CHICAGO - The National Immigrant Justice Center has grave concerns over several key provisions in the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act.This legislation represents a constructive first step towards reaching common ground between divergent interests on a complex and widely contested issue. Much work remains to be done.

The bill does not uphold basic fairness and due process under law, nor does it honor the American tradition of keeping families together," said Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center. Furthermore, the temporary worker provisions in the bill do little to protect the rights of hard-working contributors to our economy. The bill must be improved prior to a final vote in the Senate.

The National Immigrant Justice Center will work with allies in the Senate to strengthen the following key provisions to secure human rights, due process, and labor protections:

Strengthen New American Families. The bill restructures the immigration system and creates a point system that undervalues the importance of family ties.  Under the proposed law, permanent residents and U.S. citizens would no longer be able to bring brothers, sisters, parents, or adult children to the United States.  Our current system for providing lawful permanent resident status (what we typically call "green cards") is centered on preserving families, with other measures offering lawful status based on education or professional abilities.  We need to ensure a process for regulated, orderly family reunification.

Build a strong economy. The legislation makes it difficult, if not impossible, for hard- working individuals to come into the country to provide the labor needed by our economy.  The proposed merit-based system for permanent immigration virtually ignores the fact that our economy needs workers at every level - and is in desperate need of lesser-skilled workers. For example, the Labor Department estimates that people with a high school education or less will fill 37 percent of all new jobs in the next decade.[1]  If native workers are not available, and the merit-based system keeps out lower-skilled immigrants, both industrial and service-based economic growth will suffer.

Preserve American notions of fairness and justice. The Senate bill contains provisions that allow immigrants to be denied admission or deported based on the mere suspicion of a government official, with no opportunity to rebut the allegations in court. Immigrants facing deportation should have the right to review evidence used against them in court, and government officials should not be able to make life or death decisions arbitrarily, without adequate oversight or evidence.  This is contrary to American values in which individuals are innocent until proven guilty.

Protect Asylum Rights. The bill rewrites the criminal code in a manner that could subject asylum seekers to criminal prosecution for using false documents to enter the country.  Asylum seekers, including victims of torture and other serious human rights abuses, are often denied travel documents in their home countries and have no choice but to use fraudulent documents in order to cross international boundaries. This legislation could impact the right of these individuals to obtain protection. The Senate should add a waiver for asylum seekers, victims of torture, trafficking, and domestic violence to ensure that America does not prosecute these victims and diminish our long-standing values and policies.

Assure workers' rights. The temporary worker program, a key component to this legislation, is arbitrary, inefficient and inhumane. Immigrants who come to our nation to take the toughest and most dangerous jobs would serve in a system of virtual peonage, with few protections against exploitative or dangerous labor conditions. They could only work for two years and then have to leave the United States for a full year before returning again as a temporary worker on a two-year visa. Dependents could join these individuals only if they could prove that their household income was 150% of the poverty level and that they had health insurance. In a cruel twist, temporary workers who were accompanied by dependents would be limited to two two-year periods, instead of three two-year periods-but the family could only remain during one of the two two-year periods. As a result, the nation that purports to uphold family values would actively tear families apart.

Pass a legalization program that does not undermine its stated goals. The high fees are unnecessarily punitive and would prevent people from obtaining legal status. The bill proposes exorbitant fees to obtain and maintain legal status and to eventually adjust to lawful permanent resident status. For a family of four to gain initial legal status (by obtaining Z visas) could cost $9,000. To maintain that lawful status, the same family would have to pay $6,000 after four years.  For the principal family member to adjust to permanent resident status eight years after obtaining initial legal status would cost another $4,000, plus application fees and the cost to return to their home country to file their applications. Workers in low-paid but essential jobs would be priced out of the market. This formula may force undocumented immigrants to remain in the shadows, undercutting the fundamental purpose of the bill to make the nation more secure.

Protect due process and human rights for detained immigrants. This bill fails to include provisions to protect the due process rights for detained immigrants. For example, it does not include key provisions found in the House immigration bill, the STRIVE Act (H.R.1645), that would improve access to counsel and increase the quality of protection available to those fleeing persecution in their home countries. These measures, called the Safe and Secure Detention Act, should be incorporated into the Senate bill.

Like all legislation, the Senate bill is a work in progress. The above changes can and should be made by legislators acting in good faith to fix our broken immigration system.

Attorneys and clients from the National Immigrant Justice Center are available to explain how the proposed legislation will affect immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in the Midwest. The National Immigrant Justice Center, a Chicago-based partner of Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights, provides immigration legal consultation and representation to low-income immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.