Clinton-Era Proposals Key to Ending Immigration Crisis: Advocacy Group

Police Lt. Marco Santana leaves his vehicle to inspect a section of the southern border wall at San Luis, Ariz., on Jan. 27, 2023. Allan Stein/The Epoch Times

For the United States, the problem of immigration is nothing new, having plagued the nation for decades. But while the issue stands as one of the most divisive in party politics today, there was a time when lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were able to reach a bipartisan agreement on what needed to be done.

Now, amid increasing concerns over record-high crossings at the U.S.–Mexico border, one advocacy group is calling on legislators to reconsider those decades-old recommendations.

The NumbersUSA Education and Research Foundation is the “nation’s largest immigration-reduction grassroots organization in the country,” according to the organization’s vice president and deputy director, Chris Chmielenski.

A nonpartisan nonprofit founded in 1996, NumbersUSA cites the recommendations of the bipartisan Commission on Immigration Reform—a mid-1990s congressional effort led by the late Rep. Barbara Jordan (D-Texas)—as its primary inspiration and blueprint for fixing the nation’s immigration system.

“Our organization’s missions pretty much mirror what that bipartisan commission’s recommendations were,” Chmielenski told The Epoch Times. “And that was that having legal immigration of over a million per year—combined with uncontrolled illegal immigration—is bad for the national interest, it’s bad for American workers.”

Advocating for a “more controlled” system, NumbersUSA is pushing for several key reforms that it has deemed to be in alignment with the commission’s recommendations and beneficial to restoring the nation’s immigration numbers to sustainable levels.

An Untenable Situation

Illegal immigrants, mostly of Venezuelan origin, attempt to forcibly cross into the United States at the Paso del Norte International Bridge in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on March 12, 2023. HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol encounters with illegal immigrants at the southern border totaled more than 251,000 in December—the highest monthly total on record. Since then, official numbers have decreased, though that may be due to the Biden administration’s creation of a new “legal pathway” to entry for noncitizens from Latin American countries under a humanitarian parole program.

“They want some sort of an orderly process, but they’re not changing the message,” Chmielenski noted. “And the message is that if you can make it to the United States, we’ll let you in.”

Describing the administration’s overall handling of the crisis as “abysmal,” he added: “Until they start to discourage people from coming in the first place … the numbers are going to be unaffected and we’re going to continue to have rampant illegal immigration.

“So, the administration needs to take their role seriously, and say, ‘Enough is enough, we’re not going to let anybody else in the country.’”

Enforcing the Law

In its 1994 preliminary report (pdf), the Commission on Immigration Reform wrote, “The credibility of immigration policy can be measured by a simple yardstick: People who should get in do get in; people who should not get in are kept out, and people who are judged deportable are required to leave.”

In keeping with that sentiment, Chmielenski noted that one of the easiest reforms to implement would be for the administration to simply enforce the laws already on the books.

“Existing law already requires the federal government to detain everybody who crosses the border illegally, including those that claim asylum,” he said. “And what this administration is doing instead is they’re granting them parole and putting them in what they call ‘Alternatives to Detention,’ giving them ankle bracelets or cell phones so they can track their movements once they get into the United States.”

But such alternatives are easy to circumvent, Chmielenski added, noting, “You can rip off an ankle bracelet and you can toss the cell phone in the trash can, so people are disappearing left and right.”

A group of illegal aliens walk up the road after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico. Further up the road, they will board a bus bound for the Border Patrol processing facility in McAllen, Texas, on April 18, 2019. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

However, on March 8, U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell struck down the administration’s Alternatives to Detention policy, holding that it had “effectively turned the Southwest Border into a meaningless line in the sand” and that asylum seekers must be detained per U.S. law.

Recently, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) put forth legislation—dubbed The Border Safety and Security Act—that would likewise require the Homeland Security secretary to detain asylum seekers, or, where that is not possible, turn them away.

NumbersUSA supports the measure as “a good first step,” Chmielenski said, but he noted that more needs to be done to address the exploitation of the nation’s current asylum policies.

“The administration is abusing our asylum policy,” he held. “They’re abusing our credible fear policy. They’re abusing the authority that Congress has given them to grant parole on a case-by-case basis that people cross the border illegally. All those issues still need to be addressed.”

Revamping the Legal Process

Another area for reform that NumbersUSA highlights is how eligible individuals are selected through the legal immigration process.

“Two-thirds of all of our immigration comes from family preference Green Card categories—and it doesn’t just include nuclear family members,” Chmielenski noted.

Under current law, certain family members of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents—also known as green card holders—are eligible to become permanent residents.

Migrants begin walking in a caravan on their way to the United States, in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on March 30, 2021. Wendell Escoto/AFP via Getty Images

For citizens, those family members can include not only their spouses and children (including married children), but also their parents and brothers and sisters, if the citizen is at least 21 years old. Those green card holders can then sponsor additional family members to join them, though for them, the list of eligible individuals is shorter.

“What happens is when you allow one immigrant to start sponsoring their parents, their parents can then sponsor their other children, their other children can sponsor their spouses, which then leads to in-laws, and it creates these endless chains of migration—hence the term ‘chain migration,’” Chmielenski explained.

“NumbersUSA is very much in favor of allowing new immigrants to be able to sponsor their spouses and their minor children to come here along with them, but when we start getting into extended family beyond the nuclear family, that’s where we would say we draw the line.”

The Commission on Immigration Reform had recommended reordering the categories of family preference so that spouses and minor children were given top priority. That recommendation does not seem to have been followed, as they are currently listed as the second preferred category behind the unmarried sons and daughters—age 21 and older—of U.S. citizens.

The commission had also recommended a greater emphasis on employment-based immigration and requiring employers to verify workers’ eligibility status. The latter, Chmielenski noted, could be accomplished through mandatory E-Verify as outlined in bills recently introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in the Senate and Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) in the House.

Additionally, NumbersUSA promotes ending the Diversity Immigrant Visa lottery program, through which green card applicants are drawn at random, and limiting total legal admissions to about 550,000 per year, as per the previously introduced Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy (RAISE) Act.

Ending Birthright Citizenship

A pregnant Honduran immigrant stands in line with fellow immigrants for a bus to a U.S. destination from McAllen, Texas, on Aug. 15, 2016. John Moore/Getty Images

Lastly, Chmielenski said NumbersUSA advocates for an end to birthright citizenship in the United States—a proposal often met with backlash among some conservatives.

“Our position is that we don’t think that illegal aliens are covered by the 14th Amendment,” he said. “We think that Congress has the authority to determine who is subject to the jurisdiction thereof of the United States.”

The 14^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

While many feel the amendment is meant to cover every individual born in the United States, others argue the framers of the Constitution likely did not mean for that to include individuals in the country temporarily or illegally, and that certain exceptions already exist.

For instance, Chmielenski noted that birthright citizenship is denied to the children of foreign diplomats.

Others have also expressed support for repealing birthright citizenship in recent years, including former President Donald Trump, who suggested in 2018 that he could do so via executive order, raising questions about the legality of such a move.

While Chmielenski held that the legislature could and should clarify the meaning of the 14^th Amendment, he also acknowledged that any attempt to do so would likely be met with a swift legal challenge.

“But, you know, let’s have it out,” he said. “Let’s have a public debate and see what happens, if it gets to that point.”