Few states have more at stake in the ongoing congressional debate over immigration reform than Georgia.
Georgia ranks sixth among the states with the largest number of unauthorized immigrants — approximately 440,000 in 2011.
At the same time, Georgia’s foreign-born population accounts for nearly 10 percent of the state’s population. Each year, thousands of legal immigrants arrive in Georgia.
Unfortunately, our nation’s immigration system is woefully inadequate to meet the demands of today’s modern economy. Reforming this system in a comprehensive manner is vital to the future of Georgia and our country.
Border security, of course, must be at the core of any reform plan. Georgia enacted its own state-level immigration law in part because citizens here recognized that the federal government had failed to protect the nation’s borders.
The immigration reform bill recently passed by the U.S. Senate contains large investments in border security personnel and technology. We recognize that other approaches to improving border security also have merit, and hope these ideas will be put forward as the debate in Congress continues. As we have watched the debate, we cannot help but notice there is often more agreement than disagreement.
There seems to be broad acceptance of the need to effectively measure our border’s security and to prevent immigrants from overstaying their visas. We believe that we must gauge our ability to control unauthorized immigration using trustworthy, scientifically valid assessment tools developed by an independent commission. These metrics should be published periodically for public scrutiny. Without such measures, it will be impossible to know whether reforms are successfully controlling unauthorized immigration.
There is also widespread agreement that any immigration reform must be fair to individuals who have stood in line and followed the rules. We, too, agree that individuals who have applied for visas through legal channels should get first priority before any unauthorized immigrant receives a green card, with the exception of individuals brought here as children.
A key component of a revamped system should be reformed guest worker visa programs. Current numerical caps are outdated, arbitrary, and rarely match economic needs. Employers find guest worker programs difficult to use, creating incentives to subvert the law. Visas are not portable, meaning that employees must either stay with their current employer or face deportation. This leaves workers highly vulnerable to exploitation.
We believe that if employers gain access to additional guest workers, they must accept additional restrictions on their ability to hire and exploit unauthorized workers. Georgia’s recent enactment of mandatory E-Verify took a step in this direction. However, it is important to remember that the system still requires improvement, particularly in its ability to identify document fraud.
The big, unresolved issue is the status of the 11 million undocumented individuals already among us. We have concluded it makes little sense, either economically or morally, to require that they remain partial participants in our society. Those who pay all penalties, pass a criminal background check, and fully comply with other rigorous requirements should have the ability to stay here legally, enter the mainstream of American life and eventually apply for citizenship if they choose.
While there is plenty of room for honest disagreement on each of these issues, there is no room for obstruction or delay. Comprehensive immigration reform is too important for America and for Georgia to allow partisan politics to derail effective, durable solutions.
