Immigration dilemma

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It:

Immigration enforcement.

Protesters in Los Angeles and Phoenix took to the streets last week after Immigration and Customs Enforcement carried out raids to round up immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally.

AUDIO: No more ICE, no more ICE…

MARY REICHARD, HOST: But some immigrants now living with legal status in the U.S. believe the problem is found somewhere else.

WORLD’s Paul Butler has the story.

GONZALEZ: I want to have a better life.

PAUL BUTLER: Juvenal Gonzalez was sixteen when he first tried crossing into the United States, looking for work in the 1980s.

GONZALEZ: I tried like six or seven times.

Each time, border patrol caught him and returned him to Mexico until the day he got through undetected and worked his way to the fields of Washington state.

GONZALEZ: I knew that I was illegal. And I knew that if they caught me they're gonna return me. So when I started working I always have something, cash in my pocket.

The Center for Migration Studies estimates nearly 12 million people were living in the country illegally as of July 2023. Some, like Gonzalez, enter the country hoping to avoid getting caught by Customs and Border Patrol. Others enter the country on tourist visas, and apply for residency.

GUTIERREZ: We came to be with one of my mom's family members here in the US.

Marcos Gutierrez came to the United States from Panama when he was 10 years old. Gutierrez and his family worked hard while their application was being reviewed and could relate to the passage in Matthew 6 about God providing for the birds of the field.

GUTIERREZ: It definitely felt like he was providing for us and giving us our daily bread, but I think it felt like a place of vulnerability and instability of constant trust in God to take care of us.

The family’s tourist visa expired long before they found out whether they would be approved for residency.

GUTIERREZ: And so we were here with no legal status. It took about 20 years before they let us know that the visa wasn't approved.

Problems with the legal immigration system have led many to try a faster path claiming asylum.

The asylum program exists to give people escaping political or religious persecution a pathway to safety.

GONZALEZ: When I see the Russian people leaving Russia because of the bomb and the war that is going on, and also the Afghanistan people leaving Afghanistan because they've been persecuted because of their faith, I said, "This is the kind of people that need asylum."

The problem now is that thousands of immigrants in search of economic opportunity and a better life are also claiming asylum and that clogs the system.

GONZALEZ: There's only five things that make the person qualify for asylum and persecution and fear and all that. But being poor is not one of them.

Gonzalez lived in fear of being deported until 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed The Immigration Reform and Control Act. The law granted amnesty and residency to migrant farmworkers and their families who could prove they’d been working in the fields for at least 90 days.

REAGAN: Future generations of Americans will be thankful for our efforts to humanely regain control of our borders and thereby preserve the value of one of the most sacred possessions of our people: American citizenship.

Gonzalez applied for a one year work permit, and renewed it year after year.

GONZALEZ: Then later I applied for the citizenship.

He was naturalized in 2003. Now he is a pastor in North Carolina and also runs a ministry hosting asylum-seekers in a home he owns in Tijuana, Mexico. Families applying for asylum could stay in the house while waiting for their interviews with Custom and Border Patrol agents at ports of entry. Then came Inauguration Day.

GONZALEZ: After January 20, every CBP-1 appointment and the CBP-1 application, it got canceled.

The asylum program remains on hold along with the refugee resettlement program. Gonzalez says it makes sense that parents want to find a better life for their families, but claiming asylum just because it is on the table is wrong.

GONZALEZ: I think that a lot of people abuse the program. And United States is right. Say, hey, we need to be careful who do we give the asylum application and the status.

Meanwhile, many of those in the country illegally are at risk of being deported. Border czar Tom Homan has said the administration will prioritize catching and removing dangerous criminals, but critics warn the net will likely be much wider. Gonzalez says immigrants working and living in the U.S. illegally should not be surprised.

GONZALEZ: If we're not legal, if we don't have visa, then we're going to pay a price.

Gutierrez is concerned that uprooting families who are investing their skills and lives in the United States will have consequences.

GUTIERREZ: We pay taxes. Like, we're contributing to the economy. We're doing essential jobs that a lot of people are not willing to do.

That includes jobs in agriculture and construction.

After the government denied Gutierrez’s family a visa, he was later granted amnesty under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He became a citizen in 2021. Gutierrez says the ideal would be for Congress to fix the immigration system in order to process visa applications faster than the 20 years his family experienced.

GUTIERREZ: But at the same time, I do think if I was to be sent back, then I would have that this is the right thing, because I broke the law.

For WORLD, I’m Paul Butler.

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