DHS Taking a Better Approach to Enforcement, But No Substitute for Reform

Washington, DC - On Thursday April 30th, 2009, the Department of Homeland Security announced that new guidelines were being disseminated to enforcement personnel related to workplace raids. A fact sheet on the new policies was issued and the New York Times ran a story today. The following is a statement by Ali Noorani, Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, a non-partisan pro-immigrant advocacy group in Washington.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security are starting to move in a more helpful direction, but tweaking enforcement policies is no substitute for reform. Going after genuine criminal threats and focusing on prosecutions of employers exploiting the current immigration mess is a good first step. But even if fewer workers and families are rounded up by ICE enforcement actions, they still face the same truncated due process, deplorable detention conditions, and drive-by deportations that plague the system now.

Let's be clear, we will simply not enforce our way back to control of immigration yet enforcement needs to be part of any immigration system that works. When 5.4% of the American workforce is undocumented and not protected by basic labor laws, we have a problem that goes beyond raids. When 12,000,000 people live outside the system in a parallel society of undocumented and mixed-status families, we have a problem that goes beyond fantasies of mass deportation or mass expulsion. When our legal immigration system keeps families separated for decades and makes legal immigration next to impossible for workers, we have a problem that goes beyond simply enforcing the current law. If we continue to have two sets of workers -- one legal and covered by labor law and another excluded and not covered by our laws -- all workers will continue to lose ground and honest employers who want to be within the law will continue to be undercut.

We need vigorous enforcement from ICE and DHS that respects basic rights, but that alone will fail if it is not combined with vigorous enforcement of labor laws and enforceable immigration laws enacted by Congress. Such an approach would strengthen our economy while defending the livelihood of American families, American workers, and honest American employers.

The President has it right and repeated it at his press conference on Wednesday; we need a comprehensive solution to fixing immigration. We need legal channels so people come with visas, background checks and health screenings and we need to move the people already here into the system so that they are fully taxed, not afraid to make contact with authorities, and become integral parts of the society in which they live and work.

We've incorporated immigrants into our society in a legal manner for hundreds of years dating back to before we were even a nation. If we fail to do the same with today's immigrants, we will do so at our own peril and at a great cost to our national identity.