TWENTY-ONE TOPICS FOR AN IMMIGRATION DIALOGUE
If you happen to stumble into a discussion about immigration, may I make a suggestion. Establish this as a ground rule: when person A states something, person B cannot use “but” in his or her response. Note: Ducking any foolish thought of prioritizing the points below, I have put them in alphabetical order.

*African-Americans until relatively recently were loathe to be critical in public about the actions of other African-Americans. Analogously, does it seem that immigration advocates rarely speak out when an undocumented individual commits a truly criminal act?
*Canada welcomes immigrants – if they have certain skills. The American system is almost the reverse, the statutory emphasis being on family reunification. Should the USA put more emphasis on skills?
*Crossing into the USA without documentation is a misdemeanor carrying a maximum sentence of six-months in jail. Many/most? plead guilty, avoid jail, and go back to their home country (to try again?)
*Do businesses want tighter scrutiny of the E-Verify system for validating the status of new employees?
*Does the average older American realize that his social security check is dependent on payments into the program, which means younger workers — which means that more immigrants, not fewer, are needed since the white population is not regenerating its numbers?
*How does ICE determine which countries participate in the diversity visa lottery system?
*How much of the blame for the criminal activity and political corruption in South and Central America should be shouldered by the USA? Is the response different for similar situations in, for example, Malaysia or South Africa or Turkey?
*If a parent, about to become illegal by walking into the USA without any documentation, loses temporary custody of his/her children – themselves illegal for the same reasons, what is their legal, not moral, claim against separation of the family? (Unaccompanied apprehended children number about 50,000 annually, 2/3 from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador [WSJ: 6-30-18])
*If a border wall was accepted as something to be constructed and DACA-holders immediately were placed on a path to become green card-holders, would immigration advocates accept the deal?
*If American schools treated blue-collar jobs as desirable alternative routes to a career, and were equitably supported in terms of both money and quality staffing, would seasonal employers have many more job applications and therefore not be concerned that the number (81,000) of H-2B visas available for Summer hires of non-Americans is inadequate?
*If I, an American from birth, rob my neighbor, will my church prevent the police from arresting me?
*Is the country’s most pressing employment problem finding more low-paid service workers, ranging from the agricultural sector to personal care and home health aides? At present, these job categories (as well as many in the higher paid but unpredictable construction trades) are heavily filled by immigrants.
*If I walk into France from Belgium and have a baby, is he or she a French citizen?
*Is the real problem/challenge behind constructing a logical immigration program that the USA is in a unique position, given its size, its job-creation capability, its historical pledge to be open to all comers? In other words, expectations of the USA are wholly different than the expectations of any other country.
*Let’s say you have a Russian, a Mexican, and an Indian who have overstayed their tourist visas? Should they be treated differently?
*Should the USA welcome all asylum-seekers from high crime rate countries, where presumably the applicants can prove that they meet all the asylum tests, perhaps most important being that they would be in imminent danger if they returned to their home country? Total seekers in 2016 were 180,000, compared with a typical annual admission count of 25,000 (WSJ 6-30-18).
*The American immigration system must be changed. Does it make sense to scrap ICE and start over?
*Were jet travel, the internet, and smartphones around during previous waves of immigration?
*What would happen if the tourist visa was shortened to three months, from the existing six?
*Which immigration policy group would be against hiring more judges and reducing what can be a multi-year wait to resolve one’s case? Right now, there are 334 immigration judges, juggling 2,000 cases apiece, with a typical resolution time of two years. The backlog is nearly 700,000 (WSJ: May 24, 2018).
*Would you prefer a completely open border? Would the neighboring states pick up the additional tab for education, healthcare, etc.? Would all states pay proportionately, based on their economies?

Bob Howitt, wkbj@att.net; 973-537-1814; not a PhD.

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