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Rosa Sabido, now receiving sanctuary in a Mancos church since her last application to stay in the country was denied, is not an example of problems caused by uncontrolled immigration. For the past 30 years, she has been gainfully employed, has paid taxes and has been an upstanding member of the community.

She is, though, the face of one large and often-undiscussed group of immigrants: those who have contributed to their community and the economy and who have tried to follow the rules that would allow them to remain in this country legally, but who, for a variety of reasons some logical and some arcane have come up short. These are the intended beneficiaries of immigration reform, which has languished on the national agenda for years. Unfortunately, a nuanced view of the complex issue, necessary for true and lasting progress, does not fit well into campaign speeches.

The United States gains no specific benefit by deporting Sabido. It would be better served with a sensible immigration policy that focused on identifying, locating and deporting those who are a danger to the country, and at the same time, dealing realistically with those whose only crime is being undocumented.

The problem with immigration is not only the behavior of individual immigrants, it is the effect of their aggregate number, and the specific issue for those like Sabido is not that they are causing trouble; its that their legal status does not allow them to stay.

Laws necessarily must be written in ways that cannot address every individuals circumstances, even though Sabidos legal circumstance indeed seems unfair. That she narrowly missed at least two opportunities that would have paved the way for permanent residency, including President Ronald Reagans broad path to citizenship, is sad but ultimately irrelevant; wherever a line is drawn, some people will fall just outside it. The law is the law, and selective enforcement without legal reform has contributed to the immigration mess that now exists.

The Mancos United Methodist Church has shown impressive caring and courage in shielding Sabido from a law that they believe is wrong or is being applied unfairly, and in taking a stand in opposition to the law. President Donald Trump has made clear that he disapproves of IRS regulations that penalize religious organizations from expressing political opinions, and although he surely did not intend it to play out in this way, the logical extension of that is for congregations to act on their beliefs. Kudos to this body for doing so.

Churches have no special legal status that exempts their premises from enforcement actions, only a tradition of being respected. The hands-off policy will not last much longer, although when ICE agents are ordered to breach a religious sanctuary, expect them to be in pursuit of someone far less appealing than Sabido.

This kind of sanctuary is not available to all who might wish to use it, and it is not a broad solution to the immigration dilemma. Elsewhere, families are being split, crops rot unpicked and some of the immigrants the president termed bad hombres evade deportation.

The true solution is reform, and Sabido and the church sheltering her have drawn attention to that need. This is one way change begins to happen, and that change is badly needed.

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Rosa Sabido: Immigration reform must address cases like hers - The Journal

Increased immigration enforcement has been one of the hallmarks of the Trump administration, with federal agents directed to seek the deportation of just about anyone they find in the country illegally no matter how long the person might have lived here or how deep the ties to family and community. In the first 100 days after the presidents inauguration, immigration arrests climbed nearly 40% over the previous year, a pace that will almost certainly increase if Congress accedes to President Trumps request to hire an additional 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to be assigned to the nations interior, and another 5,000 Border Patrol agents to work within 100 miles of the border.

Those buying into Trumps view of illegal immigrants as rapists, murderers and job stealers have no doubt been cheered by the enforcement effort, and they probably arent bothered by the rush to expand detention space to house those facing deportation hearings. But even they should recognize that capturing and incarcerating people is only part of the equation.

While the government under President Obama and now Trump has been ramping up immigration enforcement and detention, it has not invested a parallel amount of money in expanding the immigration courts capacity to handle the cases. Spending on immigration courts increased only 74% from 2003-2015 while enforcement spending went up 105%. Trumps 2018 budget would increase the total number of judicial positions, but its not clear if that will become law and for the moment the backlog of cases is continuing to grow.

At the end of September, the number of pending immigration cases stood at 516,031, according to data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. By the end of May, that backlog had jumped to 598,943 cases, which have been pending for an average of 670 days each. New York City has the biggest backlog (78,670 cases), followed by Los Angeles (57,090).

Making matters worse, the Trump administration has temporarily reassigned judges to detention centers in Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to handle cases primarily involving recent border-crossers. The problem with that is that fewer people are getting caught at the border these days, so moving judges there makes little sense. Why then is it happening? The answer: Optics. Sending judges to the border looks like a commitment to stronger and more serious enforcement, when in reality its a Potemkin effort that exacerbates backlogs in the courts from which the judges are transferred. At the same time, immigration lawyers say government attorneys have lately become tougher in their cases, taking harder lines with immigrants and reopening cases that had been suspended, adding more drag on the system.

This enormous backlog has real-life consequences. People in detention centers or jails are spending more time incarcerated as they await hearings on whether they will be allowed to remain in the country. For those with legitimate requests for asylum or other relief from deportation, the delays prolong uncertainty about whether they have found a sanctuary.

This should not make the anti-illegal immigration folks happy. If people arent getting deported but are just stuck in limbo in the immigration system, then Trumps ramped-up enforcement program is a chimera. Those immigrants who should be found ineligible to remain in the country because of criminal pasts or other disqualifications wind up, in effect, with open-ended reprieves.

The system is not working well for anybody except, perhaps, the operators of private prisons and local jails with ICE contracts that handle most of the detained immigrants. For a president who prides himself on his business and managerial acumen, this is a grotesquely failed approach to management.

Instead of taking this piecemeal approach to immigration enforcement, the administration should work with Congress to develop comprehensive immigration reform legislation that would create a path to citizenship for those who have established roots in our communities while tightening up enforcement at the border and tackling visa overstays. The Republican Party controls the White House and Congress. It has no excuses for not getting this done.

The Los Angeles Times, June 30, 2017

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What others say: Administration must take steps toward immigration reform - Kenai Peninsula Online

With his penchant for tweeted insults and GIFs, Donald Trump will never be mistaken for a master of the sweet art of persuasion. Yet he is clearly winning the public argument on the issue of immigration.

He isnt doing it through sustained, careful attention. No, it is the sheer fact of his November victory, and the data showing the importance of the issue of immigration to it, that has begun to shift the intellectual climate.

It had been assumed, even by many Republicans like U.S. Sen. John McCain, that opposition to amnesty and higher levels of legal immigration would doom the GOP to minority status forevermore. Trump blew up this conventional wisdom.

Now, intellectuals on the center-left are calling for Democrats to rethink the partys orthodoxy on immigration, which has become more and more hostile to enforcement and to any skepticism about current high levels of immigration.

The swing here was enormous. A Trump defeat in November after running on an exaggerated version of immigration restriction would have sent Republicans scurrying back to the comfortable, corporate-friendly cliches about so-called comprehensive immigration reform. And if Hillary Clinton had won on a platform that doubled down on President Barack Obamas executive amnesties, serious immigration enforcement would have lost its political legitimacy.

In light of the election, Josh Barro of Business Insider, William Galston of the Brookings Institution, Peter Beinart of The Atlantic, Fareed Zakaria of CNN and Stanley Greenberg of Democracy Corps, among others, have urged Democrats to recalibrate.

Many of these writers dont merely note the perilous politics of the maximalist Democratic position on immigration or argue that policy should take account of the economic costs as well as the benefits of immigration. They also give credence to cultural concerns over mass immigration concerns that much of the left considers poorly disguised hate.

In an act of heresy for the Davos set, Fareed Zakaria recommends that the party should take a position on immigration that is less absolutist and recognizes both the cultural and economic costs of large-scale immigration.

This sentiment wouldnt be so noteworthy if the Democratic Party hadnt become so radicalized on immigration. Peter Beinarts essay in The Atlantic is a trenchant reminder that as recently as 10 years ago, the left allowed much more room for dissent on immigration. Go back a little further, to the 1990s, and Bill Clinton was forthrightly denouncing illegal immigration, and liberal giant Barbara Jordan was heading a bipartisan commission that called for enhanced enforcement and reduced levels of legal immigration.

In the interim, Democrats convinced themselves that liberality on immigration has only political upside, and that immigration is in effect a civil rights issue, and therefore nonnegotiable.

Reversing field wont be easy. The House just voted on Kates Law, named after Kate Steinle, the young woman killed in the sanctuary city of San Francisco by an illegal immigrant who had re-entered the country after getting deported five times. The bill merely strengthens the penalties on repeated illegal re-entry, yet only 24 Democrats could bring themselves to vote for it.

The pull of the lefts cosmopolitanism is strong. In an attack on Peter Beinart, Dylan Matthews of Vox argues that the lefts egalitarianism cant stop at the nations borders it means a strong presumption in favor of open immigration.

So, itd be a mistake to make too much of the recent spate of articles calling for Democrats to rethink this issue. If Democrats are ever going to shift on immigration, though, elite opinion has to change first, and at least there is now an opening.

Few would have guessed that in the 1990s, conservative Republicans, so unreservedly in favor of tough sentencing, would be open to joining liberals on criminal justice reform. Perhaps Democrats will eventually recalibrate on immigration. If so, the unlikely instrument of the sea change will have been none other than Donald J. Trump.

Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review.

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Lowry: Trump win forces liberals to rethink immigration - Boston Herald

Rosa Sabido, now receiving sanctuary in a Mancos church since her last application to stay in the country was denied, is not an example of problems caused by uncontrolled immigration. For the past 30 years, she has been gainfully employed, has paid taxes and has been an upstanding member of the community.

She is, though, the face of one large and often-undiscussed group of immigrants: those who have contributed to their community and the economy and who have tried to follow the rules that would allow them to remain in this country legally, but who, for a variety of reasons some logical and some arcane have come up short. These are the intended beneficiaries of immigration reform, which has languished on the national agenda for years. Unfortunately, a nuanced view of the complex issue, necessary for true and lasting progress, does not fit well into campaign speeches.

The United States gains no specific benefit by deporting Sabido. It would be better served with a sensible immigration policy that focused on identifying, locating and deporting those who are a danger to the country, and at the same time, dealing realistically with those whose only crime is being undocumented.

The problem with immigration is not only the behavior of individual immigrants, it is the effect of their aggregate number, and the specific issue for those like Sabido is not that they are causing trouble; its that their legal status does not allow them to stay.

Laws necessarily must be written in ways that cannot address every individuals circumstances, even though Sabidos legal circumstance indeed seems unfair. That she narrowly missed at least two opportunities that would have paved the way for permanent residency, including President Ronald Reagans broad path to citizenship, is sad but ultimately irrelevant; wherever a line is drawn, some people will fall just outside it. The law is the law, and selective enforcement without legal reform has contributed to the immigration mess that now exists.

The Mancos United Methodist Church has shown impressive caring and courage in shielding Sabido from a law that they believe is wrong or is being applied unfairly, and in taking a stand in opposition to the law. President Donald Trump has made clear that he disapproves of IRS regulations that penalize religious organizations from expressing political opinions, and although he surely did not intend it to play out in this way, the logical extension of that is for congregations to act on their beliefs. Kudos to this body for doing so.

Churches have no special legal status that exempts their premises from enforcement actions, only a tradition of being respected. The hands-off policy will not last much longer, although when ICE agents are ordered to breach a religious sanctuary, expect them to be in pursuit of someone far less appealing than Sabido.

This kind of sanctuary is not available to all who might wish to use it, and it is not a broad solution to the immigration dilemma. Elsewhere, families are being split, crops rot unpicked and some of the immigrants the president termed bad hombres evade deportation.

The true solution is reform, and Sabido and the church sheltering her have drawn attention to that need. This is one way change begins to happen, and that change is badly needed.

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Rosa Sabido: Immigration reform must address cases like hers - The Durango Herald

News & Observer

Are immigrants taking farm jobs from US citizens? In NC, farmers say no. News & Observer The messages on immigration reform from the White House have been mixed. In April, Trump and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue hosted a roundtable, which included N.C. Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler, to address farmers' concerns. and more »

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Are immigrants taking farm jobs from US citizens? In NC, farmers say no. - News & Observer