Reunification, Not Reunions

Before this summer is over, the Senate will agonize--again--over changes in the nation’s immigration policy. This time, revisions deal with legal immigration. The main issues are: Should there be a limit to the number of legal immigrants; and on what basis shall we determine who comes in?

In June the Senate Judiciary Committee revised last year’s immigration bill, authored by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo). The alterations were substantial, even though the 1988 bill had passed the Senate by a vote of 88-4. This time, the committee adopted amendments emphasizing family reunification over the broader national interest.

We now take in more than half a million new legal immigrants a year, over and above those who come as political or religious refugees. Only about 10% are admitted because they bring skills required by our economy. The rest come mainly because of family connections.

The question to be resolved by the Senate is really quite simple: Should our immigration policy be determined mainly by what’s good for our country, or what’s good for the prospective immigrants, or what’s good for some special segment of the population now in the United States?

If we wanted to design our immigration policy to benefit new immigrants, we would just remove all barriers to immigration. Some analysts advocate precisely that, perhaps thinking that vast numbers of immigrants will ensure the right mix of skills needed in the future. However, there is no evidence that numbers alone bring in the necessary skills. Neither is there any indication that the American people want to increase our levels of immigration.

Family reunification is the cornerstone of our current policy. Like apple pie, it sounds like nothing any American politician would want to oppose. But the concept has been distorted by special-interest groups pressuring our senators with an emotional issue with racial overtones. As a Latino and as a beneficiary of family reunification, I want to analyze the concept and limit the distortions.

When I was a youngster, I lived with my parents and my sister in Mexico, where the four of us were born. My father received an offer to come to the United States to manage a small retail business. He accepted the offer and came here by himself.

For almost a year, he worked, saved money, bought a car and made a down payment on a house. Then he returned to Mexico City to bring his family with him.

Prior to his initial trip, we were living as a family under one roof. After we immigrated, the four of us again lived together under one roof. This, to me is a classic example of family reunification.

Immigration advocates now argue that the concept of family reunification should be expanded to include the extended family. In my case, that would mean a few hundred people. My father came from a family of 15 children and my mother was one of 16. Almost all of them married, and together with their children, in-laws and grandchildren, they number close to 500.

Would they like to come to the land of opportunity? You bet! Could we possibly bring them under the pretense of family reunification? I don’t believe so.

The only logical definition of family reunification requires that those being brought together have been a unit before. I never lived with any of my 500 relatives, and if they came to the United States, they certainly would not come to live with me. We can’t be reunified because we were not a unit before. Nor could we justify reuniting them with my parents because they were once a family. True, my parents lived with their brothers and sisters when they were youngsters, but each family became many families when my aunts and uncles married and moved away.

The concept of family reunification can apply only to the nuclear family. Expanding it is a disguise to get around the rules. Applying it to nieces, nephews and assorted in-laws ridicules its real purpose, which is to bring together spouses and their dependent children. We should not confuse family reunifications with family reunions.

There are prospective immigrants longing to come to the United States. They have the drive to make it on their own. We should stop discriminating against such skilled, qualified and enthusiastic people whose only lack is relatives already here.