ARIZONA REPUBLIC: Migrants to return voluntarily under bill
Some doubt plan by Kyl will work

Billy House
Republic Washington Bureau
July 20, 2005

WASHINGTON - The millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States would have to agree to first return to their home countries if they ever wanted a chance to work or live here legally, under a new Republican immigration reform proposal.

The legislation, announced Tuesday by Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas as their "Comprehensive Enforcement and Visa Security Bill," also emphasizes tighter border security, such as authorizing 10,000 new Border Patrol agents and 1,000 new smuggling and immigration-violation inspectors.

But some immigrant advocates and immigrants said Tuesday that it is unlikely that most undocumented workers now living and working in the United States would voluntarily step of out of the shadows to be returned to their home countries with little guarantee they could soon return.

And how the bill would address the more than 10 million undocumented immigrants already living and working in the United States represents its starkest contrast to a bipartisan measure introduced in May by Arizona's senior GOP senator, John McCain, along with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and others.

But Kyl called his and Cornyn's bill "the most comprehensive legislation introduced to date."

"We will have a situation where everybody who is employed in the United States will be employed legally," Kyl said of his bill. "We'll be working within the rule of law, we will have a secure interior, and we will have a secure border."

Added Cornyn: "Those who are here today illegally will have to return, every one of them, to their country of origin."

That requirement is seen as a contrast to the McCain-Kennedy bill, which would set up a program for undocumented workers already in the country to obtain temporary visas after paying a fine, a process that could put them on track to become permanent residents or return home in six years.

The competing bills underscore how Arizona's two senators both have identified illegal immigration, border security and the need for foreign workers as paramount issues for their state and nation.

Yet the two men have come up with legislative prescriptions that lead in different directions. It remains uncertain which approach, if either, Congress is more likely to embrace as a cure.

Indeed, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said last week that he did not expect Congress to act on an immigration reform bill until next year, adding that any measure will have to be "a bipartisan" approach.

But Kyl on Tuesday noted that the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which he and Cornyn sit, has scheduled a hearing on their bill for July 26. He said he hopes a reform measure could be voted on by this fall.

Specifically, the Kyl-Cornyn bill requires undocumented immigrants to admit their unlawful status under oath and voluntarily submit themselves to mandatory departure to their home country within five years after stepping forward.

In that way, Cornyn said, the plan doesn't immediately have to "uproot people."

There would be incentives to leave the United States sooner within that five year period, however.

For instance, after the first year, the immigrant would be subject to a $2,000 penalty for each year he or she failed to depart. After arriving back home, the immigrant then could apply to re-enter the United States legally, though with no special priority.

Ways immigrants might seek to re-enter the country would include a new temporary worker visa status, dubbed "W" non-immigrant, that would be created under the bill to cover foreign workers who had been matched with U.S. jobs that Americans won't do.

Immigrants could be admitted to work under that temporary worker status for up to two years. But they would have to return to their home country for at least one year before they could reapply for "W" status. The total period of admission for a "W" non-immigrant could not exceed six years, under the bill.

Kyl said his bill would restructure current visa numbers to provide as many as 75,000 to 80,000 new slots.

The measure also would call for a study to determine how the United States could expedite issuing green cards, which give official permanent residency status in the United States, and how many might be necessary, depending on how many people would seek them after leaving the United States.

"The key here is to ensure that the documentation that's used, the process that's used for verification and the enforcement, both electronically and on the ground, are so thoroughly overlapping and workable that at the end of the process here no one is going to be employed illegally," Kyl said.

"And woe to the one that is, because the person doing the employment is going to have a significantly enhanced penalty."

A study commissioned by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Hispanic Center and released in June found that 6.3 million foreigners are working in the United States without legal authorization to be in the country. They represent about 4.3 percent of the nation's workforce.

The same study estimated the number of undocumented immigrants in the country at 10.3 million to 11 million, with about 500,000 of those in Arizona.

One of those workers, Jesus Garcia, an undocumented immigrant who lives in Tucson, said Tuesday that he supports the McCain-Kennedy legislation but not the proposed Kyl-Cornyn bill.

Garcia was born in Sonora and has lived illegally in the United States for more than a decade, first in the Valley and then in Tucson. The 48-year-old construction worker and his wife, also an undocumented immigrant, have three children, the youngest a baby girl born in September.

He said the proposed Kyl-Cornyn law, if passed, would punish people and their families who have lived in the United States for years without papers. Realistically, he said, the Kyl-Cornyn proposed legislation gives undocumented immigrants in the United States no hope for a green card.

"What about people who are living here, like me?" Garcia asked. "People who pay taxes? In my check, I pay about $60 every week for Social Security and Medicare. . . . My life is here. I have a family here; I have kids. Within five years, I would have to go back (to Mexico)? It's not fair. It's not just."

Immigrant advocates on Tuesday also roundly panned the Kyl-Cornyn proposal. And some, including Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, said its lack of bipartisan support suggests it won't have a long shelf life in the ongoing immigration debate.

Since last year, President Bush has been calling on Congress to adopt an immigration reform plan that includes a guest-worker provision.

Kyl and Cornyn said they are talking with their colleagues in the Senate, including Democrats, about their bill. But immigrant advocates doubted many Democrats would sign on as co-sponsors.

"We are pleased that they (Kyl and Cornyn) have added their voices to the many working on reform," said Judy Golub, senior director of advocacy at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

But Golub also said the mandatory departure provision would discourage participation because "there's not a reasonable expectation that people can come back in a reasonable period of time." "People will not sign up for this. Why would they risk family, home and work for a 'report to deport' requirement?" added Kelley, of the National Immigration Forum.

"I don't think immigrants would be willing to leave their house, jobs, family, community, and voluntarily leave the country," said Rene Franco, director of the Catholic Social Service of Tucson's Immigration and Citizenship program.

Franco, whose program helps immigrants through the legalization and citizenship process, predicted the Kyl-Cornyn bill "will create an economic, social and familial chaos."

Michele Waslin, immigration policy research director at the National Council of La Raza, said her group simply can't support such a measure if it does not have a path to permanent residency. "That is our bottom line," she said.

Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates better enforcement of immigration laws and reduction in foreign workers, said he believes the border security and other enforcement measures in the Kyl-Cornyn bill look promising, at least on paper.

But he, too, urged Congress to act soon on immigration reform because next year is an election year, saying, "The chances of anything getting passed go down the closer you get to an election."

Reporter Susan Carroll contributed to this article.