Smarter, streamlined laws needed on immigration

IN a story six years ago in The Oklahoman, Oklahoma City immigration attorney T. Douglas Stump noted the significant hurdles faced by those who wish to come to this country, whether they’re high skilled or not. “It’s an antiquated system. It’s collapsing down all around us,” Stump said.

Six years later, little has changed. As businesswoman Erika Lucas, a native of Mexico, said in a recent visit with The Oklahoman’s editorial board, “We make it really hard to come here legally.”

That difficulty is what drives up the number of immigrants who wind up here illegally — the illegal immigrant population is estimated at 11 million, something President Donald Trump harped on during his campaign in vowing to do something about it.

Earlier this month, Trump announced his support for legislation that would end the practice of U.S. citizens sponsoring parents, siblings and adult children for permanent residence. He also wants to switch to a “merit-based” system that would grade wouldbe immigrants on their potential economic impact. Those with advanced degrees, strong work histories and English proficiency would receive higher grades than others.

If this bill were to become law, it’s estimated it would reduce legal immigration by 50 percent.

As it is, the legal process can be extremely trying. Waits of up to 20 years are not all that uncommon, said Lucas, who is CEO of StitchCrew, a consulting firm that works with venture capital firms and tech startups. She was raised in Mexico, migrated to the United States to learn English, returned to Mexico for a time, then came back to the States for good.

She and Robert Ruiz, president of Scissortail Community Development Corp., both say they would like to see any policy reform take the labor market into consideration.

“If we were to establish a program tomorrow that allowed people to be able to match with employers, pay a fee … I guarantee you a majority of people would pay for that fee to have a legal status,” Ruiz said.

The number of immigrants from any particular country is limited to 7 percent of visas granted, which can result in long waits — and not just for those coming from south of the border. Backlogs of several years exist for professionals with advanced degrees from India and China, for example.

But when “immigration” is debated, particularly in this part of the country, it generally focuses on the illegal influx from Mexico and Central America. Oklahoma is now home to roughly 220,000 immigrants, of which 10,000 are entrepreneurs who employ more than 29,000 Oklahomans. A report this year by U.S. mayors and business leaders said Oklahoma immigrants paid $346 million in state and local taxes in 2014. The state’s 96,000 undocumented immigrants pay more than $50 million annually in state and local taxes, Lucas says.

The notion of expelling them is far-fetched (Trump once said he wanted to, but has eased off that position), but doing so also would take a sizable bite out of the state’s economy.

The American Immigration Council notes on its website that the U.S. immigration system “is very complex, and there is much confusion as to how it works.” What’s needed is a smarter, more streamlined body of laws that, if nothing else, makes 20-year waits in line a thing of the past.