The GOP’s latest immigration policy ploy – What could go wrong?

Recent headlines expressed hope that the 114^th Congress would advance bills to facilitate potential growth by addressing critical work visa limits, both temporary ones, such as the H-1B, and permanent resident/green card backlogs.  However, that hope will be overshadowed by the GOP’s new efforts to thwart temporary hope for relief for millions of families and a portion of certainty for companies employing immigrant labor.

In November of 2014, President Obama announced several measures, the most controversial of which is providing approximately five million undocumented immigrants with temporary relief from deportation and separation from family members through “deferred action.”  Yesterday however, House GOP leaders put forward amendments to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill that will cripple the President’s deferred action policy.  This course of action is not innovative and altogether skirts the underlying issue.  It does not provide a legislative solution to effectively and humanely deal with the undocumented immigrant dilemma.  Furthermore, the House GOP’s efforts will contaminate the well and shelve action on any form of an immigration bill until at least 2017.

{mosads}The bill passed the House as amended and the Senate will now be faced with a DHS funding bill containing a “poison pill” that defunds deferred action.  As Fox News points out, “… pushing such legislation through the Senate could be the trickier part, considering they would have to clear a 60-vote hurdle — and Republicans only have a 54-member majority.”  It is likely that the DHS funding bill issue will linger until late-February.  The Hill reported that Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-Ky.) promised the DHS will “remain open,” but how?  Will tea party members in Congress permit any temporary funding extensions, or will this be their line in the sand?  Will a handful of Senate Democrats again hand anti-immigrant Republicans a victory?  Will the President cave in to GOP pressure?

The narrative for 2015’s immigration policy debate is being written in real-time by those who exist in a world of closed doors, narrow hallways, and pompous trimmings of a by-gone era.  Many of the authors are advanced in age, suffer from overly skeptical rural blindness, or rose to power in political environments affected by the aura of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”  They fail to see the future or the fact that visionless, perpetual antagonism is not an answer to any problem.

There is little disagreement that our country’s immigration policies should foster growth and innovation and advance domestic industries.  These policies should provide pathways for the world’s talent and create opportunities for our next generation of bright U.S. students and contribute to the country’s overall job growth.  Our leaders should understand that innovation happens in rooms occupied by talented people seeking what is possible and are willing to take chances and invest time and resources to bring us the next light bulb, power source, or cure for a devastating disease.  Whether it occurs under rooftops in Redmond or coffee shops near the San Francisco Bay, that dynamic synergy can grow and thrive in the U.S. or depart our borders. 

Perhaps a change of scenery is in order for our Congressional leaders.  Maybe they could temporarily lease out an office building somewhere far away from Washington, D.C. where innovators typically labor, sit around tables together, work through the nights and weekends, and create immigration policy solutions.  The long-played game of one side jockeying for advantage over the other in assessing blame is getting pretty old.

It is possible pass legislation that effectively and humanely deals with the undocumented immigrant dilemma while also addressing our country’s critical business immigration needs.  Please abandon the ploys and innovate in 2015.

Weigel, the principal of Weigel Law Office, LLC, in the Kansas City, Missouri area, is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).