Some of you may recall that, back in 2013, when the U.S. Senate was still occasionally working for the people of the United States, it passed S. 744, the "Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act," a genuine bipartisan attempt to provide comprehensive immigration reform. No sooner was it passed by a majority of more than two-thirds of the Senate that a great hue and cry emerged among the chattering classes of the vast, right-wing conspiracy regarding, of all thing, the length of the bill.
True, the bill clocks in at 1198 pages. But that's because it's comprehensive, everybody. It was intended to resolve the fate of 11 million stateless people, and to otherwise provide for a right regarded in this country as fundamental--the right to travel. It was intended to unleash the economic power of millions of travelers from around the world, seeking to fit into the complex economy of a nation of more than 300 million people. It was designed to affirm the better parts of our history and heritage as a nation of immigrants. That's hard to do in the Post-It note fashion by which we now communicate with each other. And while the PATRIOT Act, which most Republicans surely regard as a great accomplishment, only clocks in at 131 pages, that merely proves that it's much easier to destroy than it is to create.
Anyway, the objections concerning the length (and other details) of the bill were heard by House Republicans, who saw the bill as a threat to their right to hold office and do nothing. So they did nothing with it. And, today, the aforementioned 11 million souls are still waiting.
Now, as someone who was expected by one of his college professors to read "David Copperfield" in a single afternoon, I'm not particularly impressed with the whining of Congresspeople who, after all, have staffs (paid by the taxpayers) to help them read, digest, and advise regarding the pros and cons of all legislation, lengthy and otherwise. Too, our elected representatives spend quite a bit of time in three-hour lunches with their contributors; maybe it would help if they shaved them down to two-hour lunches.
Never let it be said, however, that I have ignored the groaning of Congresspeople, burdened as they are to actually do the job they were elected to do. Herewith is my proposed text for an immigration reform bill that, although not comprehensive, gets at the heart of our failure to move forward on a national priority of paramount importance. It fits neatly onto one page, so that not even the dullest Congressperson can complain about the length:
Sections 212(a)(9)(B)(i)(I) and (II) of the Immigration and Nationality Act are hereby repealed.That's it. Those sections refer to the three and ten-year bars from reentry to the United States by foreign nationals who have been present in the United States for more than 180 days (or, for the ten-year bar to apply, one year) without being documented. All I'm asking Congress to do is to make the U.S. Code just a little bit tinier by taking those two subsections out of it. Because those two subsections, more than any other reason, are the reason 11 million stateless folks are with us today. If they could "self-deport" without losing all prospects of ever returning to the U.S., where many of them have U.S.-citizen families, and many others have a wide range of U.S. connections--friends, jobs, other business and cultural interests--I can almost guarantee you that the "problem of all those illegals" would solve itself overnight.
The undocumented would be free to put themselves out of harm's way from the U.S. government, and to then justify their ability to return to the U.S. on a lawful basis, which most of them had done in the first instance. They could then be re-evaluated by said government on a case-by-case basis, to weed out the criminals from the family members, the employees, the artists, the (dare I say it) job-creators we so desperately need. They would stop being seen as just a "blob" of "illegals," and could actually start being treated like what they are--human beings.
And it would be win-win on the political side as well. Republicans would get the self-deportations they crave; Democrats would get the human-rights relief they crave, and everyone could then focus on solving other problematic aspects of immigration, such as border security, visa availability and processing times for immigration petitions. Dare we dream? We might even actually have comprehensive reform at some point. And yes, in the interests of full disclosure, I'll note the economic stimulus this would provide for my colleagues, and those of my wife's, in the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
There would be no losers, only winners. And it takes less time to read my proposed bill than it takes to read the PATRIOT Act (or this blog post, for that matter). Get with it, Congress.
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