Posted on 11/18/2008 10:37:23 PM PST by Kukai
As the Bush administration winds down and the Obama administration ramps up, immigration policy is right where it was at the start of the Bush administration: an unfulfilled promise, many Hispanic advocacy groups and immigration policy researchers say.
“It’s been disappointing,” says Dr. Michele Waslin, a senior policy analyst with the Immigration Policy Center. “President Bush had spoken very strongly about the need for immigration reform. He came from Texas. He really understood the need for immigration reform. But, unfortunately, that fell apart in Congress.’
The failure to pass a bipartisan immigration reform bill in the spring of 2007 is atop most advocates’ minds as they prepare for a new administration that has made the same campaign vow: to pass an immigration bill to help many of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country earn a path to legal status.
Many acknowledge it will be difficult for Obama to achieve — even more so as he grapples with the nation’s crumbling economy — but they plan to demand it anyway.
A coalition of immigrant advocates called the Fair Immigration Reform Movement is already planning a mass demonstration on the mall on Obama’s second day in office, Jan. 21.
As the groups look ahead to the next administration, the current one is touting what it believes have been signs of success in its approach to immigration: in enforcement as well as naturalizations.
Since a far-reaching immigration bill failed to clear Congress last year, the Bush administration posted record numbers of deportations of undocumented immigrants: almost 290,000 in the 2007 budget year and 350,000 more in the budget year that ended in September.
“We are seeing the kinds of results that the country hasn’t seen for many years,” Michael Chertoff, Bush’s Homeland Security secretary, said in a speech last month.
He quickly added that tough enforcement of immigration laws must continue before a comprehensive immigration bill could gain public support.
“It is my conviction that if we do that, there will come a time in the near future where the American public will finally say, ‘OK, we trusted the government to control immigration,’” Chertoff said. “’Now we are prepared to open the door to more legal immigration or to more legal temporary workers.’”
On the immigrant services side, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services completed more than 1.17 million naturalization applications in the 2008 budget year — after averaging just below 600,000 a year in prior years of the Bush administration.
“Our (enforcement) numbers are up and indicators of illegal immigration are apparently down, according to the department statistics and recent studies,” says Pat Riley, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “So we see that as an indication that what we are doing is working.”
Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer with the Pew Hispanic Center, says while it does appear that the flow of undocumented immigrants coming into the United States appears to have slowed, it may have more to do with the bad economy rather than tougher enforcement.
“It coincides with stepped-up enforcement and it coincides with a rotten economy,” Passel says. “I’m not sure it’s theoretically possible to know what is caused by the economy and what is caused by enforcement. There was about a 30 percent drop in the number of illegals coming into the country between 2001 and 2002. It seems to be highly related to the economic conditions.”
Rosalind Gold, senior director of policy research and advocacy for the National Association of Latino and Elected Officials Educational Fund, applauded the Bush administration efforts in processing more than a million citizenship applications in the past budget year.
Applications soared early last year amid the rancorous immigration reform debate and unprecedented campaigns among immigrant advocacy groups and Spanish-language TV networks to promote citizenship. To top it off, many sought to file applications before a mid-2007 increase in immigration fees. Some of the fees doubled. Gold says it now takes $675 to get a naturalization application started — a 69 percent increase.
“We’re very glad to see the progress the administration made in dealing with the dramatic increase of applications that occurred due to Fiscal 2007,” Gold says. “We were very glad to see they were able to make sure so many people were naturalized.”
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reported reducing naturalization processing times to nine to 10 months, on average, from the 16- to 18-month average processing times that applicants saw in the fall of 2007.
The agency hired 1,600 new adjudication officers in the past budget year to deal with the onslaught of applications. They also worked with the FBI to tackle a big backlog in the FBI’s name-check process that verifies there is no negative information on citizenship applicants. In the fall of last year, there were 350,000 applicants in the name-check backlog. Now, that number is down to 37,000.
Gold said there are still issues that she hopes the Obama administration will address in the agency.
Some immigration offices — in North Carolina and South Carolina, for instance — still face 14- to 15-month processing periods, even though the national average has decreased.
She says the agency needs to make management changes to address the deeper backlogs in some offices. She also says that the immigration services agency, which is now completely funded by fees paid by the immigrants, should also receive money from Congress to purchase better technology, which will help reduce caseloads.
Several Hispanic and immigration policy groups challenge the notion of success that the Bush administration sees in its enforcement numbers, particularly when it comes to beefed-up, high-profile workplace raids.
They predict that President-Elect Barack Obama — who won two-thirds of the Hispanic vote in the Nov. 4 election — there will be continued enforcement, but with a different focus.
“Only a very small part of the 350,000 (deportations) was caused by the very high-profile and, I’d argue, harmful worksite raids that occurred throughout the country,” says Don Kerwin, vice president for programs at the Migration Policy Institute. “Probably one thing you’ll see less focus on are those kinds of dramatic raids that entail criminal prosecutions of large numbers of workers.
Clarissa Martinez, director of immigration for the National Council of La Raza, notes that President George W. Bush had promised the same thing, but didn’t keep it.
“The problem with Mr. Bush is that when he decided to make a push for immigration reform, it was too little, too late,” Martinez says. “Even though there were attempts to craft bipartisan legislation, he wasn’t able to muster members of his party to come on board. More than anything that we’ve seen during these eight years, a potential legacy he was building — which was, really to expand the tent of the Republican Party and to bring in greater Latino support for that party — has been deeply eroded.’’
More like his albatross.
Lordy. The man has lost his marbles.
you just can’t win by pandering
Mr. Bush, your legacy is the death of your party, and quite possibly the death of our country. I don’t know how you sleep at night...
You sure this isn't ScrappleFace?
Bush is just another Ivy League goofball who believes the Marxist indoctrination he received at Yale. He and his father have done incredible damage to the Republican brand, along with all the other RINO’s.
The Bushes believe in big government “helping” people, their charity is our misery.
Immigration reform = open borders that say “cha-ching” for nothern-wandering peasants from Mexico.
free hospital care
free education for the kids (meals #1 & #2 included)
free housing via HUD
free cash from SSI
free food from WIC (meal #3)
preferred admissions into colleges
preferred financial aid
free social security that they have not contributed to
no need to speak the native language or assimilate
yes, the USA offer so much Mexico doesn’t...and now as Obama wants to lessen sentences for gang members (his track record coddles criminals - see Illinois/Chicago record) gangs will soon rule our streets, just like good old Mexico.
thank you Jorge Bush, hearing blaring polka music at 4 AM with people firing off rounds is my idea of a wonderful immigration policy
amnesty is coming...Barry Soetero will do everything in his Kenyan soul to make it happen as 12,000,000 new Latino citizens will carry him to 2016...
buh bye USA, welcome 3rd World...if you haven’t been to your local Home Depot or liquor store lately, you must realize that Mayberry is gone, welcome Tijuana.
Which one?
did I forget, MeCHA, LULAC and La Raza want to enforce all Affirmative Action programs...
preferred hiring practices
preferred government contracts
social services/counseling/clinics for immigrants
ACLU attorneys
What an idiot.
Yeah, the kind of legacy to be proud of! Unfortunately, I think Bush is caught up in this because some of his family is Hispanic and from Mexico. He is under this impression that we need to add people who come here illegally when we are already up there in population and this will only encourage more of the same law breaking. Disastrous and he never would win over the ‘Hispanic vote’ because it is unfortunate but today they are becoming the new ‘black vote’ who are seeking out not only strength in numbers but entitlements and having their loyalties elsewhere but not to this country. The same kind who come from third world countries where they are allowed to vote and destroy their own countries time and again and never diverge from the bad policy of those they continually elect. Naturally, they are Demonrats when they come here.
This piece is horribly misnamed. There’s not record of Bush touting anything in the text of the article.
Whatever his rationalization for not enforcing the law and the Constitution, I reject them 1000%
When I googled “Fair Immigration Reform Movement “, I didn’t like what I saw—reads like pro amnesty—nothing on chain migration and more drive through anchor baby births. With amnesty, chain migration will eliminate the USA essentially. Is this going to be another one of those May Day parades like a few years ago? Who is going to led the counter protest? It is not an issue to be quiet on.
Bush did more to increase the Hispanic population in America by his neglect of our border and refusal to enforce immigration laws than anyone I know of.
Perhaps this fellow think all South Americans, Central Americans and Mexicans should have a birthright of American citizenship.
I wasn't born in a Latin American country, and I don't want to live in one. If I did, I would go to Mexico. There I would be expected to learn THEIR language and adopt THEIR customs. If they come HERE - to an ANGLO country - they should reciprocate. That is something the author of this piece, Bush, McCain and Ted Kennedy are apparently incapable of comprehending.
Did Bush have an immigration policy? I must have missed the announcement.
I have no problem with the Bushes helping people... just so long as they use their own money.
American people are extremely generous and I do believe that each individual is more than capable of deciding who they want to “help”.
Big government never really helps anyone but itself.
His legacy is Obama.
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