What It Takes to Fix Our Immigration System

There is a consensus in the United States today that our immigration
system is broken. The question is "What is required to fix it?"

There is a consensus in the United States today that our immigration
system is broken. The question is "What is required to fix it?"

It is clear that more of the same will not work.

There are an estimated 11 million undocumented persons living and
working in the United States today. Smugglers, traffickers and criminals
preying on undocumented migrants have a growing negative impact on
border communities.

Nearly 2,000 migrants have died trying to cross our border from the
south from 1998 through 2003, and nearly 400 migrants continue to die at
our borders every year.

America needs comprehensive immigration reform that will make
immigration safe, orderly and legal. Such reform must provide three things:

* an opportunity for people already living and working here to earn
permanent legal status;

* a new temporary worker program with adequate labor protections, so
that essential workers can enter the U.S. safely, legally and
expeditiously;

* backlog reductions in family-based immigration so that families can
unite in a timely way.

Proposals that fail to embrace these components and seek only to
increase enforcement of the current system will only exacerbate current
problems.

Congress may enact harsh enforcement measures, such as the Sensenbrenner
bill passed in the House of Representatives, which do nothing to
increase our nation's security. Such measures only increase the
pressures on hardworking but undocumented immigrants and force them to
seek dangerous paths of entry to the U.S., where increasing numbers will
die attempting to cross.

Or Congress can engage the debate and enact realistic and comprehensive
reform, which will ensure the U.S. remains a nation of immigrants in the
decades to come.

Deborah Notkin is president of the American Immigration Lawyers
Association. - NU