Strong Immigration Bills Still Carry a Few Burs : Penalizing children and legal immigrants is wrong

The two bills on immigration passed by the House and Senate reflect a feeling that is prevalent nationwide, especially in California: It’s time to crack down on illegal immigration. In the main, the congressional focus finally is where it ought to be--on those who break the law, not on all immigrants.

Indeed this nation needs to regain control of its borders. Legislation that calls for doubling the number of border patrol agents, better equipping them and making the existing border fences more efficient makes sense.

But more border fences aren’t the only answer. The new legislation also cracks down on smugglers of illegal immigrants and the counterfeiters who produce fraudulent documents that help them blend into U.S. society. These are truly vile criminals who profit from illegal immigration and they have deserved harsher penalties for a very long time.

Using existing closed military bases as detention centers for people illegally in the country and streamlining the deportation procedures, while ensuring due process, for those who clearly have no legitimate claim to remain here are also sensible steps that should help save time and money for an often overworked federal immigration bureaucracy.

The Senate bill would set up a series of pilot programs to verify the immigration status of people seeking jobs. Those who oppose it see it as a first step toward a national identification card, yet the critics don’t offer a credible alternative. The problem is that the current system does not work. The law does not deter people with false documents from obtaining jobs and leads in some cases to instances of discrimination against U.S. citizens or other legal residents who happen to look or sound “foreign.”

Where this legislation goes off track is in its proposed restrictions on government benefits. A provision sponsored by Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) that would give states the right to ban public schooling for illegal-immigrant children is both wrongheaded and counterproductive, because it penalizes children for crimes that may or may not have been committed by their parents. This provision could not even find a sponsor in the Senate, although Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), while campaigning in California, endorsed the concept.

The Gallegly provision has pretty much the same language of the infamous Proposition 187. That measure has been legally unnforceable because it is clearly unconstitutional, based on a Supreme Court ruling holding that all children, regardless of their immigration status, are entitled to an education.

Another problematic provision in both the House and Senate versions of the bill calls for sharply limiting benefits for legal immigrants. Currently, illegal immigrants are not eligible for benefits except for emergency health care, disaster relief and programs to immunize children and provide them with decent nutrition, such as school lunches and the Women With Infant Children (WIC) program.

The same rule would apply to legal immigrants, except that in the Senate bill there is a provision toughening up the affidavit of support and making the sponsor of a legal immigrant legally liable for any assistance the immigrant gets from the government. This provision would render a virtual ban on the granting of benefits because it adds the sponsor’s income to that of the immigrant, thereby making the immigrant ineligible for assistance in most cases. Further more, if a legal immigrant participates in any government program for an aggregate period of one year, within five years of entry, he becomes deportable.

These provisions, if approved, would represent a big change in the nation’s traditional vision of immigration. Up until now, there’s been no discernible difference between the way the United States treats legal immigrants and citizens. The nation should not change this policy. Legal immigrants should have access to a minimum of safety net programs.

With the elimination of the restrictions on children’s public schooling and legal immigrants, Congress is on its way to rational and fair immigration reform.