Second Thoughts: Cracking the Door for Immigrants
It was a time of sweeping political declarations -- remember Newt
Gingrich and his Contract With America? -- and everyone seemed to agree
that everything was wrong with immigration policy. Critics said the system
was so lax that terrorists and freeloaders could slip by border guards
with ease or stay in the country undetected. They said immigrants abused
political asylum, defrauded the bureaucracy and burdened welfare programs.
The laws passed that year were just as sweeping as the oratory,
restricting not only benefits but also due-process protection for
immigrants. And then, suddenly, the storm passed. An abashed Congress and
many states amended or softened the legislation. Last week, the Supreme
Court ruled twice in favor of immigrants who had challenged aspects of the
laws concerning the mandatory detention and deportation of noncitizens who
have committed crimes. Even so, the 1996 overhaul of the nation's immigration policy has
altered the relationship between the government and immigrants. And while
immigration has ceased to be the polarizing issue it was in the
mid-1990's, the landmark laws enacted then have diminished the rights of
legal immigrants and expanded the classes of immigrants who can be
deported without judicial review. "Many of the most far-reaching aspects of all these laws remain on the
books, and almost all of them are exclusionary in nature," said Michael
Fix, director of immigration studies at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit
policy research organization in Washington. "There have been some striking
rollbacks, but these are very large, comprehensive laws and they remain
mostly in force." Some of the most dramatic results can be seen in the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, which has received huge infusions of money and
manpower. The added resources have not stopped illegal immigration, a
problem that still confounds policy makers. But the I.N.S. has become the
biggest law enforcement agency in the federal government, empowered and in
many instances required to jail and deport more people than ever before.
At the same time, the 1996 laws (the Illegal Immigration Reform and
Immigrant Responsibility Act; the Antiterrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act; and the general welfare reform package) virtually eliminated
the discretionary powers of agency officials to grant exceptions to
individual immigrants. While their effects may have been unintended, those basic provisions
remain intact. "It's a question of the abstract versus the specific," said
Doris M. Meissner, the I.N.S. commissioner from 1993 to 2000. "In the
abstract, of course, people don't want to have illegal immigration. Of
course people don't want criminal aliens here who are a danger. It all
seems very self-evident. But when you really have to grapple with specific
circumstances, it looks very different." MANY lawmakers didn't grasp the scope of the punitive measures they
passed, said Ms. Meissner. "The immigration policy debate shows how
unsettled we are right now about how we view immigration," she added. "And
maybe that's to be expected because looking back, we now know from the
census that this has been the largest decade of immigration in history in
terms of numbers. Over 10 million people came to this country in the
1990's." The two Supreme Court decisions last week will provide limited relief
to some immigrants caught up in the harsh 1996 laws and may bring about
broader changes in some agency procedures. But immigrant advocacy groups
said new legislation would ultimately be needed. In the first case, the
justices ruled that noncitizens who pleaded guilty to crimes before 1996
should not be automatically deported, as required by the new laws.
However, the decision did not deal with the many others who did not plead
guilty but were convicted of crimes and still face automatic deportation,
even when the offenses were minor or committed decades earlier. In the second case, the court said the government could not detain
immigrants indefinitely, even if they had committed crimes. But that
ruling, too, may be limited in its immediate effect because it deals
specifically with immigrants whose home countries refuse to take them
back. Most of the activity aimed at easing the 1996 laws has focused on
restoring welfare benefits that were eliminated for legal immigrants and
refugees. Congress itself reinstated some benefits, but only to those who
arrived in the country before the welfare rules changed in 1996. Needy
people who arrived legally after 1996 have found little relief. One-fourth
of the states provide them with food stamps; only a handful pick up their
Medicaid costs. Earlier this month, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that the state
may not deny Medicaid benefits to immigrants, regardless of their date of
arrival. It is not clear whether that decision will influence other
states. "To be a legal permanent resident used to be a very secure status,"
said Joshua Bernstein, a senior policy analyst for the National
Immigration Law Center. "People couldn't vote, but in most other
circumstances they were treated fairly. Now we've made it into a much more
contingent status, where people can no longer feel sure that fundamental
rights won't be taken away." THE sweeping changes in immigration law did not, in the end, resolve
the problem of illegal immigration, which was the issue, after all, that
provoked all the hue and cry in Washington five years ago. Nor do they
address the concern of those critics who see illegal immigration as a
byproduct of the massive influx of legal immigrants over the past
decade. "They took some baby steps toward fixing our dysfunctional immigration
system," said Mark S. Krikorian, executive director of the Center for
Immigration Studies and an advocate of reduced immigration. "But they also
made some things worse -- and the big reason for that is they consciously
dodged the major issue, which is the level of legal
immigration."
IVE
years on, it takes some effort to recall the full fury of the
anti-immigration hurricane that hit Washington in 1996.
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