Redeeming immigration

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 27th of June, 2023.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up on The World and Everything in It: a shot at bipartisan immigration reform.

Last month, two Hispanic lawmakers from opposing parties came together to introduce a piece of legislation aimed at solving one of America’s biggest problems.

MARIA SALAZAR: The Dignity Act is what this country needs because we have a major problem called immigration. In the last 30 years this body, Congress, has not been able to come together and create legislation that is good for both parties.

That’s Rep. Maria Salazar, a Republican from Florida. Audio courtesy of The Washington Post.

SALAZAR: Number one is it seals the border, it controls the border, it puts an order at the border because no country that respects itself could have the border in the situation that we have the southern border at this hour.

But it also increases legal immigration and gives immigrants living in the U-S illegally an opportunity to earn legal status.

The last time something like this was tried, Ronald Reagan was president. He ended up signing the last comprehensive immigration reform bill in 1986.

Back then Charles Kamasaki spent years advocating for the reform bill with a group called UnidosUS. The bill was introduced in the Senate three times before it finally got through Congress and to the President’s desk.

CHARLES KAMASAKI: And if you want to go back even further, antecedents of this bill had been made literally since 1952. So you know, the lesson I think, from history, is immigration is hard. And it's not surprising if it dies a couple of times before it gets enacted.

REICHARD: No reform bill has made it through since, though Congress got close in 2006 and 2013. But Kamasaki thinks the Dignity Act might have a chance.

KAMASAKI: I mean, first of all, it's bipartisan. Right and just anything bipartisan these days is noteworthy.

And there is a bipartisan sense that the immigration situation has reached crisis levels. Immigration authorities encountered illegal immigrants at the southern border a record number of times last year, 2.76 million to be exact. And U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement released thousands of immigrants into the country to await court hearings that are years away because of backlogs.

TARA WATSON: They're trying to speed up the asylum process, which is, I think, a really good goal.

Tara Watson is an economist with the Brookings Institution who focuses on immigration.

WATSON: Right now, it's, you know, years in the queue of waiting for an asylum claim. And then people often are residing in the U.S. and they make their home here. And then if their asylum claim is turned down, that's a very disruptive removal. So it'd be better if those decisions could be made more quickly.

EICHER: To that end, the bill proposes setting up five humanitarian campuses at the southern border. There, asylum officers would process claims within 60 days. It would also create more legal pathways for workers without college degrees to work in agriculture and construction jobs.

But the bill also proposes things conservatives have objected to in the past. For example, it would provide a pathway to permanent status for so-called Dreamers. These are people who were brought to the U.S. illegally when they were children. And perhaps most controversially, it gives the rest of the illegal immigrants living in the U.S. the opportunity to earn legal status likely incentivizing more illegal crossings.

But Representative Salazar explains the benefits of the bill wouldn’t come for free.

SALAZAR: People who have been here for more than five years, have American kids or can pay taxes are working so those people come out of the shadows under what I call the dignity status , and that is for seven years. And those seven years you pay $5,000. You do not have access to government programs.

REICHARD: To be clear, this program would not offer amnesty or let immigrants off the hook for entering the country illegally. Instead, it offers a way for illegal immigrants to get right with the law. Matthew Soerens is vice president of advocacy and policy for World Relief and the national coordinator for the Evangelical Immigration Table. He says it’s important to make that distinction.

SOERENS: You have people paying really significant restitution for having violated immigration law, but it does make it possible for them to they're in permanent legal status. And for them, those who want to take some additional steps even to pursue US citizenship if they're willing to go through that process.

That process points to another surprising aspect of this bill. Not only does it have bipartisan support, Representative Salazar makes a Bible-based appeal. WORLD’s Addie Offereins explains:

ADDIE OFFEREINS: And so you have the Dignity Act in the title. But the idea of the dignity program is that someone who has violated the law is able to make restitution by paying fines by paying taxes and kind of earn their way to a legal status in the United States. She sees this as reflecting those biblical principles of dignity for someone created in God's image, but then this idea of redemption, and that they are able to earn this legal status, even though they have violated the law.

EICHER: According to the bill, once illegal immigrants complete the seven-year program, the Dignity program, they can live and work in the country on a five-year, renewable basis. That’s called Dignity status. Or, by completing the five-year Redemption program, they can work their way towards citizenship.

So far, the two representatives have recruited 10 cosponsors: 5 of them democrats and 5 of them republicans. It could take years for something like the Dignity Act to move forward, but Matthew Soerens says it’s the best shot at comprehensive reform in decades.

SOERENS: But frankly, this is like the best good faith genuinely bipartisan effort that we've seen since 2013. To broadly reform our immigration laws, not just one little part of it.

This story was written and reported by WORLD’s Compassion reporter, Addie Offereins.

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