As a member of United Families, I wanted to post the summary of our issue from one of the groups members:
You're not kidding, it's a fascinating subject, and it's one that I've wrestled with professionally for waaayyy too long. It's also perhaps the only time algebra can make you cry.
I started with the issue when I was working in the Congress for the author of the last permanent increase in legal immigration, the 1990 Act, and it sharpened a lot in the mid-1990s, when I was communications director for a blue-ribbon, bipartisan Congressional panel chaired by the late Barbara Jordan. The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform's recommendations have become the foundation for the sensible center in the immigration debate, and even our opponents at the time have expressed some regret for delay and obstruction. (That whole 9-11 thing, e.g., www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.confessore.html>)
One recommendation which the Congress has not -- yet -- followed through on, which has been a piece of my professional life for, geeze, 16 years now, is the definition of "immediate relative" in immigration law.
Basically, it works like this: because so much talk about immigration confuses legal and illegal, many people don't realize that, unlike illegal aliens, the rule is that LEGAL immigrants don't choose themselves. They're invited, as individuals, by individual Americans. That's how "We, the People" decide who gets to JOIN, "We, the People".
Forgive me for using you and I as an example (but in all this time explaining it, I find this works best): supposing you are a U.S. citizen, and I'm your foreigner fiance. When we marry, you can petition for my immigration visa (bear in mind, a real legal immigration visa, which makes me a legal permanent resident: a green card). As the husband of a U.S. citizen, I am an "immediate relative", which is a numerically unlimited category. I can come in as fast as they process the paperwork -- granted, that can take a long time, but it's still an expression of old-fashioned American values: we believe in marriage.
In the law, "immediate relative" is defined for immigration, as it is in the Family and Medical Leave Act (I should add, I also worked for its principal author, also: Chris Dodd, now running for President, though I had little to do with that one): spouses, kids, and parents.
But in immigration law, this category is ONLY for U.S. citizens.
Family-based immigration is about two-thirds of the total, as it should be. (Employment makes up most of the rest, with 50,000 visas a year awarded by lottery for diversity. Again, refugee resettlement and asylum aren't 'immigration' as such, because rather than folks who have been invited, they are folks we won't turn away. "Give us your tired, your poor" isn't immigration law, and never has been. Folks can get a bit romantically softheaded about Emma Lazarus when they think about immigration. What, some "wretched refuse" should get a visa, uninvited, before YOU, my wife? Immigration law, like it nor, has to have priorities. Those who are invited should be treated better than those who are not.)
Family-based immigration means the following categories: immediate relatives of citizens (spouses, kids and parents), the spouses and kids of legal permanent residents (LPRs), adult children of citizens, adult children of legal permanent residents, and siblings of U.S. citizens.
While the first category, the immediate relatives of citizens, is numerically unlimited, it IS counted -- and what it is counted against, are the visas available for all the other categories. You COULD think of this as recognizing that immediate family (spouses and kids) are closer than extended family (brothers and sisters), but that's not right.
Because this is where the algebra kicks in. Every time somebody like me (your husband, the spouse of a U.S. citizen) gets an immigration visa, that's one fewer available for all the other categories: the spouses and kids of legal permanent residents, adult children of both citizens and LPRs, and siblings of U.S. citizens.
The thing to understand is that Congress promises FAR more immigration than it delivers, and it tries to manage the demand by waiting list. It doesn't work.
See, there is a difference between "immediate relatives", and everybody else. I love my five brothers and four sisters -- but I LIVE with my wife and son.
That's Family Values 101: and it does NOT apply to U.S. immigration law. As you see below, this is simply the most anti-family, anti-marriage, and anti-immigrant provision of U.S. law.
It wasn't always this way, exactly. That is, before the 1986 amnesty, the wait for the spouse of a legal permanent resident was only about one year.
Again, let's use you and me as a f'r instance -- only this time, let's say that YOU'RE the foreigner.
Say I get my green card this morning, an employment-based visa because I can grow amoebae into microchips, or something. I call you up, my high school sweetheart from back home in Bangalore, or Oaxaca, or Karachi or Qingdao or wherever, and we get married this afternoon. This being the 21st century (and a summary example, anyway), say you have our firstborn in a U.S. hospital tomorrow morning, and I file my immigration petition for you, tomorrow afternoon.
Say further, you are here (which sure makes the wedding convenient) as a foreign student. (Don't laugh, I know people in these circumstances -- and worse.) So now you are the wife of a legal permanent resident AND the mother of a U.S. citizen (born here, 14th amendment).
You are also a foreign student, which is a NON-immigrant visa. Should you leave the country, you will no longer be allowed to return, even as a student -- because you are now an "intending immigrant", being as how you're my wife.
And if, as a wife and new mom, you either graduate or drop out of school, a clock starts -- since you are now here illegally. After 6 months, should you leave (say, to show off the new baby to your mom back home), you cannot return EVEN WITH A LEGAL VISA for 3 years.
If it was a year of unlawful presence, that's 10 years.
Face it: you're outlawed -- or exiled.
That cruel-as-a-fish-hook innovation in immigration policy was enacted by the Congress in 1996 -- when it refused the Jordan Commission's recommendation to deliver visas to LPR spouses and kids.
Like I said, it wasn't always like this. It's a simple supply and demand issue: the more legal permanent residents there are in America, the more demand there is for LPR spouses and kids visas. People are people -- they fall in love, they get married, they have kids.
Before 1986, it was about a one year wait in this category. Not a big deal, really. Folks who argued for the amnesty (I supported it; still do) insisted that it would have no effect on the rest of immigration policy -- but they were wrong.
The 1986 amnesty made 3.1. million more legal permanent residents between 1986-1991.
By 1990, it was clear that this was causing a tidal wave of new demand for the LPR spouses and kids category. The House passed a version of immigration reform then which would have recognized that LPR spouses and kids are "immediate relatives", just like the spouses and kids of citizens. (It would NOT have allowed LPRs to sponsor their parents, nor the extended family category of siblings: those are exclusively privileges of U.S. citizens.)
But the Senate -- which on immigration issues was led, then as now, by Senator Kennedy -- refused. The result was the complicated and ineffective mess we have now.
By 1995, the MINIMUM wait in this category was 3 years. The Jordan Commission found this to be unacceptable -- immoral, in fact. Husbands and wives should not be forced to sleep in separate nations, fercryinoutloud. When Dad (or Mom, for that matter) has a green card, they have made a commitment to America -- and America, a commitment to them.
Forcing people to choose between their marriage vows and their path to U.S. citizenship is simply wrong.
But -- led by groups that consider themselves to be pro-immigration -- Congress refused to give a higher priority to LPR spouses and kids, because (they argued) that would have meant a lower priority for other categories.
In 1995, the Jordan Commission also asked the State Department (which controls visas) for an official count of how many were waiting. Though later (in 1999) State acknowledged that this was a significant UNDER-estimate, the official count then was 1.1 million, with a minimum wait of 3 years.
By 1999, the minimum wait had increased to more than FOUR years. They used to call this "the amnesty echo" -- but it's not going away. Outlawing or exiling immigrant marriages has become a permanent feature of American policy.
Earlier this spring, the minimum wait was four years and two months. After extensive discussions with the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, I concluded that the waiting list was now about 1.5 million husbands and wives, parents and small children of LEGAL immigrants, all of 'em outlawed or exiled by the U.S. Congress.
This is not a popular insight, because it yanks at your conscience. But the proof is damning -- in May, the minimum wait was 4 years and two months. It has been going up by leaps and bounds ever since: today, in August 2006, the MINIMUM wait in this category is 6 years and 11 months.
This has not been a central issue in the immigration debate, despite our best efforts. (As you see below, UniteFamilies.org hired me to help them because they had read some of what I've written about this over the years.) Most of the debate in Congress has focused on illegal immigration, amnesty, "earned legalization", and guest workers.
Still, the original Senate compromise offered by Senators Hagel and Martinez would have done what the House proposed to do 16 years ago, treating LPR spouses and kids as the "immediate relatives" which they are: marriage is marriage. Senator Kennedy objected, and now the Senate bill would exempt the immediate relatives of citizens from the overall count: in effect, exempting a from b in order to increase c, d, and e.
In plain English, to fix the problem that TEN YEARS AGO the Jordan Commission calculated would take 150,000 more visas a year, the Senate has this year proposed (for this category, specifically) 128,000 more visas annually. Having failed to fix it ten years ago, now they have voted a smaller and more complex solution for a bigger problem.
But no one expects this to pass. The House bill has no similar provision, and 'pro-immigration' advocates have allowed illegal immigration to define "comprehensive immigration reform". That's why it's deadlocked.
