GLOBE EDITORIAL
On immigration, a few easy calls
July 7, 2007
THE IMMIGRATION "grand bargain" bill, fat and unwieldy with concessions to keep it afloat, came crashing down in the Senate last month -- a grand disappointment for a country that desperately needs reform. But the bill's death is hardly the last act in this political drama. Congress still has glaring problems to solve. Here are three areas that require prompt, thoughtful legislative action:
Massachusetts would benefit if the country expanded its H-1B visa program, which lets college-educated foreign workers come here temporarily to take jobs in highly specialized fields such as healthcare and technology. The employers who hire H-1B workers include Google, IBM, and Motorola. The country does have to be careful to increase the number of visas while not displacing job-qualified citizens. But the United States isn't producing enough engineers and scientists to meet the needs of high-tech industries, so there's ample room to welcome more of the world's skilled workers.
Farm owners are right to call for a guest worker program. As border crackdowns slow the flow of undocumented workers, farmers can't find enough seasonal help. Fruit rots in orchards and fields. These worker shortages can eventually raise produce prices in the nation's grocery stores. A guest worker program would help by supplying a legal source of labor -- and would protect the workers themselves from unsafe conditions, unfairly denied wages, and other abuses.
Get in line, and get here legally: That's the advice many would-be immigrants hear. But some of these lines are unconscionably long. Backlogs, slow processing of paperwork, a limited budget, and delays in FBI background checks all fuel this problem, according to an annual report submitted to Congress last month by the ombudsman for the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Prakash I. Khatri. Progress has been made on backlogs, he says, but there is much more to do.
So while the United States government could be a leader in information technology, it is instead infested with paperwork swamps. One handicap for the immigration services agency is that it is largely self-funded; it relies on charging fees. That's not enough money, Khatri says, noting that "funding problems drive agency policy." Congress shouldn't ignore this cry for help. Today's hobbled systems have to be stronger so that they can handle the added work that new reforms could bring.
These are bread-and-butter issues. The comprehensive immigration bill foundered over the far more divisive question of what to do with the millions of illegal workers already in the United States. Now practicality must prevail. Even if it's with small steps, Congress still has to pursue reform. 
