On amnesty: how many years?

On amnesty: how many years? August 24, 2016

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So Trump has, unsurprisingly, softened his immigration talk until its about the consistency of the mushy bananas with when you make banana bread.  (And, by the way, I accidentally learned the secret to seriously yummy banana bread muffins the other day:  my son dropped the 2nd of the 3 bananas onto the floor, so I told him to cut the rest of the ingredients in half – but he forgot to reduce the margarine and the milk.  They came out really good, as long as you don’t think too hard about the calorie content.)

He’s now “seen the light” on all the “people who have been here 15 or 20 years.”

Now, let’s start by saying that even immigration hawk Mark Krikorian supports an amnesty for long-time residents, after genuine enforcement measures (at the border, and at the workplace) are in place and fully functioning.  And I think that’s about right — except that the reality is that there are, indeed, some individuals who have been in the U.S. for so long that it would be a genuine hardship for them to return to their native countries, and they’d be truly worse off than if they had never left.  Delaying an accommodation for them until after all enforcement measures are in place would mean that they’d be, if not deported, than unable to support themselves.  In a prior blog post, I had suggested a very phased, carrot-and-stick approach, with a fixed number of new work permits granted each year, starting with the most deserving, and with the process halted if metrics indicate that enforcement measures are failing, or perhaps a cap each year that’s reduced on a 2 to 1 basis for a statistically valid estimate of new border-crossers.

But the question I have for readers is:  how would you identify the folks deserving of legal immigrant status?

Certainly there are easy cases at either extreme.  Those who have just recently crossed the border — no.  (The hardship-case Central Americans should be seeking asylum in Mexico anyway.)  Those who have been here for a decade or two, and are practically indistinguishable from citizens — yes.  But, on the other hand, every now and again, the newspaper will feature a sad story about a longtime illegal resident, hoping for amnesty, and will casually mention that the quotes provided by this paragon of the community, are all in translation — that in some 20-odd years, he or she never learned English well enough to speak to a reporter.

You know what I’d do?  I’d make it a simple metric:  how’s your English?  If you can’t speak English, no matter how long you’ve lived here, you’re not going to convince me that it’s a hardship to return to your native country, and I’m not going to believe that you’ll enrich this country and contribute to it.  I might add a check for literacy and numeracy on top, but the key would be English skills — and not just a promise to learn English, but existing skills.

So what would your cut-off be?

(And yes, no links in this post, because it’s about the question, and I think readers know the background well enough.)

 

Image:  from Wikimedia Commons, public domain.


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