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Most Americans didnt have email access the last time Charles Kamasaki lobbied for a comprehensive immigration reform bill that actually became law. In 1986, cellphones had barely hit the scene. He envied a co-worker who owned a clunky car phone.

It took years of face-to-face advocacy work before the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made it to President Ronald Reagans desk. Kamasaki barely saw the inside of his own office while he and his fellow members with the National Council of La Raza, now UnidosUS, haunted the halls of Congress and monitored every subcommittee meeting.

That act increased border enforcement, upped the penalties for hiring illegal workers, and included a pathway to citizenship for nearly 3 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. It was a bill that died three times before it was enacted, Kamasaki said. And if you want to go back even further, antecedents of this bill had been debated since 1952. No bipartisan, comprehensive reform has made it through since, though Congress nearly passed bills in 2006 and again in 2013.

An ambitious bipartisan overhaul, known as the Dignity Act, might have a chance, Kamasaki said. Reps. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, and Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., introduced the act last month. The Dignity Act is based on the biblical principles of dignity and redemption, Salazar said in a statement. The proposed legislation boosts border security along with legal immigration. It gives immigrants living in the United States illegally an opportunity to earn legal status. It may take years of legislative ping-pong for the bill to move forward, but experts say it has the potential to gain traction more quickly if something triggers demands for immediate reform.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle admit the immigration situation has reached crisis proportions. Immigration authorities encountered illegal immigrants at the southern border a record 2.76 million times last year. Asylum cases piled up in court, so U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement released thousands of immigrants into the country to await court hearings that are years away. A pending court ruling could end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program this summer, creating an uncertain future for more than 600,000 immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.

And legal immigration has become all but impossible, David Bier, the associate director for immigration studies at the Cato Institute, argued in an analysis released earlier this month. Less than 0.1 percent of refugees are selected for resettlement, and caps on family sponsorship visas mean most immigrants wait for years.

Employer-sponsored immigration is an expensive and lengthy process that is often too difficult for employers to complete. There are no temporary, year-round work visas for lesser-skilled workers without a college education to work in the United States, Bier explained. Employers continue to hire workers who are overstaying their visas and living in the country illegally. About 50 percent of U.S. agricultural laborers are illegal immigrants.

The Dignity Act would create an uncapped, temporary visa program for agricultural workers living in the United States illegally. Farmworkers who worked in an agricultural industry for at least 180 days out of the last two years could apply for the renewable, 5-year certified agricultural worker visa and later apply for lawful permanent resident status.

The act would also gradually implement an E-Verify system requiring employers to confirm that their employees lived and worked in the United States legally.

El Paso County Commissioner David Stout chairs the Texas Border Coalition, a group of business owners, city officials, and community leaders advocating for federal immigration reform. He supports the bills focus on expanding employment-based visas. Our farmers and ranchers dont have people to work their fields, he said. We have people that are in the construction industry that cant find people to work on their projects.

Instead of releasing asylum-seekers into the country to await their hearing, the bill proposes setting up five humanitarian campuses where asylum officers would process claims within 60 days.

Right now, its years in the queue of waiting for an asylum claim, said Tara Watson, a Brookings Institution economist who focuses on immigration. They make their home here. And then if their asylum claim is turned down, thats a very disruptive removal.

Under the proposal, about 1.9 million children brought to the United States illegally, including the 600,000 DACA recipients, could adjust to 10-year conditional permanent resident status.

Perhaps most controversially, the act would give the more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States a chance to step out of the shadows. Illegal immigrants could only access the legal Dignity status if they completed a criminal background check and paid taxes along with $5,000 in restitution. They would also have to contribute to a fund for retraining American workers for high-demand jobs, and they could not receive federal welfare benefits.

The goal is to recognize that there was a violation of a law, Watson said. She added the acts use of fines rather than deportation and family separation is a more proportionate response to an immigration violation.

This is different from amnesty, said Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy for World Relief and the national coordinator for the Evangelical Immigration Table. Its a restitution-based legalization process, he said. You have people paying significant restitution for having violated immigration law, but it does make it possible for them to pursue permanent legal status.

The idea is gaining ground among evangelicals. Last year, Lifeway Research found that 78 percent of evangelicals supported a pathway to permanent status for illegal immigrants if it involved paying restitutionup from 68 percent in a 2015 survey.

Once illegal immigrants completed the seven-year Dignity program, they would have two options. A five-year, renewable Dignity status would allow them to live and work legally in the United States and reenter the country. Or, if they completed the five-year, conditional Redemption program, they could adjust to lawful permanent status.

Reps. Escobar and Salazar paired the bills immigration reform measures with several border security initiatives. That speaks to the fact that there is an appetite in Congress to deal with this issue, to try to resolve it in a way that can be beneficial for our economy and for national security, said Christian Penichet-Paul, assistant vice president of policy and advocacy for the National Immigration Forum.

The Dignity Act authorizes at least $35 billion to improve infrastructure between and at ports of entry, including physical barriers and technology. It ups the minimum staffing levels for Border Patrol agents, Office of Field Operations officers, and Customs and Border Protection processing coordinators. And it requires the Department of Homeland Security to expand inspection lanes at ports of entry.

It also moves the border security goal posts away from operational control, which is preventing all unlawful entries. Instead, it aims for operational advantage, or finding and responding to high-priority security threats.

So far, the two representatives have recruited 10 co-sponsors: five Democrats and five Republicans. It could take a few years for something to pass, said Penichet-Paul. It could also be quicker than we expect. Another rush at the U.S.-Mexico border or the consequences of another court ruling on DACA could push Congress to act.

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Congresswomen propose ambitious immigration overhaul | WORLD - WORLD News Group

A detailed analysis of U.S. immigration laws by the Cato Institute is alarming: Less than 1 percent of potential immigrants of men and women who attempt to begin the process to legally immigrate to the United States are able to complete the process and relocate to the U.S.

The myth that legal immigration is relatively easy or a matter of simply waiting a few years persists, writes Catos David J. Bier. The focus then becomes solely on how to deal with the symptom of the restrictions people crossing illegally rather than the restrictions themselves, and legal immigration reforms fall to the wayside.

For about a century, there were virtually no limitations placed on immigration. For another several decades until 1924, our immigration laws were modeled to presume eligibility for permanent residence unless the immigrant fit into specific, narrowly tailored categories.

In 1924, this presumption was flipped, Bier writes. Today, all immigrants are presumed to be ineligible, and the burden shifted from the government to the immigrant to prove that they fall into certain narrow, eligible categories.

As Bier and the Cato Institute note, closing avenues of legal immigration funnels increasingly desperate people into doing what many say we most do not want them to do attempt to immigrate to the U.S. illegally, whether by crossing the border without documentation or by overstaying a tourism or other temporary visa.

We agree that illegal immigration is an untenable situation. We recognize the need for border security and for investigation, enforcement and apprehension of illegal immigrants.

But we also agree with the Cato Institute. We admire the institutes commitment to skepticism about the size and scope of government. We recognize, along with the Cato Institute, that arbitrary and cumbersome limits on men, women and families who wish to migrate to the U.S. to pursue life, liberty and happiness are in fact invasive and excessive big government.

And we join the Cato Institute in calling for immigration reform, in amending our laws so good people have better opportunities to openly join the our society and embrace its commitment to freedom and liberty.

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Catos numbers show immigration reform needed | News, Sports, Jobs - Williamsport Sun-Gazette

LODGING was LIVE at the 2023 NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference. Find our show coveragehere.

ESG (Environmental, social and corporate governance) and immigration reform were among the key topics highlighted by a handful of high-profile CEOs at last weeks NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference.

Speaking during the panel discussion entitled The CEOs Check In: A View From The Top, Hilton President & CEO Chris Nassetta emphasized that any efforts toward sustainability need to contribute positively to the bottom line.

In the end reducing energy use or carbon output, or using less water and pushing out less trash, if we can do all of those things in an intelligent way we can actually say to our owner community you get an ROI [return on investment], he said.

Nassetta added, What weve all been trying to figure out over time is how do you do it intelligently? My own view is there are thankfully lots of really, really good things were all doing that will make the environment much better over time and more resilient.

Keith Barr, CEO, IHG Hotels & Resorts, cited the value of industry leaders sharing best practices as he provided the franchisors perspective to solving problems for everyone involved.

Whats exciting to see is that tension of not being the asset owner forces you to become more creative and more collaborative. What are the solutions that can work for the owner, for the customer and for the environment? he asked.

Leslie Hale, President & CEO, RLJ Lodging Trust, was asked about the owners perspective specifically.

Were very focused on ESG. I would say about one out of every three meetings I had last year I would get a question about it. Its important to be able to collaborate with both the brands and management companies to identify opportunities like energy waste and water utilization. All of those things require that capital be put into the asset, she said, adding that leveraging technology is key to take advantage of such opportunities for savings.

Tony Capuano, President & CEO, Marriott International, reinforced some of the overall efforts throughout the industry.

Youve seen us start to concentrate on water conservation, energy conservation, and elimination of food waste. Those areas not only help us achieve those [sustainability] goals, but they drive profitability that ultimately benefits the owners, he said.

Sebastien Bazin, Chairman & CEO, Accor, agreed that elimination of food waste is critical for the entire lodging industry. One thing we have to do is get out of the buffet, he said, acknowledging that Accor is in the process of phasing such programs out.

Barr later referenced an AI [artificial intelligence] solution the company has utilized in the Middle East that enables properties to track food waste every single day coming off the buffet and provides real-time feedback to chefs and management.

We have significantly reduced our food waste in the Middle East. There are ways to use technology to make them [buffets] have less waste, he said.

Meanwhile, the CEOs unilaterally touted the importance of increasing temporary work visas as well as enacting some sort of immigration reform.

Capuano noted that U.S. resort destinations, in particular, are impacted on the labor front.

We are woefully inadequate in terms of the number of temporary work visas we have in this country, he said.

Nassettawho also serves as the current chair of the U.S. Travel Associationremained hopeful that a proposed bill limiting visa wait times for the U.S. to 21 days will be passed this year.

However, he further added that comprehensive immigration reform ultimately will be the game changer that we need for the country to get the right type of work force and for the U.S. economy to be competitive over the long term.

Nassetta continued, Were in a global competition economically. The way you win for the long term is you have the best and strongest economy. The way you do that is through energy, food and labor force. We are limiting ourselves from a work force point of view because of all the infighting and fund raising that goes on with both sides [of the aisle] around immigration. As a result were not solving a problem that needs to be solved, he said.

Barr, meanwhile, was given the last word as he prepares to retire from his position leading IHG by the end of the month.

Ive spent 30 years with the company, the last six of which have been as CEO and weve had amazing success. The company is in a great place so its time to get a bit of family time. Ill be back doing something. Ill be an advisor to the company for the rest of the year and then Ill figure out whats next, he said.

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ESG and Immigration Reform Were Among Key NYU Topics - LODGING Magazine

FAIR Take | June2023

Last week, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D.-Wash.), Rep. Tony Crdenas (D-Cal.) and Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI)announcedthe re-introduction of legislation that would make legal permanent residents immediately eligible for all major federal benefits programs beginning dayone.

The legislation, calledLifting Immigrant Families Through Benefits Access Restoration(orLIFT the BAR) Act eliminates the current statutory five-year waiting period for immigrants to be eligible for all of the major federal benefits programs. These programs include Medicaid, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program (otherwise known as Social Security Disability). The bill would not only provide immediate access to these benefits for green card holders, it would also provide it to illegal aliens whose deportations have been deferred such as DACA beneficiaries, TPS beneficiaries, parolees, andothers.

The bill does not stop with federal benefits. Based on the same legislationintroduced by these Members in 2021, the LIFT the BAR Act would also make green card holders and lawfully present aliens immediately eligible for state and local benefits. It also repeals current law that requires a sponsors income to be attributed to the immigrants income for purposes of determining eligibility for benefitsprograms.

The five-year waiting period was passed by Congress in 1996 (and signed into law by President Bill Clinton) in support of a long-standing policy that foreign nationals emigrating to the United States should not become a fiscal burden to Americansincluding generations of immigrants who have already settled in the U.S. For example,Section 212(a)(4)of the INA expressly states that an alien is inadmissible as an immigrant if he or she is likely at any time to become a public charge. The same section requires that family sponsors of immigrants sign affidavits of support, pledging to accept financial responsibility for the individual they sponsor to come to theU.S.

The progressive Democrats sponsoring the LIFT the BAR Act, however, do not see this as reasonable or common-sense public policy. To the contrary, in herpress releaseannouncing the legislation, lead sponsor Representative Jayapal said, Im proud to be leading this legislation to finally eliminate cruel, xenophobic, and unreasonable barriers to health care, nutrition assistance, and other life-changing public benefits. Senator Hirono similarly remarked, Immigrants play integral roles in our communities and should not have to endure an arbitrary waiting period just to access essentialbenefits.

The cost of such legislation could easily reach well into the billions. But that has not deterred Democratic support for the legislation. The last time the LIFT the BAR ACT was introduced (in 2021), it had the support of 100 co-sponsors. This version of the bill is likely to see the same level of support. The authors also boast of support from nearly 200 open-borders organizations. Fortunately, this bill is not likely to move in the Republican-controlled House ofRepresentatives.

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Progressives Fight to Give Immigrants Immediate Access to ... - Federation for American Immigration Reform

Thousands of migrant children illegally working long hours in dangerous jobs have spurred the U.S. Department of Labor to order a crackdown on child labor law violations resulting from the surge in unaccompanied minors entering the United States. At the same time, at least 10 states have introduced or passed laws rolling back child labor protections. New legislation includes an Iowa law that allows 16-year-olds to serve alcohol, an Arkansas law that ends the requirement for age verification and a state-issued work permit for 14- and 15-year-olds, and a New Jersey law allowing 16-year-olds to work 50 hours a week in the summer.

Labor law expert Kate Andrias, Patricia D. and R. Paul Yetter Professor of Law, and Immigrants Rights Clinic Director Elora Mukherjee, Jerome L. Greene Clinical Professor of Law, discuss how the seemingly disparate issues of child labor and migration overlap, and the implications for children, workers, and democracy.

Kate Andrias: Child labor was a focus in the early part of the 20th century. Labor problems broadly were at the center of political debate: really low wages, rampant inequality, sweatshop conditions. But one of the major problems was children working in very, very dangerous conditions. Congress repeatedly tried to solve the problem through enacting various child labor laws, but the Supreme Court kept striking them down as unconstitutional. However, during the New Deal, the court switched its position on the ability of Congress to regulate labor. In 1938, Congress passed a set of labor laws that, among other things, put significant restrictions on the ability of children to work in order to avoid exploitative conditions for children. And for a period of time, I think child labor was less of a problem.

Were now seeing recurring patterns in the economy that existed earlier in our history. The data suggests that there has been a resurgence in child labor in recent years. In 2022, the Department of Labor (DOL) documented an increase of 37% over 2021 in the number of minors employed illegally. That was an increase of 283% from 2015. Its possible the DOL is catching more violations. But most people think its actually an increasing problem.

Elora Mukherjee: During the Trump administration, immigrant children were being held in federal custody for weeks, months, sometimes more than a year. Procedural requirements had been put in place by the Trump administration that made it harder for the Office of Refugee Resettlement to release children to appropriately vetted sponsors.

When the Biden administration came to office, there was tremendous pressure to ensure that children were promptly released from federal immigration custody. As a result of this effort to speed up their release, there has not been, in many instances, appropriate vetting of the sponsors to whom children are released to ensure that the sponsors actually have the best interests of the children in mind.

Trafficking is not too strong a word. Some of the individuals receiving these children from federal immigration custody are traffickers. They are engaged in human smuggling and the exploitation of children. And they are sometimes working with the coyotes, the smugglers who brought the children to the United States.

Some of the fault certainly lies with the federal government. The fault also lies with the push-and-pull factors that lead children to migrate to the United States. Many of the countries where child migrants are coming from are effectively failed states. The governments cannot provide basic security to children and to large swaths of the population. And the children who are being sent north to the United States feel a tremendous responsibility to try to put food on the table for their parents or siblings. Often, unfortunately, they need to pay back smugglers as well. So the children are facing enormous pressures. They need money.

Our country has become increasingly polarized over immigration, and there has been rising xenophobia, racism, and a view that certain people, especially undocumented immigrants, are disposable. Their lives, their dignity, their value, their childhoodit doesn't matter. And there will be no one to hold the big corporations accountable if theyre hiring children, especially undocumented children.

Andrias: Child labor laws have always allowed children to do some work. If youre 14, if youre 16, you can babysit, you can work in a retail job a few hours on the weekends. The idea behind child labor laws is to make sure that the kind of work that children engage in is a supplement to their education. What we have going on right now is much more than that. Its children working as roofers. Its children working on farms. Its children working in dangerous factories with toxic chemicals. Its children working very long hours. Its a particular problem for migrant children and undocumented children, but its not limited to those children.

There are rampant violations of the law. Those exist in part because of the underlying conditions Elora was describing. But they also exist because the Department of Labor is woefully underfunded and doesnt have the resources to enforce the law.

Andrias: There are efforts in a number of states to roll back limitations on how much children can work. So, for example, a bill introduced in Iowa would allow 14-year-olds to work in meatpacking plants and would indemnify the plants against civil liability for many injuries that occur. Its an effort to enable big corporations to hire children and to have them work in dangerous conditions and not be subject to liability. A lot of the other bills expand the number of hours that children can work, the kinds of work they can do, and also how young children can be when they start working.

Observers often point to the tight labor market. But we have had other tight labor markets without the same effort to permit child labor and without widespread problems of rampant illegal child labor and exploitation. A bigger factor is that working people have very little political power right now. Big corporations have a lot of influence in state legislatures and also in Congress. If you poll people about an increase in the minimum wage or forming unions or stronger protections for labor, people say yes, they want all of those things. And yet that doesn't translate into legislation or effective enforcement because big corporations have an outsized influence in politics. Theres a concerted effort on the part of businesses to change the laws to make it easier to exploit labor. And there isnt a lot of ability among workers to prevent that.

Whats really driving this is a desire of corporations to pay less for labor. If pay were higher and conditions were better, there would likely be enough adults willing and available to do the work. The problem is that companies would like to make more profits, pay workers less, and they are able to do that if they exploit migrant children or other children who don't have alternatives.

Mukherjee: The reform that is most likely to actually be implemented is increased vetting of the sponsor before a child is released from federal immigration custody. We have all by now heard the horror stories of a single sponsor who has taken custody of multiple children to whom the sponsor has no familial connection. I think were going to see a genuine effort by the Biden administration to increase the vetting before children are released. Now, on the flip side, what I hope we dont see is a return to the Trump era, where children were kept in federal immigration custody for prolonged periods of time and in inhumane and degrading conditions that led to the deaths of multiple children.

Second, and more pressing, is the need for comprehensive immigration reform. The system that we currently have perpetuates family separations. There have not been sufficient changes to that system that would enable migrant children who come to the United States to focus primarily on school.

Andrias: The Department of Labor has committed to ramping up enforcement. It has created a new interagency task force to try to handle the problem of child labor in a more coordinated way. And its trying to do more data-driven enforcement, where it prioritizes enforcement resources in industries that are particularly in need of such enforcement. The problem is that without significantly more funding, theres only so much progress that effective and committed administrators can make.

We also need comprehensive labor law reform. Our labor laws are woefully outdated. Not only is there a problem of extreme underenforcement, but also penalties are so low that it often makes economic sense for employers to violate the law. That is a serious problem that needs statutory reform. In addition, we need higher minimum wages, things like paid time off when you have a baby or when youre ill, and a stronger right to organize unions. Because if workers lack power at work, if they lack an organization through which they can have a voice, no matter how many labor enforcers are hired at the federal level, the violations occur.

Mukherjee: After the lifting of the Title 42 expulsion order, there have been a number of important developments. On one hand, a number of conservative attorneys general have filed a federal lawsuit in Florida, trying to enjoin the federal government from lifting Title 42. That case remains pending. On the other hand, on the other side of the country, in California, immigrants rights groups have filed a lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction that the new Title 8 regulations that were announced in May should be enjoined. Those Title 8 regulations effectively end asylum in the United States, with the exception of unaccompanied minors, who will continue to be allowed to cross into the United States. The effect of this change will be increased family separations, with children being allowed to enter the United States without their parents or primary caregivers. That will make those children even more vulnerable to exploitation than they would have been otherwise.

Andrias: One of the challenges with both immigration and labor law governing the right to unionize is that, because of preemption doctrine, reforming both of those bodies of law has to happen at the federal level. And therefore, I think the possibility for reform right now is pretty low, which is depressing.

On the other hand, there is exciting organizing work occurring at the state and local level. Thats one place where I see shoots of hope. I would point to the recent efforts of Starbucks workers to organize and the efforts of the writers in Hollywood to try to affect how AI is used. Theres been a real upsurge in organizing across both low-wage industries and more professional workers.

Theres also some important legislative reform occurring in states where theres sufficient political power to do so on issues that are not preempted by federal law. New York state recently changed its laws to make it easier for farmworkers to organize. There are a number of efforts to protect domestic workers through state and local legislation. There are efforts to raise minimum wages, to pass scheduling protections, and to limit the ability of companies to use electronic monitoring of workers in numerous states.

Finally, there are some promising administrative efforts within the federal government. The effort at the Federal Trade Commission to prohibit companies from imposing on low-wage workers noncompete agreements is an example. At the National Labor Relations Board, the general counsel is also seeking to limit noncompete agreements and undertaking other reforms that would significantly protectworkers democratic rights. The question will be how those fare in the courts.

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Professors Kate Andrias and Elora Mukherjee on the Crisis in Child ... - Columbia Law School