For Some, Immigration Issue Personal

October 29, 2004

Abdifatah Abdinur, anchorman of a public affairs TV show broadcast in Somali, is a key conduit for election information in his immigrant community.

From a small TV studio in Rochester, Abdinur re-broadcasts the presidential debates -- complete with translation and fact checks.

Minnesota's immigrants are very interested -- and perplexed -- by the elections, he said. They're concerned about jobs, housing, health care -- and also the candidates' plans for immigrants, he said.

"So many people are really confused by the immigration issues going on," said Abdinur. "They get a lot of headaches from them."

Although immigration issues aren't in the headlines this election, they're a top priority to thousands of Minnesota immigrants and the communities they live in. The same is true nationally. As Bob Schieffer, moderator of the third presidential debates, noted, he'd received more mail on immigration than any other subject.

A big reason is that the scope of immigration issues has ballooned since 9/11. The traditional issues of family reunification, worker permits and legalization have been joined by concerns about certain immigrant rights in relation to tighter homeland security.

"I think both [candidates] diagnose the same problem -- that we have a lot of people here illegally, a lot of people who want to come here legally, and families separated because of an outdated family reunification system," said Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant research and advocacy group in Washington, D.C.

"Where they part company is what to do with these folks," she said.

One of the biggest issues, especially for burgeoning Latino communities, is how the United States should handle the thousands of immigrants who slip across the border and the other illegal workers already here.

President Bush has proposed a guest-worker program that would allow businesses to hire foreign workers for three years with a possibility of renewing their term. The businesses would get needed workers, he explains, and immigrants wouldn't have to fear deportation.

But under the Bush plan, the workers wouldn't be able to remain in the United States after their work term ended. Such a route to amnesty, said Bush, would "perpetuate illegal immigration."

Kerry also endorses a temporary worker program, but with the option of citizenship down the road.

"We need an earned legalization program for people who have been here for a long time, stayed out of trouble, got a job, paid their taxes," Kerry said in the final debate.

For people like Jorge Saavedra, CEO of Centro Legal community law office in St. Paul, a route to citizenship is critical. Otherwise, he said, "we'll use immigrants as cheap labor, to have when we want, and to discard when we're done with them."

But critics say that giving guest workers a path to citizenship undermines the current immigration system and could result in jobs being taken from Americans.

The records

Bush's immigration record is mixed, say national immigration officials. He started his administration calling for immigration reform. In fact, his first foreign visit was to Mexican President Vicente Fox.

Some progress was made, said Jeffrey Passel, an immigration expert at the Urban Institute, a public policy research group in Washington, D.C. The backlog of citizenship applications was reduced during his early years in office. New technology was put in place that could better track information needed to process applications.

But by 2003, the backlogs for processing of green cards -- or permanent residency cards -- and citizenship applications grew, he said. There's now a backlog of 1.2 million people waiting for green cards, he said.

Meanwhile, tightened homeland security after 9/11 led to charges that the civil liberties of immigrants, especially Muslims, were being violated.

Most of that has subsided, said Abdinur. And now, refugee groups, including Somalis, are focused on bringing their children and families to the United States -- a bureaucratic process that can take years, he said. They're also very interested in jobs, housing, education and health care, he said.

"Most Somalis are here legally; they want to bring their family here," he said. "That's been getting harder and harder after September 11."

Kerry, for his part, has not been a leader on immigration issues in the Senate, in part because his fellow Massachusetts senator -- Democrat Ted Kennedy -- has been a vocal advocate for change, national observers said.

Kerry has, however, supported guest-worker programs and has talked about cracking down on leaky borders and on employers who hire illegal workers. He supports the SOLVE Act, sponsored by Kennedy, which would legalize undocumented workers who had been here five years, reduce backlog on family reunification requests by relaxing some requirements, and increase the number of temporary worker permits.

Kerry has also backed the DREAM Act, which would allow children of illegal immigrants to receive in-state college tuition. The Bush administration doesn't have an official position on it.

Whoever the next president is, he must make the immigration system function more smoothly, local immigrant leaders argue. It would benefit employers in need of workers, they say, as well as immigrants eager to build lives in America and the communities they live in.

"There are so many [immigration] issues that people deal with on a daily basis," said Abdinur. "They need to do something different."

Jean Hopfensperger, Star Tribune