unprecedented?

Lin: Each year, thousands of people are granted deferred deportation by immigration judges. These are often people who cannot return to their countries because they are in danger of suffering from human rights violations or people whose countries are in the middle of a humanitarian crisis. Deferred deportation is often also granted to people who have a humanitarian reason for remaining in the U.S., such as the need to care for children, spouses or parents who are U.S. citizens.

President Obama’s plan is new in that he’s proposing an administrative solution for processing these individuals’ claims. He’s saying, let’s not use law enforcement resources to arrest undocumented immigrants, who will then go to court and ask an immigration judge to let them stay in the U.S. for humanitarian reasons. Instead, let’s tell them to come out of the shadows and apply for deferred deportation on their own. Let’s see if they’re eligible before they get caught. And if they’re eligible, let’s give it to them.

So the solution—deferred deportation—is not really new. But the scale is new, because if it works, people will come forward on their own instead of waiting to be caught.

Q: What is delaying action in Congress?

Lin: I don’t believe that Congress is going to be able to act in the next two years. Republicans are divided between the part of their constituency that depends upon the labor of undocumented immigrants and the part that would see it as a betrayal of their ideals to legalize the undocumented.

The problem, though, is that a significant part of the Republican constituency depends on undocumented labor—construction labor, the service industry, agricultural labor. It knows comprehensive immigration reform is the only politically acceptable way to get legal status for the undocumented.

Q: Why should Congress act with a sense of urgency?

Lin: Immigration policy needs to be handled because our antiquated immigration policy is a structural drag on the American economy. It limits our ability to adjust to employment challenges in the sectors of our economy that need educated labor. It doesn’t help our economy to have a significant part of our workforce off the books or in the gray market. It is not good when employers can essentially hire people in an unregulated part of the economy. It’s a structural problem in our economy and it has to be resolved.

That doesn’t even begin to deal with the social and political consequences of having people, legally here or not, who are not fully integrated into our country. It needs to be resolved on its own merits.

 

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