Reforming Immigration Reform

The U.S. Senate has taken a significant step toward rewriting a section of the landmark Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 that could split up families if anyone ever decided to take the law literally. So far, no one has done so, and if the House follows the Senate’s lead promptly, nobody ever can.

When Congress enacted the law in an effort to restrict illegal immigration, it generously included an amnesty program that allowed those illegal aliens who had entered the United States before 1982 to legalize their status. Unfortunately, the 1982 cutoff date posed a problem for many immigrants whose close relatives entered the United States at different times. In some instances, for example, a husband qualified for amnesty while his wife did not, or parents qualified while children did not, or children who entered before 1982 qualified while their siblings who entered after the cutoff date did not.

To their credit, the officials of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service charged with enforcing the new law and overseeing the amnesty program said publicly, and often, that they would not carry out wholesale deportations of those members of amnestied families that did not qualify for legalization. But they could not guarantee that such deportations would never occur as long as the 1986 law stood as it had originally been written.

This week, as part of a series of changes in U.S. immigration law, the Senate voted 61-38 to amend the 1986 act’s amnesty provisions. Under the new language, any member of an amnestied family who was in the United States on the date the new law became effective, Nov. 6, 1986, is granted a stay of deportation and is authorized to work in the United States. While they still cannot participate in the amnesty program, since that accelerated effort is already well under way, they can legalize themselves under other provisions of immigration law. That is a sensible compromise. Sponsors of the amendment estimate that it could benefit up to 1.5 million relatives of the approximately 3 million persons who applied for amnesty. The House of Representatives and the Bush Administration should go along with this move to relieve a potential burden on thousands of immigrant families.