A "Generous" Immigration Reform Plan

The President has said that he is being "generous" with his ideas for immigration reform. I will take him at his word and suggest to Democrats that they test that premise with amendments for the current legislation.

What should be in the amendments?

Listening to Sen. Perdue today, I heard a short list of four things which are indeed important: fix DACA, improve border security, fix 'flaws' in our current law to end 'chain migration' and to expedite the backlog of immigration cases, and fourth, the Secure and Succeed Act which shifts our immigration policy to a more skill-based approach. In general terms that isn't a bad starting place, but Democrats also have some other things in mind.

Visa Overstays

It's well-known that many people come into America legally using a visa, but they overstay and become 'illegal'. We need a better way to track and catch these people for a quick exportation. People who intentionally use and violate our mechanisms for visits should not be granted much reprieve or legal stays of action.

Better Analysis, Focused Solutions

To ensure we aren't wasting money on boondoggles and ideological posturing, we should use existing data to focus our energies on the places and means people use most to come into the country (whether legally or illegally) for the purpose of staying illegally, and then focus our attention and spending on solutions to those first. Let's not spend a dollar more on a wall or some other 'solution' if it isn't actually a big problem.

Guest-Worker Legal Status

Another important issue is the difficulties people face when they come to work and the difficulty government has of protecting people and measuring economic activities. Workers are often employed at slave wages, with no work protections, and are abused. That needs to stop. To help with this we need a guest-worker legal status for those individuals. That will help us to know who is working and that those people can have some protection of Law where they are working. They would have protections from unscrupulous employers. I suggest that they not receive the minimum wage of American workers, but to enable them to survive there should be another guest-worker minimum wage established. This will enable them to be legal for Social Security and other programs. Employers who want to publicly claim they do not hire foreign workers will then be on the record and they may be dissuaded from hiring so many foreign workers! This should also be good for the economy and for government programs that count foreigner workers and measures their affects on the economy.

Paying for It

Lastly, I'd like to mention the cost of this legislation. We haven't heard discussion of that as much as what should be in the legislation. I would suggest that we debate the relative importance of the immigration "problem" and our national defense spending. If immigration is a problem of great national importance, because of the criminal activities related to it (drug transportation, etc.) then our spending priority compares to and should be paid for from the same pile of dollars. Put Homeland Security and the DoD spending together and ask which is more important, another ship, another aircraft, another airbase the American people don't want or more of the "War on Drugs" spending by the DEA or greater border becurity and Immigration-related things. I suggest the spending for this Immigration reform should come from existing piles of money and it should NOT be another additional burden on the American taxpayer. We know Republicans won't tax the richest 1% to pay for it and we know from recent elections and protest movements that people can't pay more taxes and we know we shouldn't borrow more, so it should come from other sources.

Let's see how generous the president is when Democrats suggest other reforms we've been wanting for decades.