As goes Immigration Reform so goes the largest (and growing) minority voting bloc in the United States. The current administration had scheduled a meeting with key congressional leaders to discuss Immigration Reform on June 8. This meeting was delayed to June 17. Now, the administration has announced that the meeting has been postponed indefinitely. Sounds like a regular day at the immigration service. While congressional leadership has advanced a schedule to push for immigration reform this year, the Executive branch has been noticeably distant from the current debate.
For the past several years immigrants have been playing a fools game in trying to meet requirements, which change on a seemingly daily basis. The agencies charged with regulating immigration in the United States are broken. The “back of the line” stretches for years and, increasingly, in a majority of cases, can be measured in decades. Who can blame these "legal immigrants" for the frustration they face with a system that changes the rules in mid stream.
Imagine lining up to renew your driver’s license and you are told your wait will be 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, the DMV announces it has run out of licenses and because of demand for licenses from other offices your wait is expected to stretch in to tomorrow. As the next day arrives you patiently wait. Again those in line are told, that the DMV has run out of licenses for that day and now they don't expect to have licenses available until the following week. As you return the next week, you are told that because the other offices were so efficient at processing their backlogs and requesting use of licenses, that the line you are in, is now expected to last into the next month. At this point, it's been a month since you could drive and this "song and dance" continues without end. The bus you have been using to move about has broken down several times, and you risk losing your job because you have been late to work on several occasions. As you look at the wait for licenses, you are told that the wait is now a year or more. You open your front door and take a long hard look at the car sitting in your driveway. Would you use the car despite the fact that your license is expired even though when you first applied to renew it you were told it would take 10 minutes, and that was 6 months ago and now you are told that you probably will not be able to get a new license for a year more?
Immigrants face this conundrum on a daily basis. Many choose to "drive". They face choices that are far starker than driving with an expired license; in most cases their situation involves a question of survival. Simply ignoring the issue does not mean it is not there. Inaction will certainly create a negative economic and social impact in the Unites States. Governments across the globe are taking advantage of America’s spoiled promise by working aggressively to lure the next great innovators out from under us. As our beacon of light dims, theirs are beginning to shine.
As immigrants make a calculated decision based on broken promises and changing benchmarks, the government loses its ability to provide for our security and the economy faces the inevitable consequence of losing the next "Google" to a more forward-looking government. As General Colin Powell recently said "Immigrants eventually become part of our social and economic fabric. But the policies with which we greet them are, in important ways, self-fulfilling. If we reach out, if we help, they will respond in kind."
