THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 3, 1996 TAG: 9610030033
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A16 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 53 lines
Congress is leaving town with a new plan to dike the flood of illegal immigrants entering the United States each year. With that swell growing at an annual rate of 300,000, the changes should offer needed relief for the most-affected states, including California, Texas and Florida.
Fortunately, the final version of this hotly debated bill does not include many of the harshest penalties proposed for such immigrants, including depriving their children of access to public schools. Nor does it penalize legal immigrants to the extent critics had feared.
Also absent are the toughest sanctions recommended for the employers who hire illegal immigrants. In a good-faith gesture, the law focuses instead on making it easier for companies to detect those improperly in the country before they are hired. Hopefully, this will suffice.
In straddling the poles of opposition, the compromise strikes hard at safer ground - beefing up border patrols, increasing penalties for those who provide aliens with fraudulent immigration papers and hastening the departures of those who arrive without papers, or with false ones.
The final product recognizes the obvious - that it is much easier to stop illegal newcomers at the border or before they have begun working than it is after they have become entrenched.
We applaud the dropping of several provisions that were unduly mean-spirited in their impact on children of the poorest immigrants. The cost of educating children whose parents are illegally in the United States is daunting, estimated at several billion dollars each year. But to license states to force such youngsters out of the classroom while their families await or appeal deportation would be cruel indeed.
The final bill also wisely revamped a proposal requiring anyone sponsoring an immigrant to have income at least twice the poverty level. The current requirement is that sponsors themselves not be impoverished.
Under the compromise, earnings will need to be 125 percent of the poverty level, or a co-sponsor willing to assume joint liability will have to be found. This will make it harder for some families to be reunited. But, properly, the immigrant pool will not be limited to the relatively well-off.
Moreover, the inclusion of some additional restrictions is justified, given the increased insistence through welfare reform that American citizens hold their own economically.
Another positive change is the dropping of a requirement that would have put legal immigrants in danger if they accepted assistance for 12 months in a seven-year period.
America cannot house the world. But our interest should be in stopping those who are improperly in the country, not in harsh treatment of those who have followed the rules. The immigration bill just passed comes much closer to recognizing both that distinction and the ongoing value of our immigrant population. by CNB