Immigration Panel Urges Focus on Unity

A blue-ribbon commission called Tuesday for Congress to shift the country’s immigration debate from a numbers game to focus on weaving America’s myriad cultures into a national fabric, while reiterating controversial suggestions to overhaul the INS and more strictly limit legal immigrants.

After five years of work, the panel offered a blueprint for congressional action, with specific proposals on who should be allowed into the country, how naturalization could be streamlined and what should be emphasized in educating immigrant children and even included a draft of a new oath of citizenship. But the panel’s previous suggestions have been largely ignored by lawmakers, and prospects for action on the new report remain unclear.

“The proposal raises difficult and complex issues, which need further consideration,” President Clinton said in a written statement, referring to the recommendation that the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service be stripped of most responsibilities and focus on law enforcement and patrolling the border.

“You can read it two ways,” Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, cautioned in regard to the suggestions on assimilating current immigrants. “If they’re saying slave-drive these guys into knowing English, then I think that’s bad. If what they’re saying is help them understand a secure working knowledge of English, that’s good.”

After more than 40 hearings across the United States and abroad, the panel chose to focus Tuesday not on its controversial ideas regarding the INS and limiting the numbers of newcomers but on a new theme of Americanization, a flashback to an early 20th century campaign of mass naturalization ceremonies and spectacular Fourth of July parades that was later criticized by some as coercive or xenophobic.

Attempting to reclaim the term with a positive spin, the commission described immigration as a “voluntary covenant” and said the United States must require proficiency in English and knowledge of America’s “core civic values” for new citizens, suggesting a national testing program to precede naturalization.

“It’s absolutely critical that we have a clear message out there that we invite people to come here, and we expect them to take on the American dream and culture and everything else,” said former INS Western states chief Harold Ezell, one of the nine commission members.

“We’re not here creating separate little Baltic enclaves,” Ezell added. “We want [immigrants] to become Americans, not hyphenated Americans.”

Though some worry that assimilation implies abandonment of native culture, the commission sought to soften such criticism by referring to Americanization as part of an “immigrant policy” that focuses on those who are already here.

The Americanization campaign won plaudits Tuesday. A crucial component, supporters said, is a promised speeding and professionalization of the naturalization process. Backlogs have made applicants wait more than two years to become citizens; as of this summer, the citizenship queue had swelled to more than 1.4 million, a quarter of them in Southern California.

Cecilia Munoz of the National Council of La Raza said the Americanization discussion is “one of the very few constructive things that the commission has said,” adding that the “commission’s language is very careful, and we appreciate that.”

“People have expressed themselves in no uncertain terms that they want to become Americans, but they need the means to do it,” said Juan Jose Gutierrez, executive director of One Stop Immigration, an East Los Angeles agency. “You have to provide the basic resources to prepare people to become Americans.”

Along those lines, the commission suggested federal funding of state information clearinghouses to help newcomers navigate life in the United States and praised public-private partnerships, many employer-based, as the key to successful assimilation. The naturalization process itself must be streamlined and expedited, while its “solemnity” and “integrity” should be maintained, they said.

Perhaps the most radical, albeit symbolic, suggestion was to rewrite the naturalization oath itself to remove two-dollar words such as “potentate.”

That recommendation sparked criticism. “We shouldn’t dumb down the oath of allegiance,” complained Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “If the oath of office is too hard for the immigrants to understand . . . we’re admitting the wrong immigrants.”

But Shirley Hufstedler, a Los Angeles resident and former federal judge who chaired the commission, said rewriting the oath is meant to make it more relevant, not just simpler.

“To talk about potentates when we’re fresh out of them is silly,” Hufstedler said, referring to the fancy word for sovereign ruler. “If the language is archaic, then why not bring it up to date?”

The commission’s new oath also would delete a reference to God. Commissioner Richard Estrada, a Dallas journalist who led the oath-rewriting effort, said there was little discussion of that issue but that he was concerned a reference to God could trigger disunity. Ezell Tuesday night said he would like the reference kept in the oath.

Frank Sharry of the National Immigration Forum, which has criticized past commission recommendations, praised the Americanization theme, but noted that it is “a little squishy” and lacks specifics on implementation.

“The commission is saying, ‘We respect diversity, as long as there’s unity,’ and that’s the story of immigration to America over the last 300 years,” he said. “Too often, the debate is between those who want to coerce unity and those who trumpet diversity.”

Though the report repeatedly emphasizes the importance of English proficiency for citizenship, the commission did not take a stand on the question of how best to teach immigrants the national tongue. Rather, it suggests that federal funding be available for both bilingual education and English immersion programs but that schools receiving grants be held accountable for “rigorous performance standards” both on English acquisition proficiency and progress in academic subjects.

“What the commissioners decided universally is that for anyone to say you’re going to teach English to non-English speakers by one method is silly,” said Hufstedler, a former U.S. Secretary of Education. “You should say, ‘That’s the objective.’ It’s up to the communities and the schools and the individuals how they’re going to accomplish that.”

Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-San Diego), among Congress’ most conservative on immigration, said the report is “generally pointed in the right direction.”

“The challenge they are giving us here is how do we change our institutions to handle immigration and assimilation at the same time,” Bilbray said. “I think we can do it if we’ve got the guts to confront these problems head-on and not be so darn [politically correct] about it all the time.”

The report’s other components--on reorganizing the INS and changing guidelines for legal immigration--were embraced more skeptically, as was the case when they first surfaced. One commissioner, immigration attorney Warren Leiden, even dissented from the entire report, reportedly because of his opposition to the INS proposals.

Saying the INS suffers from “mission overload,” the commission suggested that many of its responsibilities be transferred to the departments of Labor and State, leaving mainly a border patrol and law enforcement function.

The panel said current immigration levels, about 700,000 a year, should be sustained “for the next several years,” then dropped to about 550,000, with priorities shifted away from extended families and low-skill workers.

Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who head Congress’ immigration subcommittees, both said they would hold hearings soon on the report. The two men differed on the question of limiting immigration.

“As a nation of immigrants, we should be certain that any legal immigration legislation is both pro-family and pro-growth, and that means preserving the ability of U.S. citizens and companies to sponsor close family members and needed employees,” Abraham said.

Smith disagreed, saying: “We need skilled and educated people if they’re going to succeed, not the unskilled and uneducated.”

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Wilgoren reported from Washington, McDonnell from Los Angeles.