Immigration bill messy but vital

Immigration and political activists from all sides of the issue can finally agree on one… Immigration and political activists from all sides of the issue can finally agree on one thing: The immigration bill that is currently under debate in the Senate is bloated, inefficient and hard to stomach.

The bipartisan bill, which was chiefly drafted by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., attempts to strike a compromise between the strongly pro- and anti-immigration factions both in Congress and around the country – and to no avail.

Both sides of the aisle have spoken out against the lofty measure, proposing a handful – actually, a truckload might be more like it – of amendments that attempt to soften or beef up certain portions of the legislation.

As it stands, the legislation aims to tighten border security, establishing a guest worker program that would issue some 200,000 visas a year to temporary workers and grant an opportunity for citizenship to the 12 million illegal immigrants currently residing in our country, according to the Associated Press. The bill would also establish a point system for selecting future immigrants, giving priority to applicants with an education and fluency in English.

The bill itself – we won’t even start on the amendments – poses several inherent problems, the first and most pressing being its point system provision. This system, which is based off of similar programs in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, will allow the U.S. government, under the jurisdiction of Congress, to decide who is most fit to immigrate into our country, placing point values on applicants’ fulfillment of job skills and education (which accounts for the largest number of points), English-language proficiency and family ties.

It’s like we’re engaged in a giant game of Red Rover, with Congress on one side declaring “Red Rover, Red Rover, we call the smart ones over.”

The point system essentially operates under the assumption that well-educated immigrants will be able to make long-term economic contributions to the United States.

But this mindset, while optimistic, ignores the market forces that are controlling our economy today. There is currently a great demand for unskilled labor in our country, more so than for white-collar positions. And ultimately, allowing more educated immigrants into the United States will create competition with our own educated class. Under this system, educated immigrants and college-educated U.S. citizens – that’s us, and you, most likely – will be displaced into working-class jobs.

The immigration bill does propose some positive-step measures, most importantly the portion that would grant citizenship opportunities to the millions of illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States.

We are concerned, however, that the application process will be too time consuming and expensive. The bill requires applicants to pay at least $5,000 in fines, as well as submit to a lengthy background check and a trip home – another expense. While it is fair that illegal immigrants pay some price for their actions, this measure might not offer any incentives for applying for citizenship at all.

As many problems as this bill poses, we can’t help but acknowledge its one fundamental strength: It is an immigration bill – addressing immigration. As simplistic as this sounds, our government has failed to address the immigration problem for years, and while compromise sometimes yields messy results, it is better than doing nothing at all.