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Arizona in April 2010 enacted a law making it a state crime for unauthorized foreigners to be present, prompting Senate Democrats to announce a framework for a comprehensive immigration reform bill before demonstrations in support of legalization around the nation on May 1, 2010. The Democrats' framework was more enforcement oriented than the bill approved by the Senate in 2006, but Republicans predicted it would be difficult to enact immigration reform in 2010. President Obama seemed to agree when he said: "I want to begin work this year" on immigration reform.

Arizona, where almost half of the million foreign-born residents are believed to be unauthorized, enacted the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (SB 1070) on April 23, 2010. Federal law requires foreigners to carry proof of their legal status, and SB 1070 requires foreigners to show IDs to state and local police officers who encounter them for other reasons but suspect they may be illegally in the United States--violators can be fined $2,500 or jailed up to six months. Arizona became the main point of passage to the United States for unauthorized migrants from Mexico about a decade ago, when unauthorized entry attempts  shifted from California and Texas to the Arizona desert.

The Arizona law was criticized by President Obama, who said: "If we continue to fail to act at a federal level, we will continue to see misguided efforts opening up around the country." However, State Senator Russell Pearce (R-Mesa), author of SB 1070, expects the law to result in "attrition through enforcement"--that is, to reduce the number of unauthorized foreigners in Arizona. He said, "When you make life difficult [for the unauthorized], most will leave on their own." U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), the Republican candidate for president in 2008, said: "I think [SB 1070] is a good tool" for Arizona because the federal government has not reduced illegal migration.

Critics, who  predicted  widespread  racial profiling  and  mistaken  arrests  if  the law goes into effect as scheduled on July 29, 2010, sued to block the implementation of SB 1070. The legal issue is likely to turn on whether Arizona police are engaged in lawful "concurrent enforcement" of immigration laws with federal authorities or in un- lawful racial profiling. Since the 1940s, federal law has required immigrants to carry papers showing they are legally in the United States. A 2002 Department of Justice (DOJ) memo reversed a 1996 DOJ memo to conclude that state police officers have "inherent power" to arrest unauthorized foreigners for violating federal law.

The National Council of La Raza led a campaign of unions and church groups that urged governments, tourists, and businesses to boycott Arizona and urged major league baseball to move the 2011 All-Star Game scheduled for Phoenix if SB 1070 is not repealed. About 30 percent of major league baseball players are Hispanic, and half of the 30 major league teams train in Arizona.

Most Americans support the Arizona law. A Pew Research Center poll in May 2010 found 59 percent support for the Arizona law; only 25 percent of respondents supported President Obama's handling of immigration. Over 70 percent of Pew's respondents sup- ported requiring people to present documents showing they are legally in the United States to police if asked, and two-thirds supported allowing police to detain anyone encountered who cannot produce such documents.

The Pew and similar polls suggest wide gaps between elites who favor more immigration and legalization and masses who oppose amnesty and immigration. Former president Bill Clinton on April 28, 2010, said: "I don't think there's any alternative but for us to increase immigration" to help the economy grow and to fix the long-term finances of Medicare and Social Security.

Senate Democrats released a 26-page outline of a comprehensive immigration reform bill on April 29, 2010, the Real Enforcement with Practical Answers for Immigration Reform (REPAIR). The Democrats' REPAIR proposal emphasized enforcement to discourage illegal migration in an effort to win Republican support, but the framework will not be put into legislative language until there are Republican supporters.

Under REPAIR, border enforcement benchmarks would have to be met before legalization can begin; a commission would be created to evaluate border security and make recommendations to Congress within 12 months. REAPIR calls for more border patrol agents and an entry-exit system to ensure that foreign visitors depart as required.

REPAIR would require all U.S. employers to check new hires within six years via an improved E-Verify system, the Biometric Enrollment, Locally-Stored Information, and Electronic Verification of Employment (BELIEVE).  BELIEVE,  to be funded by fees, would be phased in beginning with industries employing large numbers of unauthorized foreigners and require U.S. employers to use scanners to check the validity of new Social Security cards with biometric markers such as fingerprints presented by workers. Civil money penalties for knowingly hiring unauthorized workers would triple.

REPAIR offers a relatively simple path to legal status for an estimated 11 million il- legal migrants. Unauthorized foreigners in the United States by the date of enactment would register and pay fees to obtain a new lawful prospective immigrant status that would allow them to live and work legally in the country. After eight years, they could become immigrants by passing English and civics tests and paying more fees. The proposal promises to clear the backlog in family-based immigration within eight years, in part by lifting caps on immediate relatives of legal immigrants (immediate relatives of U.S. citizens can immigrate without delay, but there are queues for immediate relatives of immigrants).

REPAIR would change the immigrant selection system. Foreigners who earn masters and PhD degrees from U.S. universities in science and engineering and have U.S. job offers could obtain immigrant visas immediately. New antifraud provisions would apply to employers seeking H-1B and L-1 visas for foreign workers with at least bachelor's  degrees, including a requirement that all employers (not just H-1B dependent employers as currently) try to recruit U.S. workers before hiring H-1Bs and not lay off U.S. workers to make room for H-1B foreigners.

For low-skilled workers, REPAIR includes the Agricultural Jobs, Opportunity, Benefits and Security Act (AgJOBS) bill, which would legalize up to 1.35 million unauthorized farm workers (plus their family members) and make employer-friendly changes in the H-2A  program. The H-2B program, which admits up to 66,000 foreigners a year to fill seasonal nonfarm jobs, would add protections for U.S. workers while exempting returning H-2B workers from the 66,000 cap if the U.S. unemployment rate is below 8 percent.

A new three-year H-2C provisional visa would admit guest workers to fill year-round jobs; H-2C visa holders could change employers after one year of U.S. work. H-2C visas could be renewed once, allowing six years of U.S. work, and H-2C visa holders could become immigrants by satisfying integration requirements. The number of H-2C visas is to be adjusted according to unemployment and other indicators, but employers could obtain an H-2C visa for a foreign worker even if the cap has been reached if they agreed to pay higher-than-usual wages and additional fees.

A new Commission  on  Employment-Based  Immigration  (CEBI)  would study "America's employment-based immigration system to recommend policies that promote economic growth and competitiveness while minimizing job displacement, wage depression and unauthorized employment." The CEBI would issue an annual report with recommendations and could declare immigration emergencies when it concludes there are too many or too few foreign workers.

President Obama called the Senate Democrats' REPAIR proposal "an important step" to fix "our broken immigration system." Failure to enact immigration reform, Obama said, would "leave the door open to a patchwork of actions at the state and local level that are inconsistent and, as we have seen recently, often misguided."

The United States is a nation of immigrants that first welcomed virtually all newcomers, later excluded certain types of immigrants, and, since the 1920s, has limited the number of immigrants with annual quotas. Immigration averaged over 1 million per year in the first decade of the 21st century, plus an additional 500,000 unauthorized foreigners a year settled in the country.

Americans are ambivalent about immigration. On the one hand, most are proud that the United States welcomes foreigners seeking opportunity, including the ancestors of most Americans. On the other hand, Americans fear the economic, social, and cultural consequences of immigration. Congressional debates reflect these differences among Americans.

References:

Archibold, Randal C., "U.S.'s Toughest Immigration Law Is Signed in Arizona." New York Times (April 23, 2010).

Borjas, George, Heaven's  Door: Immigration Policy and the American  Economy.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Castles, Stephen, and Mark Miller, The Age of Migration. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Cornelius, Wayne A., Takeyuki Tsuda, Philip L. Martin, and James F. Hollifield, eds., Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004.

Hsu, Spencer, "Senate Democrats' Plan Highlights Nation's Shift to the Right on Immigration." Washington Post (May 2, 2010).

International  Organization  for Migration, World Migration Report. 2010. http://publications.iom.int/bookstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=653.

Martin, Philip L., and Elizabeth Midgley, Immigration: Shaping and Reshaping America. Washing- ton, DC: Population Reference Bureau, 2006.

Martin, Philip, Manolo Abella, and Christiane Kuptsch, Managing Labor Migration in the Twenty- First Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.

Migration News, http://migration.ucdavis.edu/

Pew Research Center, "Public Supports Arizona Immigration Law." May 12, 2010. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1591/public-support-arizona-immigration-law-poll

"Senate: Immigration Reform Stalls," Migration News 14, no. 3 (July 2007). http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=3294_0_2_0

Smith, James P., and Barry Edmonston, eds., The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1997.

United Nations Development Program, Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development. Human Development Report 2009. http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2009/

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