New York City Council

Immigration and Civil Rights Committee

Kendall Stewart, Chair

Hearing on Federal Immigration Reform

April 13, 2007

Testimony by Dr. Diane Steinman

Executive Director, New York Chapter

American Jewish Committee

On behalf of the American Jewish Committee, I want to thank the Committee and Chairman Stewart for this opportunity to speak to the issue of immigration reform, one of the most important issues facing our country today.

American Jews have consistently maintained a deep interest in United States immigration and refugee policy.  Our involvement in these issues is rooted in our religious tradition. The Old Testament tells us:  “The strangers who sojourn with you shall be you as the natives among you, and you shall love them as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

The value placed in Judaism on a fair and compassionate immigration policy is one we share with other communities of faith.  In July, 2006, AJC and many other national and local Jewish organizations, including those on this panel today, joined with more than 150 national and local faith based organizations reflecting the full diversity of American religious life, in a statement of support for comprehensive immigration reform as reflective of the teaching of our religious traditions, which all require us to “welcome our brothers and sisters with love and compassion.”  Together, the leaders of our faith communities affirmed the America symbolized by the Statue of Liberty, which welcomes “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” 

From its founding in 1906, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which is America’s oldest Jewish human relations organization, has been a strong voice in support of immigration, participating actively in many of the major immigration debates of our time:  opposing reductions in the flow of legal immigrants; supporting increased “family unification” immigration; supporting efforts to reduce the flow of illegal immigration, while at the same time calling for civil liberties protections; supporting generous immigration policies regarding refugees who are fleeing persecution, as defined by U.S. law; and supporting programs designed to educate and integrate new citizens.

In light of our values and commitments, embraced by AJC and leaders of the New York Jewish community, we are particularly proud of New York City.  City leaders have embraced immigrants as a wellspring of New York’s vitality and prosperity, and have enacted policies that treat immigrants, both documented and undocumented, with justice and compassion.  Executive Order 124, which ensures access to city services for all  New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status, is an outstanding example of one such policy.  Our city serves as a model for America, and we are particularly grateful to this Council committee for its leadership in educating New Yorkers about immigration reform.  We ask that New York elected officials vigorously press the Bush administration and members of Congress to act now to fix our broken immigration system, and adopt a comprehensive approach to immigration reform.

We believe that comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) is the only approach that can lead both to increased security, so essential in this post-911 world,  and a fair and humane immigration policy. To put it simply, a comprehensive approach maintains that we must secure our borders, but that we cannot achieve true security unless the millions of undocumented immigrants who live among us can come out of the shadows, and unless we can create a legal way for those who must come to America to work to do so, for their benefit and our own. 

KEY CIR PRINCIPLES ENDORSED BY AJC:

• CIR is the best vehicle for dealing with the multiple facets of our immigration system, both addressing enforcement concerns and dealing systematically and fairly with millions of law abiding undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for years.
• A successful CIR policy would involve border security measures that include: (1) intelligence sharing between U.S. intelligence and gatekeeper agencies; (2) increased use of state-of-the-art fraud technology to develop counterfeit-resistant passports and visas and to analyze suspect documents; (3) layers of security with multiple screening point for those department for and arriving in the U.S.; and (4) improvements in the system that tracks foreign nationals who enter and leave the U.S.
• Security must not be achieved at the expense of due process rights for immigrants.  In particular, AJC (1) opposes detention of “aliens” for an unspecified period of time without the opportunity of judicial review; (2) opposes the continued detention of an alien after an immigration judge has determined that the alien poses no flight risk or danger to the community and has ordered the alien released, unless a federal judge has determined that continued detention is appropriate; 3) supports allowing the government to refuse to disclose names and locations of alien detainees it alleges to be linked to terrorist activities, but only if the government’s refusal is subject to judicial review; and (4) opposes the closing of immigration proceedings without a determination by the presiding immigration judge that there is a significant risk to national security, and the availability of federal judicial review of such determination.
• There must be a path to citizenship for law abiding undocumented immigrants who have been here for a substantial period of time, have a demonstrated work history in the U.S., and want to become full members of American society.
• Achieving and preserving family unity must by a priority in CIR, and the plight of immigrant families that have been separated for a long period of time, in many instances because of administrative or visa backlogs, must be addressed.
• CIR should include the DREAM Act, which would legalize those young people living in the U.S. illegally who were brought here as minors by their parents, as well as affording them resident tuition at state colleges and universities.
• There should be a temporary worker program, which would allow individuals to enter the U.S. legally to work for a designated period of time and then return home, as long as this program would: (1) afford these workers the full protection of the law, (2) enhance cross-border cooperation, (3) meet the needs of American employers while at the same time ensuring protection of American workers, and (4) provide for temporary workers the opportunity to legalize their status over time if they so desire.
• No law should make felons out of undocumented immigrants or those who assist them.
• Measures that seek to expand the involvement of local authorities in the enforcement of immigration law, which is a federal, civil matter, are unacceptable.
• Measures should be adopted that would enhance protections of asylum seekers at ports-of-entry, ensure that their treatment in detention centers is humane and subject to appropriate judicial review, and encourage the expansion of alternatives to detention and to less restrictive detention facilities.

THE STRIVE ACT

We have been extremely gratified by efforts by the House of Representatives to revive CIR, which failed in 2006, through the STRIVE Act, which we consider to have many strengths.  We particularly applaud the following provisions:

• A path to legal status for otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants through a new “non-immigrant” visa program for undocumented immigrants present in the U.S. before June 1, 2006. , including spouses and children, valid for 6 years, and authorizing work and travel.  Critically important, it includes opportunity to apply for citizenship, and the DREAM act.
• A “new” worker program, involving the creation of an H-2C Visa program that allows workers to enter the US on a temporary basis, with full labor rights and protections, and that allows workers to apply for legal permanent residency after 5 years, and ultimately apply for citizenship. 
• Protection of US workers from possible impact of the “new” worker program, by giving them access to jobs before they are offered to “new” workers, preventing “new” workers from being employed during labor disputes, and barring employers for hiring “new” workers in areas of high unemployment for workers whose education level is at our below high school diploma.
• Fair, sensible and effective border and interior enforcement measures, including: (1) increased manpower for border enforcement, and increased numbers of ICE agents; (2) cooperation with Mexico on human trafficking, drugs, etc.; (3) strengthened border and ports-of-entry infrastructure; enhanced use of technology and DHS-DOD cooperation; and (5) a meaningful employer verification system with appropriate safeguards.  This system would include: (i) the development of a permanent system by DHS and SSA; (ii) significant penalties for violations; (iii) prohibition of a national ID card; (iv) strong anti-discrimination provisions.
• Appropriate reforms of the family-based immigration system, by including spouses and children in the H-2C Visa program; exempting immediate relatives of US citizens from the annual family-sponsored visa-cap of 480,000; and eliminating the backlog in the family immigration system within 6 years, and hence a major source of illegal immigration.

We wish to make two further points about the STRIVE Act:

• The provision calling for a “trigger” mechanism should be formulated more  precisely.  This provision is intended to ensure the implementation of both the enforcement provisions and the legalization and new worker provisions, and charges the Secretary of DHS with the task of certifying that the enforcement provisions are implemented before the other provisions are implemented. We believe that it would assist the Secretary in discharging his responsibility if the Act specified the criteria that should be applied to determine whether the enforcement provisions are being implemented.  As it stands now, the language is vague, and provides no such criteria.  In light of the vital importance of the legalization and new worker programs, such vagueness is a flaw in the legislation.
• There should be consideration of whether the security benefit provided by the “touchback” provision - which requires heads-of-households who are non-immigrant visa holders to leave during the 6-year period, go to a port of entry, get fingerprinted and re-enter - warrants the magnitude of the burden that would be created for some of these individuals in adhering to the requirement, with the potential undermining of the fairness and effectiveness of the legalization program.

I close by reiterating the importance of a comprehensive approach to national immigration reform, and ask that the City Council and the Mayor serve as forceful advocates for passage of a CIR law during the current session of Congress.