The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

New Senate Immigration Compromise 'Falls Short' of Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Feature Story by Tyler Lewis - 5/25/2007

The Senate has finally proposed a resolution to the long stalemate around comprehensive immigration reform and the nation's roughly 12 million undocumented workers.

On May 17, Senate leaders, working with House leadership of both parties, presented a compromise bill that they believe will end the long impasse on immigration reform in Congress. 

However, civil rights groups said that the new bill is "nowhere near close" to what is needed to fix the nation's broken immigration system.

"The Senate immigration bill currently under consideration today is seriously flawed," said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR).  "[However], many of us agree that it's an important first step on the road to that goal [of comprehensive immigration reform]."

The bill contains stringent enforcement provisions and will create a guest worker program that drop the 40 year focus of family reunification for a complex point system designed to favor highly-skilled workers.  Civil rights groups say that this system would undermine family reunification by eliminating many types of visas that are currently available to relatives.

"The proposed system is inconsistent with deeply held American values and these elements of the agreement must be addressed in order to win the support of the Asian American community," said Karen K. Narasaki, president and executive director of Asian American Justice Center (AAJC).

The Senate bill resolves the long-standing issue of legalizing roughly 12 million undocumented workers by granting them temporary legal status while they apply for visas and eventual citizenship, but civil rights groups say that the bill does not outline a clear path to citizenship for temporary workers.

"Without a real path to legalization, the program will exclude millions of workers and thus ensure that America will have two classes of workers, only one of which can exercise workplace rights. As long as this two-tiered system exists, all workers will suffer because employers will have available a ready pool of labor they can exploit," said AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney.

In addition, some churches are concerned about their role in helping immigrants maneuver through the legalization process.  "[M]igrants will come to us and ask us for our opinion for help to shepherd them through the process and we want to be able to say with confidence to them that this is a program they should participate in and which will not trap them," said Kevin Appleby of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.  "But at this point, we cannot say that with confidence."

A number of civil rights groups, including the AFL-CIO, LCCR, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), AAJC, and the Service Employees International Union, agreed to a set of principles they felt should be incorporated into any temporary worker program that Congress creates that will protect the rights of immigrant and native-born workers. 

"Our statement of principles contains recommendations that we believe to be the essential fixes to the current temporary worker programs.  It's clear that the Senate deal comes nowhere close to satisfying these principles with respect to worker protections," said Henderson.

Civil rights groups said they intend to work with Senate and House leadership to incorporate the principles and get a better bill. 

"We are deeply committed to moving legislation forward and seeing this process through to the House and ultimately to the President's desk. We salute the senators who have taken the first step and look forward to engaging in the debate to its conclusion," said NCLR President and CEO Janet Murguía.