With Health Care Reform on the home stretch, I would like to switch gear and talk about the powderkeg issue of Immigration Reform. Even within the comfortable confines of DailyKos, Immigration Reform is a controversial subject. In order to understand our differences better, I am doing a "Sense of the Kos" survey in order to see where we, as a community of progressives, stand on this issue.
The most controversial provision of Immigration Reform is how, or whether to legalize all or some of the undocumented immigrants currently within our borders. We know there are 10.8 million undocumented immigrants in the US. We, as progressives, know that that is not a tenable situation, to have 10.8 million 'untouchables' living in our midst. Some "path to legalization" is inevitable. The remaining question is 'who' and 'how'. Today we'll have a survey on who should be eligible for legalization, and shortly thereafter I'll have another survey on how the legalization process should work.
Explanation of the choices:
- No amnesty. Keep in mind that the cost of mass deportations will be approximately
$206 - $230 billion over the next 5 years. Now that is expensive, but at the same time it is less costly than, for example, the Iraq War over any 5 year period. I will leave it up to you to decide whether that is worthwhile or not.
- Legalization for people with specialized skills. This would be similar to the H1B program. ie. Amnesty for people doing 'work that not enough american are qualified to do'
- Legalization for low wage menial workers. This would be amnesty for people doing 'work that no american wants to do'
- Legalization for people with 5 years' proven work history in this country. Reward for people who have been contributing to this country.
- Legalization for people who have been in the country for at least 5 years. No work history required- only physical presence. This would be a similar criteria as the 1986 amnesty:
http://thomas.loc.gov/...
- Legalization for people who have been in the country since before the introduction of the bill. A much more relaxed criteria. This would be similar to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill promoted by Rep Gutierrez, which would legalize anyone who has been here since Dec 09.
- Legalization for people under the age of 30. The not-so-hidden rationale of immigration reform is to shore up our entitlement programs, which are endangered because of our demographic problem (too many baby boomers retiring and too few young workers). Younger people have more productive years to contribute to Social Security and Medicare.
Update: Now with new, improved wording! People have pointed out that the word 'amnesty' is biased. So I went ahead and changed it to 'legalization'.