Compromise greeted with skepticism by advocates, opponents
Minutes after a US Senate compromise bill on overhauling immigration was announced yesterday afternoon, the telephones at La Comunidad started ringing.
The Everett immigrant-advocacy group was fielding calls from immigrants eager to hear more about the bill, which promises paths to citizenship for millions who entered the United States illegally.
"We are telling them at this moment it is just a piece of legislation," said Antonio Amaya , La Comunidad's executive director. "They have to wait till it's concrete. We have nothing yet."
But while callers to his and other organizations were enthusiastic in the first hours after the compromise was announced yesterday, Amaya and other immigrant advocates were decidedly guarded in their responses.
"It is good news for many people who are already in the United States," Amaya said. "They are going to come out of the shadows and work legally. But it will take so long to become a legal permanent resident, and it will cost so much. And people will have to leave the country and come back, and they are not going to be able to bring [as much] family into the country."
Advocates called the compromise bill a good starting point, but said they had serious concerns about many of its provisions, including those that require immigrants to wait eight to 13 years to apply for legal permanent residency (green cards) and that require heads of households to return temporarily to their own countries to apply for green cards. They also objected to the legislation because it would mean a reduction in visas available for family members seeking to be reunited with their citizen relatives.
"This would further separate families," said Jessica Durrum, associate director of Centro Presente, a Cambridge organization that serves mostly Latino immigrants. "It is unworkable to make immigrants return home to apply for green cards. We work on immigration documents here, and we know the bureaucracy that is Citizenship and Immigration Services, and we know that the more obstacles you put in the way, the more unworkable it will be."
Durrum said she was also concerned that a temporary worker program that provided no path to permanent residency and citizenship would create a "second-class citizenry," exploited and without the rights of other workers.
But while immigrant advocates greeted the compromise legislation with skepticism, those who favor stricter immigration controls pilloried the Senate bill, even though it contains provisions that will double border patrols and intensify other controls.
"This is insane," said Robert Casimiro, a Weymouth activist who is a member of Mainers for Sensible Immigration Policy. "The very last thing that will happen with this . . . bill is the securing of the border. It won't happen."
He said legalizing millions of illegal immigrants will put them into the Social Security system. He said the drain on already-imperiled Social Security funds and on social services will be enormous.
Matt Donnelly, president of The Maids Home Services, a group of house-cleaning franchises, had unqualified praise for the legislation yesterday.
The cleaning companies employ only legal immigrants, he said, and those workers have been very difficult to find. "This legislation will potentially allow us to hire people who want to work for a company like ours." 