Immigration nation

During their first elementary school social studies lesson, American students learn that we live in a nation of immigrants...although perhaps not in so many words. In any case, our students are taught to admire and respect the pilgrims for their brave and courageous trek to the New World. Every Thanksgiving, elementary school classrooms across the country dedicate a bulletin board to hand turkeys and the Mayflower. Every fifth grader is expected to be able to rattle off the names of Christopher Columbus’s ships: the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María.

Later in elementary and middle school, in discussions about the industrialization of the United States—the process that allowed it to become the behemoth of a nation that it is today—students are introduced to the metaphor of either the melting pot or the salad bowl. Both represent the United States as the coming together of heterogeneous groups, or “ingredients,” to form a cohesive or at least complementary whole. 

How did we get to where we are today? There were about 2.9 million American Indian and Alaskan Natives in the United States in 2010. That’s less than 1 percent of the total population. There were only about 24 million people who identified their ancestry as “American” in 2011. That’s only about 8 percent of those living in the United States. Clearly, we are still a nation of immigrants. So how does a nation of immigrants solve the problem of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants?

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I am an immigrant. I came to the United States at the age of three, and I have been a legal permanent resident, or a “green card holder” for almost 18 years. My parents went through the legal immigration process: My father was sponsored by his employer, my parents were represented by a private immigration attorney and, after a little more than two years, we had our green cards. It was a long and arduous process that included extensive internal medical examinations (for the women only) and expensive translations of official documents. Since we were lucky enough to have the financial means and the favored Western European origin, we came out the other side relatively painlessly. 

Needless to say, it is neither easy nor cheap to enter the United States as a legal immigrant. Yet the American attitude toward immigrants is internally inconsistent. On one hand, most American-born, U.S. citizens recite their ancestry with pride—one-quarter Irish, half German, one-sixteenth Dutch and so forth. On the other hand, the immigration reform bill currently in the Senate calls for drones to patrol the border with Mexico around the clock. According to a 2011 Gallup Poll, 43 percent of respondents agreed that developing a plan to deal with the large number of illegal immigrants who are already living in the U.S. was “extremely important.” In the same poll, 21 percent of respondents said the government should simply deport all illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. Similarly, according to a recent Fox News Poll, 73 percent of Americans favor taking measures to increase border security before changing any other immigration policies. 

Naturally, in an ideal world every immigrant would have the financial and social capital to go through the process that my parents and I went through in order to get our legal permanent residency. Moreover, the U.S. is perfectly justified in closely scrutinizing the individuals it places on the path to citizenship. But does there have to be such a significant financial burden on the applicant? A simple family-based petition, where a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident petitions to have a family member immigrate to the United States, comes with a $420 filing fee. And that does not include processing fees, travel costs or attorney fees. Once an immigrant is legally in the U.S. and wants to adjust to permanent residency, he or she must be prepared to shell out an additional thousand dollars just to file the I-485 form. And then there’s the cost of translating official documents and the attorney’s fees once again. There are fee waivers for some forms, but only for those earning less than 150 percent of the national poverty level or suffering “financial hardship,” as determined by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

In other words, it seems as though the current immigration system incentivizes illegal immigration. If an estimated 11 million people can live “in the shadows” for decades, while documented immigrants spend years and thousands of dollars risking rejection, what’s the practical advantage of using the proper channels? Rather than simply beefing up border security and creating a new path to citizenship, we should look more closely at how to reinvigorate the immigration-based model that built this nation into what it is today. Immigration reform must do more than increase staffing at application processing centers. It must also make the system accessible to qualified individuals who wish to immigrate to the United States.  

Joline Doedens is a second-year law student. Her second summer column will run on June 20. You can follow Joline on Twitter @jydoedens.