We are a nation in crisis. We are in the midst of a partial government shutdown that is threatening to become the longest in our nation’s history. Real people, real families are being hurt by the inability of our government to find solutions through bipartisan compromise.
It is time for the citizens of this government of, by, and for the people to show the way forward. Mormon Women for Ethical Government has spent the past year working in collaboration with immigration scholars, law professors, and attorneys to craft the following citizens’ proposal to the current gridlock over immigration reform. This proposal is an attempt at genuine compromise and focuses on what is good for the American people, not politicians. Like any fair compromise, it requires concessions from both sides. Immigration is a complex issue, but there is much upon which the majority of concerned citizens agree.
We echo the plea to national leaders made in this statement from our Church leaders last June: “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long expressed its position that immigration reform should strengthen families and keep them together. The forced separation of children from their parents now occurring at the U.S.-Mexico border is harmful to families, especially to young children. We are deeply troubled by the aggressive and insensitive treatment of these families. While we recognize the right of all nations to enforce their laws and secure their borders, we encourage our national leaders to take swift action to correct this situation and seek for rational, compassionate solutions.”
We will not give up on the hope for reasonable compromise and compassion — not when so much is at stake. We urge citizens everywhere to join us in becoming more educated on the issues, to think critically about partisan talking points, to seek out the opinions of experts, to listen to the perspectives of those communities most directly affected, and to band together with other reasonable citizens to push our members of Congress toward practical, effective, and compassionate solutions. We refuse to accept anything less.
Please read our proposal, discuss it, and then share your thoughts with your members of Congress today! (To download a PDF of our proposal, click here.)
A Citizens’ Proposal for Ethical Immigration Reform
SECTION 1: $5.7 BILLION TO BE ALLOCATED OVER THE COURSE OF 5 YEARS FOR THE FOLLOWING SECURITY AND ENFORCEMENT MEASURES:
Innovative Technological Border Security
Strengthen national security by developing innovative technological solutions for identifying people seeking to enter the country and tracking when they enter and exit. Focus first on threats to national security, gangs, drug and human traffickers, and other security threats.
Develop “smart documentation” that is much more difficult to abuse or counterfeit and that can be tracked upon use by other governmental agencies like drivers license divisions, background checks, or employment authorizations.
Invest in better training and resources for DHS officers and agents with incentives that promote a culture that respects and values immigrants as human beings, regardless of race, creed, or income. Trainings should include communication skills (including additional incentives for foreign language fluency), crisis resolution, skills-based de-escalation training, emergency response, anti-discrimination training to prevent racial profiling, and civil rights training consistent with other law enforcement agencies.
Require DHS to provide detailed reports to Congress on its security plan, including physical barriers, fencing, tactical infrastructure, technology, personnel, and the milestones for implementing this plan. Funding after the first year is released each year once the DHS Secretary certifies that at least 75 percent of the goals for the prior year have been reached. Sixty votes would be required in order to prevent funding for each fiscal year. (From Rounds King Bill)
Focus ICE efforts on removing those who threaten the safety of our country and communities, including gangs, drug traffickers, human traffickers, and national security risks. Work with state and municipal law enforcement agencies to come up with a fair, Constitutionally-sound program for not releasing immigrants who have been CONVICTED of violent crimes back into our communities.
Executive Office of Immigration Review
Allocate a portion of the total $5.7 billion for the hiring and training of new Immigration Judges, BIA staff attorneys, ICE attorneys, and USCIS Asylum officers in order to eliminate the years-long backlog and ensure speedy adjudication of future immigration proceedings. Require a well-trained, impartial, diverse pool of IJs with balance of individuals from private bar, NGOs bar, academia, and public sector. Require specialized and ongoing mandatory training of IJs and BIA members on procedural issues, including training on vulnerable populations (domestic violence, sexual assault, children, trafficking). Also requires each IJ to have sufficient support staff, court facilities, and technological resources. (From McCain-Coons Bill)
Immediately improve administrative efficiency by restoring to Immigration Judges the authority to implement administrative closure, with or without consent of DHS attorneys, when good cause is found.
Prevent the denial of credible fear interviews and indefinite detention for asylum seekers in private detention centers by increasing the number of asylum officers at the border. Expand the categories for asylum-seekers to include sex as a particular social group and gang-violence as a qualifying threat. Require that an attorney be appointed to represent unaccompanied minor children, immigrants with serious mental disabilities, and other particularly vulnerable individuals in removal proceedings.
Promote public safety by expressly authorizing the use of Expedited Removal under specific circumstances and by implementing a mandatory reporting system for the collection of detailed data on all cases of expedited removal. Grant express and limited authority for DHS to use Expedited Removal within 100 miles of the border for those with histories of criminal or immigration violations who have been here no more than 30 days.
E-Verify
Make E-Verify mandatory, with the inclusion of common exemptions from states that have already mandated its use. Invest a portion of the total $5.7 billion into improving its technology and accuracy. Allocate funding to offer assistance for small businesses. Allocate funding to provide legal assistance to those who need to challenge inaccurate E-Verify results. (While E-Verify error rates have dropped significantly, if mandated for all employers, estimated 200,000 people who are hired for jobs would be erroneously found to be ineligible to work.) Impose penalties, after warnings and training, for employers who fail to use e-verify.
Remove criminal penalties for hiring undocumented workers and instead notify employers who attempt to hire undocumented workers and permit them to pay for the proper visa to sponsor those workers if they can prove there is no US citizen for the job. (Consider allocating funding to subsidize the cost of visas for certain employers, like farmers, who rely on low cost employment for the benefit of the American people.) Include protections for immigrants who are exploited by employers, and criminal penalties for employers who exploit the system or employees.
Data collected through E-Verify will help determine the true employment needs of US employers, prevent employers from devaluing US workforce, bring undocumented individuals out of the shadows, minimize burdens on US employers, while still protecting the interests of US workers and providing information that helps the US better understand who is here.
Secure Communities
Allocate a portion of the total $5.7 billion to research, development, and implementation of an improved Secure Communities Program. This effort should draw upon experts in law enforcement and constitutional law and should result in focusing ICE efforts on removing those who threaten the safety of our country and communities, including gangs, drug traffickers, human traffickers, and national security risks and preventing the release of immigrants who have been convicted of violent crimes back into our communities.
SECTION 2: PATH TO PERMANENT RESIDENCY FOR DREAMERS
Provide legal permanent residency to individuals who were brought to the U.S. as children. Individuals who are registered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program automatically qualify, if they arrived in this country by June 15, 2007, unless they have engaged in conduct that would make them ineligible. To obtain legal status, individuals not enrolled in the DACA program must:
● Have been continuously present in the U.S. since June 15, 2012, the date of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Executive Order;
● Have been under age 18 when they entered the U.S., and under age 38 on June 15, 2012;
● Meet educational requirements or be serving in the U.S. Armed Forces (or have been honorably discharged from military service); and
● Pass background checks, medical exams, and register for the Selective Service, if applicable.
Individuals do not qualify if they are inadmissible under INA 212(a)(2), except that a single conviction for possession of a controlled substance for personal use will not render the applicant inadmissible under (a)(2)(A)(i)(II). Individuals are required to pay any federal tax liability incurred while working legally in the U.S. (From Rounds King Bill)
Beneficiaries are eligible to apply for citizenship after 5 years as a legal permanent resident, consistent with current law.
The government may not remove anyone who appears to be prima facie eligible for relief. Removal of qualified individuals enrolled in school and over 5 years of age shall be stayed (and employment authorization granted upon application) unless the individual ceases to meet qualifications. With limited exceptions, the Secretary may not disclose or use for immigration enforcement purposes information provided in applications filed under this title or in requests for DACA, and may not refer for enforcement anyone granted conditional permanent resident status or DACA. (From McCain Coons Bill)
SECTION 3: PATH TO PERMANENT RESIDENCY FOR CERTAIN TPS RECIPIENTS
Revise INA Section 244 to make it clear that a grant of TPS is an admission for purposes of INA Sec. 245, so TPS recipients are not unfairly denied adjustment of status through their US citizen children or spouses. This merely applies case law from the 9th and 6th Circuit Courts of Appeal consistently across the United States.
Permit any Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipient who has continuously resided in the United States for 5 or more years and who is admissible to the United States under all provisions of INA Section 212(a) to apply for legal permanent residency and eventual citizenship through the ordinary process.
● Applicants may be found ineligible for the program for various reasons, including on health and criminal activity grounds.
● A person with a prior deportation or voluntary departure order may still apply, but if the application for LPR status is denied, the previous order becomes enforceable again.
● Allows for an employment authorization document to be issued when the application for LPR status if filed.
● Spouses and unmarried sons and daughters of applicants for LPR status can apply as well and are eligible if requirements similar to the applicant are met.
● Approval of LPR status for TPS holders will not reduce the number of LPR slots provided for in the Immigration and Naturalization Act. (From ESPERER Act)
SECTION 4: PROTECT FAMILY-BASED VISAS AND DIVERSITY VISA LOTTERY
Do not revoke or change the Diversity Visa Lottery or family-based visas, unless those changes are part of a comprehensive, two-track, merit-based point system that allocates statistically significant points for family ties and country of origin, similar to the proposal in the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013.”
SECTION 5: TEMPORARY GUEST WORKER PROGRAM
Create a new nonimmigrant, less-skilled W visa program similar to the one introduced in the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013,” but with the major distinction of permitting undocumented workers already in the United States to apply for at least a portion of the available visas. This replacement for the H-2A agricultural worker program would allow foreign workers to work for designated employers while also being able to leave a job to go work for other designated employers. Employers would be required to perform recruitment activities to show there are no available U.S. workers before W visa workers can be employed. W visas would be approved for 3 years and renewable for another 3. Employers would be required to pay the W workers the higher of the minimum wage or specified wage rates and must provide U.S. workers the same benefits, wages, and working conditions.
This program would provide up to 500,000 visas and allow certain industries that need year-round labor to participate, as suggested by the Goodlatte Bill.
The program must also include protections for visa holders, including an authority to which abuses may be reported and protection from deportation for those who report abuse.
SECTION 6: REPEAL BARS TO REENTRY AND EXPAND INADMISSIBILITY WAIVERS
Repeal the 3- and 10-year unlawful presence bars to reentry, which have been shown to actually incentivize longer unauthorized stays and which severely punish many US citizens and their families. Broaden the criteria for inadmissibility waivers beyond hardship to also include rewarding individuals for clean criminal records, social and economic contributions, strong community ties, and good moral character.
Amend section 240(A) to lower the standard from “exceptional and extremely unusual” back to “extreme hardship” and remove the numerical limit.
Revise current waiver of inadmissibility requirements to:
● authorize parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents to apply for a waiver of inadmissibility for unlawful presence;
● place a three-year limit on immigration-related misrepresentations rendering aliens inadmissible;
● revise the definition “conviction” for INA purposes (see Section 6 above);
● waive inadmissibility for certain persons who entered the United States before age 16 who have earned a degree from a U.S. institution of higher education;
● waive inadmissibility for false claims of U.S. citizenship by persons under age 18 or lacking mental competence to knowingly misrepresent a claim;
● waive inadmissibility for false claims of U.S. citizenship if inadmissibility would create family separation hardship for the alien (including a self-petitioner under the Violence Against Women Act) or for a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident family member.
(From H.R.1036 — American Families United Act)
SECTION 7: MANDATORY STAYS OF REMOVAL FOR PRIVATE BILLS
Private immigration bills have long served as a final check and critical safety net against unethical immigration enforcement outcomes by preventing the removal of a very small number of certain individuals who are subject to final orders of removal, but who deserve special consideration for some reason. In order to preserve this important tool for Congressional oversight, revisions should be made to require ICE to authorize a mandatory stay of removal upon receiving a request for information about the individual from either the Senate or House subcommittee where the private bill is referred. Such a stay should remain in place unless and until Congress has voted on the bill or the bill’s sponsor explicitly requests a revocation of the stay. Pending the bill’s disposition in Congress, the individual should be permitted to remain in the United States, be released from ICE custody, and receive work authorization during this period.
SECTION 8: CLARIFY IMMIGRATION IMPLICATIONS OF CRIMINAL CONDUCT
Revise the INA to clarify the definition of conviction as not including an expunged conviction or a plea in abeyance, if properly completed. This gives more weight to state legislators’ ideas of what should or should not be considered full convictions.
Simplify and clarify which specific criminal offenses trigger removal proceedings. Such revisions will permit criminal defense attorneys to better understand the immigration implications as they advise criminal defendants, set clearer expectations and more consistent outcomes for immigrants, and ease the burden on Immigration Judges, attorneys, and support staff, who will spend significantly less time and effort re-litigating criminal issues in removal hearings.
SECTION 9: DEFERRED ACTION
In order to ensure the fair and predictable implementation of immigration enforcement priorities and reward rather than penalize those who comply with enforcement orders, prohibit DHS from withdrawing or reversing a formal grant of deferred action, whether statutory or based on prosecutorial discretion, except for good cause. Because it may be presumed that deferred action is only granted when immigration enforcement officials determine the individual poses no threat to public safety, this prohibition should be applied retroactively as well as to future cases.
*Note: Mormon Women for Ethical Government is a private organization and is not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We do, however, fully sustain, honor, and support the Church’s doctrines and leaders.
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