Now that Congress passed the universal health care bill, immigration, some might think, will be the next reform on President Barack Obama’s checklist. Well, not so fast.
Opposed to popular expectations, the U.S. immigration system has remained a marginalized issue in the Obama administration. It was barely mentioned in the President’s January 2010 State of the Union Address, a phenomenon that led to negative reactions by the U.S. ethnic press. Though Obama has many times called for a comprehensive immigration reform, he hasn’t yet discussed the topic extensively, a sign that his administration now has a different set of priorities—education and health care, for instance. But with the passing of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, will the priorities on Obama’s checklist change?
“Now that the health care bill has passed, the administration’s priorities will be the economy and job creation,” said Donna Van Handle, Dean of International Students. When Obama finally addresses the immigration issue, Van Handle expects to see an opportunity for the estimated 12 million illegal aliens in the U.S. to apply for citizenship. She hopes to see the path to permanent residency streamlined with a shorter wait period for both legal and illegal aliens.
These seem to be the questions the Obama administration wants to address as well. According to the White House, Obama is in support of stronger border control, facilitating the legal immigration process and enforcing a law against employment of illegal immigrants. As he said in a March 18 statement, he is committed to “fix our broken immigration system.”
But many are skeptical to Obama’s approach in tackling the U.S. immigration reform. Republican representatives Lamar Smith, Gary Miller and Sue Myrick blame the Obama administration for failing to enforce effective immigration laws. They formed a Reclaim American Jobs Caucus that seeks to make the connection between unemployment rates and illegal immigration apparent. “The numbers are simple,” said Miller in a 2010 video released by NumbersUSA, a nonpartisan organization fighting to reduce immigration numbers. “At last estimate, there were more than eight million illegal immigrants in the U.S. labor force,” he added. “And there are more than 15 million unemployed American citizens and legal immigrants.”
“I’m genuinely tickled at the idea that undocumented people somehow have control over the unemployment rate,” said Daniela Pila ’12, who organized Mount Holyoke international students in a spring break trip to Boston to explore U.S. immigration issues. Pila believes that the unemployment rate in America is mostly related to the recent crash of the financial and real estate markets than to undocumented migrant workers. If Obama manages to address the immigration reform by the end of the year, Pila expects to see changes in border control and tourist and student visas.
Yet the chances are that the Obama administration won’t get to tackle immigration issues in the near future. Tensions around the recent health care bill, Pila noted, will prevent the President from focusing on the much anticipated immigration reform. “Since future bills will depend on how the healthcare bill will play out, it’s tough to say that Obama will address immigration reform by the end of 2010, and to an extent, the end of his term,” she said.
Unity remains one of the fastest ways for Congress to march toward an effective immigration reform. As Van Handle said, both political parties need to work together to tackle this issue. “If such a bill is to be passed,” she said, “it will take a truly bipartisan effort.”
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