President Trump has invited an explosion in Congress with his recession of the 2012 Obama Executive Order that protected undocumented aliens who were brought to the United States by their parents when they were still children and before 2007.

There is majority public support for legislation to protect the “DACAs” (Deferred Action [for] Childhood Arrivals).

Three bills have been entered into Congressional hopper – the bi-partisan Senate Dream Act 2017, the House Recognizing America’s Children Act and the House Dream Act.

Nancy Pelosi, embolden by her meeting with President Trump, insists House Democrats will settle for nothing less than their Dream Act – which broadens the categories of eligibility beyond President Obama’s Executive Order and offers Dreamers a direct path to American citizenship.

The two other bills take a more measured approach — offering at first provisional legal status to work, travel, go to school, etc. Only after serving several years of provisional status would “Dreamers” earn a right to apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship — hardly a “get out of jail free” card.

Initial reaction on Capitol Hill suggests that there is broad support, in Congress, for DACA-fix legislation – limited in scope and purpose.

After sixteen years of bi-partisan failure to pass such a bill what is different this time?

Passing a small, targeted immigration bill will benefit both political parties going into the 2018 mid-term elections.

Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows

Does President Trump think he can trade a DACA law for his often promised southern “border wall”? It’s possible but not realistic.

More realistically — the Republican majority in Congress knows it cannot afford to lose this opportunity to partially rebuild its relationship with Hispanic voters. But the GOP must also be responsive to its own base – which has used its votes repeatedly to demand enhanced border security first and granting legal status second.

Democrats will seek political advantage in the mid-term elections by supporting a “clean DACA law” (effectively an amnesty) that would attract more Hispanic support from the US citizen brothers and sisters of the Dreamers — even at the expense of further erosion of their traditional organized union, blue collar base in the mid-west.

Representatives and senators in the center of both parties have a clear common interest. The majority want a bill they can pass, the President will sign, and that they can defend to their constituents during the 2018 primary and general elections.

Senators as philosophically opposed as Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Diane Feinstein (D-California) have both acknowledged that only a DACA Fix that includes steps to strengthen our border security meets all three conditions.

Effective Border Security Doesn’t Mean Walls

A wall on our southern border — even if Mexico or Congress was willing to pay for it – will not secure our borders.

Fact is every year since 2007 more than half of the illegal immigrants to the USA have been airport arrival “visa overstays”.

Technology, not concrete, is the solution to our 360 degree land, air, and sea border security problem.

1. Strengthen E-Verify

The 1986 Immigration Reform Act (aka Simpson Mazzoli) attempted to balance compassion for some two million illegal aliens who had been in the country for many years with stronger border security and enforcement measures.

The 1986 legislation defined as a crime any USA employer hiring/employing a person who could not prove they had the legal right to work (and live) in the United States.

To help employers stay “on the right side of the law”, Congress mandated the development of an electronic verification system – E Verify — every employer would need to use to verify every new employee’s “work authorization status”.

The bureaucracy took a different approach than the law required while subsequent Congresses just looked the other way.

Participation in the E-Verify System is voluntary unless the employer is a federal contractor – or in some states a state contractor. There is only limited enforcement even for federal contractors.

Any other employer can enroll to use the system on a voluntary basis with little risk of being subjected to enforcement action by Homeland Security.

Under current Homeland Security policy, even if a new hire is “non-compliant” – determined not to have work authorization – termination is not required only strongly suggested.

Congress should give Homeland Security twelve months from date of passage of new Border Security legislation to deliver an E-Verify System that is tested, proven and works.

Once tested and proven, the system must be made mandatory for all newly hired workers – every employer, everywhere – with significant civil and criminal penalties for employers that violate it.

Restricting the E-Verify mandate to new hires will protect those working without papers in the USA today – i.e. DACA’s parents – from termination because of status.

No DACAs could move from provisional status to permanent resident status until E-Verify is successively implemented, rolled out nationally and demonstrated to work – including employer enforcement.

1. Discourage Illegal Entry with Improved Tracking Technology at Every Border

Simultaneously, Customs and Border Security must
improve its ability to electronically track arrivals and departures of tourists and other foreign nationals with temporary (time fenced) visas.

Currently, a photo is taken of every airport arrival and stored with passport information collected prior to and upon arrival.

• Sharing photos with a modernized E-Verify System — capable of rapid facial recognition — would prevent the presentation of counterfeit identification documents to potential employers.

Today, Homeland Security has no way to track where a “visitor” goes once they cross the border or walk out of the airport. It’s just too easy to blend in and stay – get a job, rent an apartment, or buy a car.

• Congress should authorize the Attorney General to determine the Constitutionality of attaching a GPS tracking device to all foreign passports in the United States to ensure timely departures.

1. Eyes in Sky

High tech surveillance is part of 21^st century life – at the mall, the airport, the stop light, on the freeway – rendering walls historic artifacts.

Congress needs to increase funding for technology already used by Border Patrol including satellites, in the ground sensors, and drones to patrol remote stretches of both the southern and northern borders.

• More drone operators, for example, to spot irregular arrivals faster and guide border patrol agents to apprehend them.
• Ground level sensor technology can be more effective than walls.
  • Tunneling under the sensor will “set-it-off” while the wall just stands there.

1. A Tamper-proof Internal Identification System

Homeland Security must be given a deadline to negotiate a plan with the states to issue technically sophisticated drivers’ licenses and other internal identification documents.

• Congress first mandated a tamper-proof “National ID” following 9/11 but it has never been implemented.
• Adding technical sophistication to our (state issued) internal identity documents will prevent the possibility of unauthorized immigrants using our air travel system – reducing the terrorist threat as well.
  • Some states currently issue Driver’s Licenses to undocumented aliens but those licenses must meet federal guidelines that insure TSA can quickly identify them as not authorized for air travel.

Tamper-proof national identification documents are, also, a defense against the growing national threat from counterfeiting and identity theft.

None of these four steps would deny sanctuary to anyone currently in the United States.

Build Public Confidence for Immigration Reform

If the public saw each step implemented, tracked and succeeding — public confidence in the government’s ability to secure our borders would grow.

Simultaneously, Congress could use the two or three years required to implement and assess the effectiveness of these first border security steps to develop a thoughtful set of next steps to fairly resolve the status of DACA’s parents and other undocumented immigrants.

Securing the border along with resolving the legal status of those who have been living in the shadows of America for many years would
build public confidence in the government’s ability to manage our immigration system.

Public confidence is the necessary pre-requisite to a comprehensive 21^st century immigration reform plan.

Graphic courtesy of iconfinder.com