Empty Tank for U.S. Immigration Reform?

Washington, D.C. On June 25, 2009 the President, Vice President, and key cabinet members met with a bipartisan group of Senate and House leaders representing the spectrum of opinion on immigration.

Since this time, we have had very little input on this issue from The White House. The official White House web site for immigration lists these two items as the new developments in immigration:

• The President signed the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act, which provides quality health care to 11 million kids – 4 million who were previously uninsured — and removes barriers preventing legal immigrant children from being covered.
• The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provides over $400 million in funds to strengthen security and infrastructure for ports of entry on the Southwest border.

I was interested as to why the White House put these two items as the opening items on the web page in the “Progress” section. Are these new items or developments?

For the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act, when clicking through the various links, I saw that President Obama had signed this bill on February 4, 2009. This is hardly current news.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 appears to have gone into law on January 6, 2009. The DHS web link  has a Policy and Guidance Memo dated May 15, 2009. The Recovery Act has its own web site as well.  I see nothing of note on this site for immigration purposes.

Why would the White House list these two items under the Progress section of their immigration web site? This information is both stale and dated by this point. The White House seems to want to convey a message that we are making progress on the immigration issue. However, since the June 25, 2009 meeting with Senate and House leaders I cannot find any new information on White House progress in this arena.

At the risk of sounding negative, I do not see how the Obama Administration would make any progress on immigration. The Administration has commenced the Economic Stimulus Plan. This plan requires a huge financial commitment from U.S. taxpayers. President Obama recently has geared up for an all-out battle on U.S. health care reform. If health care reform were to pass (Democratic leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives reached a deal on Wednesday July 29, 2009), this would also require another huge financial commitment from U.S. taxpayers. The U.S. still has heavy military commitments in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Will the Administration have anything left in the tank for immigration? At this point, I would not bet on it. The current business immigration system has considerable flaws. We are not retaining some of the best and brightest foreign talent in our labor market. Making changes will take a broad consensus of support in both the House and Senate. After tackling the recession and health care, would the White House have enough support to make changes in the immigration system?