Congress hides in shadows on immigration

Regardless of the issue, Congress has a way of further complicating the already complex.

Take immigration, for example. Individual members of the U.S. House and Senate have called for comprehensive reform for decades. Most of their colleagues agree, yet do nothing.

In the absence of action, the problem just grows.

The greater the need for action, the slower Congress seems to move. When our representatives finally do something, more often than not, they compound the problem.

That is the case with the Temporary Protective Status program Congress passed in 1990. It was designed to allow undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. until chaos in their homeland subsided.

Haitians faced a cholera epidemic and the ravages of an earthquake. Others faced political instability, rampant crime or the devastation of a hurricane.

The temporary humanitarian program was supposed to be just that, temporary. But in the absence of action to fix immigration challenges, the initial 18-month stays were extended and slowly ratcheted up into years, one 18-month extension at a time.

Today some 50,000 Haitians are living in the U.S. under the TPS program. Hondurans add 57,000; Nicaraguans, 2,500; and Salvadorans, 200,000.

The Trump administration announced last week that further extensions would be denied Nicaraguans. The fate of Hondurans and Salvadorans awaits further analysis by the State Department. Haitians will learn next week whether they will get another extension.

Over the past 17 years, the asylum-seekers had children. Born on U.S. soil, these children automatically obtained the citizenship their parents dream of, further complicating the immigration conundrum.

These children also are better off than those whose parents brought them here as infants or toddlers, and who have achieved adulthood in America and are Americans in every way save for citizenship. These young people, about a million strong, are called Dreamers, a name derived from the 2001 Dream Act that would have given them a path to citizenship.

Because of congressional inaction, President Obama in 2012 announced a temporary program called DACA — short for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — that let Dreamers emerge from the shadows, pass background checks and work without fear of deportation. But in September, President Trump ordered an end to the program, calling it amnesty. He did, however, urge Congress to pass a replacement before DACA protections ended in March.

They are all part of the 11.3 million undocumented immigrants for whom Congress has failed to craft a cogent policy. Members resist solving even a single challenge, fearful that amendments will raise other contentious issues.

So immigration policy is left to the White House and it’s high on the list of President Trump’s goals. He favors a hard line against newcomers and has proposed a number of policies some see as draconian, uncharitable, even un-American.

Study after study shows immigrants play an important and necessary role in the U.S. economy. Trump has first-hand experience on that count. His Mar-a-Lago resort hires temporary workers every winter season to do jobs Americans won’t.

The Trump Mar-a-Lago problem plays out all across America. Thousands of immigrants fill temporary jobs in countless businesses.

Farm workers, laborers, yard workers, tradesmen of every description. Pass by any South Florida construction site and listen to the voices. The lingua franca is Spanish or Haitian.

Their citizenship is dubious. Some are here under the protection of the TPS program. Others have over-stayed tourist visas. Some are the children of undocumented parents. Still others are the U.S. born children of TPS parents.

In the face of congressional inaction, Trump has offered what many believe is a xenophobic, multilayered solution summed up in a single phrase: “get tough.”

It starts with his campaign promise to build a wall along the Mexican border, which he argues will stop illegal entry. It includes the deportation of undocumented immigrants who run afoul of the law, no matter how insignificant their infraction. And it includes a dramatic reduction in the number of visas given aspiring immigrants.

Much of Trump’s tough approach to immigration needs no congressional approval. But much of it does.

If past congressional performance is any indication, comprehensive reform remains a distant hope. As a result, our nation’s immigration policy — on TPS, Dreamers, deportation standards, family visas, temporary workers and more — will be built piecemeal by executive fiat, rather than by those elected to represent us.