Delegation discusses immigration reform

WASHINGTON — As congressional negotiators finish details of sweeping immigration reform bills — possibly as soon as this week — members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation are touting some of their own ideas for reform.

Congress on Monday returned to Washington from a two-week Easter recess mostly enthusiastic about prospects for a bipartisan immigration accord, especially after a winter dominated by partisan rancor over the federal budget.

“Of all the issues we’re grappling with in this Congress, this (immigration) is probably the one that has the most consensus,” Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., told the Journal on Monday.

In Journal interviews, the state’s five-member delegation suggested changes in immigration law ranging from beefed-up border patrols to boosting the number of visas offered to crime victims who aren’t U.S. citizens. The delegation’s four Democrats said they would like to see a sweeping immigration reform bill become law by summer, while Rep. Steve Pearce, the lone Republican, urged a more cautious and targeted approach.

House and Senate negotiators have been working for weeks to produce bipartisan blueprints for reform, and intense public debate is expected in the coming weeks. While optimism is generally high, Capitol Hill veterans don’t expect reform legislation to sail onto President Barack Obama’s desk. The legislation is expected to take on the thorny issues of border security, millions of additional work visas and a so-called “path to citizenship” for an estimated 11 million people already in the U.S. illegally.

“There’s a long road,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and a key Senate negotiator on the issue, said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “There are people on both sides who are against this bill, and they will be able to shoot at it.”

All four Democrats in New Mexico’s delegation said they favor a path to citizenship that allows those already in the U.S. illegally to obtain citizenship without first returning to their country of origin. Pearce opposes it, saying he would prefer to make work visas more widely available.

A bipartisan proposal shaping up in the House would reportedly take a resident who is in the country illegally 15 years to achieve citizenship, while a similar provision in the Senate legislation would take 13 years. Heinrich said both terms are too long.

“Even 13 years is such a long time frame, you worry you’re creating pressure to go outside the system,” Heinrich said. “We want to create a functional immigration system where all of the incentives are to be on the inside of the system, not on the outside.”

Heinrich also said he hopes any immigration bill will contain provisions to speed up citizenship for young people whose parents brought them here illegally as children, as well as more U-visas for immigrants in the country illegally who are victims of crimes in the U.S.

Udall declined to specify a time preference for a path to citizenship, but both he and Heinrich stressed that citizenship should be earned, not simply granted.

“I’m for a path to earned citizenship where you pay back taxes, you learn English, you have a criminal background check and the people who are discovered to be criminals — you deport them,” Udall said.

Pearce said a path to citizenship is an affront to millions of foreigners who have been working their way through the existing immigration process. He also said it would just encourage more illegal immigration.

The Republican congressman, who represents New Mexico’s southern border, has long advocated a greatly expanded guest worker program, reasoning that many Mexican workers don’t want U.S. citizenship, they just want to work.

“If you want to be a citizen, there should be a penalty for coming here, and that is you’re going to have to get in the back of that 20-year-line,” Pearce said. “Amnesty for a broad group is very unsettling for much of America.”

However, Pearce also conceded it’s unrealistic to think the U.S. government can simply deport 11 million people.

“If they want to just work here, that can be accomplished pretty easily with a guest worker program,” Pearce said. “When you’re not working, you need to be home and we’ll let you travel back and forth pretty easily.”

He stopped short of saying he would vote against any bill with a path to citizenship, especially if it included other elements, such as stepped-up border security, that he supports.

“If everything else was perfect and that were in it, I might just shrug and say OK,” Pearce said. “We’ll have to see the actual bill and weigh each portion of it.”

Pearce favors enhanced border security, arguing that Mexican drug cartels are an increasing threat to the United States.

Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., said those who would oppose comprehensive immigration reform simply because a bill doesn’t aggressively target border enforcement are misguided. He said border security “should be a part of the conversation” but pointed out that illegal border crossings have decreased dramatically over the past five years.

Luján also said the immigration bill offers a chance to issue more H1-B visas to highly skilled immigrants who show entrepreneurial and job-creating potential.

“As we look at the tech industry — including Intel here in New Mexico — we realize how important strengthening an H1-B visa program is,” Luján said. “We want to make it a very vibrant environment associated with the tech industry.”

Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., said she hopes Congress will discuss — if not in the immigration bill then eventually — a mechanism to provide health insurance to those who would be legalized under a path to citizenship.

She suggested the government establish a law allowing those awaiting citizenship — some of whom would be low-income and in poor health — to buy into states’ high-risk health insurance pools.

“If they could buy insurance on sliding-fee scales they could be getting healthier, not sicker,” she said.