 
A U.S. customs agent fingerprints and photographs Young-Jun Yoon, right, of Seoul, Korea as he enters the United States on a student visa at John F. Kennedy International Airport, Monday, Jan. 5, 2003 in New York. Authorities began scanning fingerprints and taking photographs of arriving foreigners Monday as part of a new program that Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said will make borders 'open to travelers but closed to terrorists.' (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Washington D.C. ( January 7, 2004) -- President George W. Bush announced his proposal to reform the immigration
system. The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium
and its affiliates, the Asian Law Caucus and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, are pleased that the President is showing renewed interest in immigration
reform. However, the measures outlined in his proposal are inadequate and will not fix the restrictive patchwork of laws that make up our broken immigration system.
NAPALC and its affiliates support a comprehensive reform of our immigration
system. Any meaningful immigration reform must include the following elements:
Reduction of the massive backlogs in family immigration;
Reasonable opportunity for people already living and working in the United States to become lawful permanent residents; and
Any temporary worker program must be accompanied by an opportunity for lawful permanent residence and full labor protections for U.S. and immigrant workers alike.
The President's proposal for immigration reform does not appear to contain any of these critical components.
While the President's proposal calls for a "reasonable annual increase of legal immigrants," it is unclear whether such an increase will include visas to alleviate the lengthy backlogs in family immigration.
As of 1997, approximately over 1.5 million of the 3.5 million people caught in the family immigration backlog were from Asian
countries. "We are disappointed that the President's proposal does not explicitly call for a reduction in the family immigration backlog," said Traci Hong, Immigration Staff Attorney for
NAPALC. "Millions of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents have been waiting for years, sometimes even decades, to be reunited with their family
members. It doesn't look like the President's proposal will help these families at
all. If the President is serious about achieving immigration reform, he must recognize that a reduction in the family immigration backlog must be a part of the solution."
The President's proposal also fails to provide a reasonable and timely path to lawful permanent residence, either for immigrants who are already living and working in the United States, or for future participants in the temporary worker program created under this
proposal. Workers who participate in this program will only receive a temporary work visa for three years, which may be renewed for some undefined finite
period. There are approximately one million undocumented immigrants of Asian descent in the United States.
"The failure to provide a path to lawful permanent residence ignores the reality that some of these workers already have or will develop close family ties in our community and have strong reasons to live in the United States permanently," said Phil Y. Ting, Executive Director of
ALC. "It is unrealistic to expect people to come out of the shadows and become fully integrated members of our community and economy, if they know that they will be forced to leave everything behind when their period of stay under the program ends."
"The President's assertion that workers can obtain green cards through the existing process is unrealistic, at best," observed Stewart Kwoh, Executive Director of
APALC. "The current process only allows 10,000 workers without specialized skills to become lawful permanent residents each
year. Given that there are an estimated 8 to 10 million undocumented immigrants already in the United States, these hard-working immigrants who have established roots in the United States and contributed to our economy and community will not have a realistic chance at getting a green card, much less becoming U.S. citizens, in their lifetime under this proposal unless it results a substantial increase in immigrant visas."
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