Official Sees 'Major Shift' in Immigration Debate

WASHINGTON (Nov. 13) -- Call it the opening salvo in the latest battle over immigration reform.

In the same week that Lou Dobbs left CNN to find a bigger soapbox to rail against illegal immigration, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano laid out the Obama administration's plan for comprehensive immigration reform. The timing of her first major speech on immigration did not go unnoticed.

John Podesta, president of the liberal Center for American Progress, opened his introduction by saying he would have mentioned Dobbs' departure but had to "enforce our serious no-gloat policy."

Afghanistan, health care reform and the economy have crowded out most other priorities at the White House and on Capitol Hill, but Napolitano said immigration reform "has been festering for far too long." By early next year, she predicted, "Congress will have to act."

Napolitano acknowledged that previous reform efforts have failed. The most recent went down in 2007 when the Senate killed a bill supported by President George W. Bush that would have created a path to citizenship for 12 million illegal immigrants. Senators from both parties complained it didn't include tough enough enforcement measures.

Since then, she said, the Obama administration has increased inspections and surveillance on the border and cracked down on smuggling. Seizures of drugs, smuggled cash and illegal weapons are up dramatically, partly because of new screening of southbound rail shipments that are often used to ferry supplies to drug cartels.

Perhaps more than stepped-up enforcement, the economic downtown has reduced the flow of illegal immigrants as low-skill workers who might have sought work north of the border have stayed home because of high unemployment in the U.S. Compared with the last time Congress debated the issue, the number of undocumented immigrants has fallen by more than half, she said.

"These are major differences that should change the immigration conversation," said Napolitano, a former governor of Arizona who has dealt with border and immigration issues since 1993. "I know a major shift when I see one, and what I have seen makes reform far more attainable this time around."

Napolitano called for tougher anti-smuggling laws, stiffer penalties for businesses that knowingly hire illegal labor and changes in visa laws to make it easier for high-skilled foreigners to stay in the country to work. She also reiterated Bush's call to bring 12 million undocumented residents "out of the shadows, require them to register and pay all the taxes they owe."

All that will take an act of Congress, which is preoccupied with the even more contentious issue of health care reform. In the meantime, the Obama administration has shifted course where it could. Most noticeable has been an end to wholesale workplace roundups and deportations. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security has shifted the onus onto employers, auditing the books of thousands of companies suspected of hiring workers here illegally.

Last month, President Obama lifted a 22-year-old ban on foreign nationals with HIV entering the country. The administration also recommended political asylum for a Guatemalan woman who was brutally abused by her husband, a sign that it's open, for the first time, to giving sanctuary to women who have suffered domestic violence.

Those moves have enraged conservative groups and lawmakers who complain that 700 miles of border fencing mandated by Congress in 2006 hasn't been built strong enough to keep out illegals.

Obama "wants to loosen restrictions on illegal and legal immigrants any way he can to flood the United States with more people from abroad at a time when Americans are suffering historic hardships," said William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration.

"The single most effective thing that DHS could do to create jobs for American workers would be to conduct vigorous work site enforcement and to actually deport the illegal immigrant workers so they don't remain here to compete with citizen and legal immigrant job-seekers," said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who chairs a key immigration subcommittee, said he expects to introduce legislation early next year, before the 2010 campaign season gets under way and makes voting on such a hot-button issue politically untenable for lawmakers up for re-election.