Just fix the law
The SB4 debate at City Hall reveals an immigration system that doesn’t work.
Just follow the law! We heard that line over and over last week when City Council deliberated on joining a lawsuit against Senate Bill 4.
There’s just one problem, and too many ignore it or simply just don’t know: Our immigration laws are broken.
Instead of imagining harsher punishments for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, or deputizing local police for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or spending billions on border security, our politicians should be proposing actual fixes to the law.
They should fix immigration courts that have around a halfmillion cases awaiting adjudication. Rather than hiring more judges, our politicians actually cut court budgets in 2011. The wait-time for a hearing is more than two years. Any path to a legal answer on refugee status or documentation essentially forces immigrants into this jurisprudential purgatory. That’s two years of living, working, driving and raising families while suffering in immigration limbo. That’s what following the law looks like.
Following the law also means facing barriers that didn’t exist for past generations.
“Everybody except for Native Americans came here as legal immigrants,” District F Councilman Steve Le said as he cast a vote opposing Houston joining the anti-Senate Bill 4 lawsuit.
Until World War I, immigration law in the United States was little more than a lice check at Ellis Island or Galveston Island. Some didn’t even have to pass that test.
Former two-term Texas Commissioner of Agriculture Todd Staples, a Republican, wrote in his 2013 book, “Broken Borders, Broken Promises,” about how his great-grandfather simply jumped off a trans-Atlantic ship and swam to shore.
Hundreds of thousands of others just skipped the line thanks to federal bills like the Cuban Adjustment Act and Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act.
But this legal history didn’t stop people who trace their roots to Ireland or Cuba or Vietnam from standing before City Council — or speaking as a member of City Council — during the SB4 debate and wondering out loud why today’s immigrants have so much trouble following the law.
People didn’t change and neither did the reasons they emigrate. The laws are simply different. They’re also arcane and make the process for legal immigration inaccessible for many.
“That’s in part why the undocumented population, particularly from Mexico, is as large as it is,” Thomas A. Saenz, president and CEO of MALDEF told the Chronicle editorial board. “Because many of those folks are in line to get visas, but they’re expected to wait 12 years, or longer in many cases, before their number comes up.”
So what is Congress doing to address this broken system? The Republican-run House is preparing to vote on a set of bills that will raise penalties for illegal re-entry and cut funding for local governments that don’t cooperate with federal immigration officers.
These bills won’t help families and workers integrate into American society. They won’t give local communities the resources they need to handle the challenge of new Americans.
The only people punished will be Houstonians like Juan Rodriguez, the subject of Chronicle reporter Olivia P. Tallet’s “Out of Time” series. Rodriguez has checked in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the past decade after coming to Texas without proper documentation to join his wife and first-born daughter. He’s paid more than $30,000 in legal fees over that time, all while raising a family, and has received a 60-day reprieve from deportation. By any reasonable measure, Rodriguez is following the path tread by past generations. He deserves an immigration system that reflects American values. Right now it just reflects an intractable Congress.