Immigration: Let Your Voice Be Heard

Many employers such as restaurants, dry cleaners, construction companies and individuals in our community rely on undocumented workers to fill landscaping jobs, cook positions, tailoring jobs, shoe repair, masonry, housecleaning positions, home health aide workers, pizza delivery, farmhands, etc. When employers find a good worker who is undocumented, sometimes the employer wants to sponsor that employee to become legal.  As our immigration laws exist today, if an
employer wants to sponsor an undocumented person for a “green card” (permanent resident status) the process will take between 6 to 10 years.  There is an additional 5 year waiting period to apply for US citizenship. 

What employer would realistically wait 6 to 10 years for an employee?

Under our current immigration system, any employer who sponsors an undocumented employee who is inside the US, and waits the 6 to 10 years, must watch that employee leave the US to complete the case at the US Consulate in the employee’s country of birth, because that employee is not eligible to complete the process for green card status inside the US.  However, under another provision of our immigration laws, that employee is then barred from returning to the US for an additional 10 years.  Thus, the employer may actually be waiting 16 to 20 years for his employee!

Entire families are buying airplane tickets to fly back to their countries of birth, to attend their consular processing interviews; and the ONLY people earning money out of this process are the airlines; and they are earning a ton of money! 

Why not institute a fine or penalty fee, and allow these undocumented families who have gone through an entire employer-sponsor case successfully, or a family-sponsorship case, to have the option of flying back to their country to consular process, OR to pay a penalty fee to our government so that they can complete their process at the Immigration Office in Hartford, or New York City, or Boston, or inside the US.  The money collected from these penalty fees could be used for additional border security, would give the employers a workforce on a timelier basis, and would address family unity issues.

If a US citizen brother wants to sponsor his Filipino sister, the waiting period is about 24 years. 

If a Permanent Resident parent wants to sponsor his unmarried, adult, mentally challenged son from Mexico (because the son cannot be left alone in Mexico), the waiting period is about 21 years.

Much immigration debate revolves around requiring people to follow our immigration laws, and remain in their country until their cases are completed.  However, this means making an employer wait 6 to 10 years for an employee, making a brother wait 24 years to be reunited with his sister, or making a mother wait 21 years to be reunited with her mentally challenged adult child. 

American employers need to compete in the global economy today, not in 6 to 10 years, or 16 to 20 years.  Family Unity needs to exist today.   In a third world country, 24 years can be a lifetime.

Reducing the severe backlogs which exist in our immigration system today, must be addressed, if our immigration laws are to make any sense at all.  If we want to encourage immigrants to follow our laws, then our laws must make sense. 

Current proposals from both the President and the bi-partisan “gang of 8” state that any new probationary legal status-seeker will be required to go to the back of the line of prospective immigrants, and demonstrate a history of work in the United States, and current employment… in order to earn the opportunity to apply for lawful permanent residency. 

If prospective immigrants must demonstrate a history of work in the US and current employment how does this interact with the sanctions against any employers who employ undocumented workers? 

A dialogue has finally opened between the parties.  If you have an opinion, then
speak up loudly. Contact your US Senators and Representatives and tell them
what you think.  If we all speak up, we can fix our broken immigration system together.