The US immigration bill

It's not reasonable to expect journalists to have some practical experience of their beats in every possible subject matter but when it comes to immigration, the fact that everyone reporting on it has little or no personal experience of immigration really comes through. After much TV watching and newspaper reading, we're little wiser on whether the new US Senate immigration compromise requires existing illegal immigrants to leave the country before they can get permission to work in it -- a crucial detail which anyone actually stuck in immigration limbo would want to know.

Our best guess is that they don't have to leave: immigrants here before a cutoff date (which is currently the amazingly recent 1 January 2007) can get immediate work authorisation through an application from within the USA. They do have to leave to file a Green Card application (the "touchback" visit), and it's the vague description of this as "legal residency" that seems to be leading the US citizen hacks astray, as they don't understand that the prior work authorisation is itself a procedure for legally working in the country. [this is a case where one learns more from reading a motivated critic like Mickey Kaus than an "objective" reporter]

If this new work authorisation is like existing types (e.g. the one you get if you were in the country legally while waiting for a Green Card application to be processed) then the main problem is the inability to travel, since it's not a visa. But the work authorization in the new bill sounds like it might be a visa too, although whether it works for all trips abroad or just the trip to file your Green Card application is not clear yet.

But regardless, the immediate implication would seem to be that the country is about to acquire 12m newly legal workers, who will therefore have a much more secure footing in the country, even if their path to permanent residency and citizenship could be a very long one. Good luck to the INS with those 12m application forms (although the good news for the INS is it will have a vast pool of newly employable workers with in-depth knowledge of the immigration system).

Another controversial feature of the reform is its shift to skills-based Green Cards. Added to the list of opponents of this type of reform should be: poor countries. They rightly perceive rich country selective immigration policies as a vehicle for plucking their most educated citizens while leaving them to deal with the masses. For better or worse, the US policy of open immigration was in relative terms, for example, taking as many taxi drivers from Malawi as doctors. Europe only wants the doctors.

UPDATE: The White House press briefing on the bill is surprisingly clear and useful, although the briefers are probably hoping that opponents of the bill don't pay too much attention to the huge scale of the program: everyone with a green card application filed as of March 2005 will get one over the next 8 years; all of the illegal immigrants here before the start of the year get work authorization and then a renewable travel "Z" visa, and then join the Green Card applications after 8 years ("This satisfies the requirement that you go to the back of the line, because the line will have been cleared").

FINAL UPDATE: The White House also has a "fact sheet" on the bill. One example of the spin that is facilitated by the confusion above was provided by House member Mike Pence this evening, who was arguing that the requirement for a "touchback visit" (i.e. return home to file a Green Card application) shows that it's not amnesty. But any illegal immigrant who comes in from the cold to get a Z visa can be legally employed, indefinitely, without having to leave the country.