Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus
CAPAC

Immigration Priorities
Congressman Neil Abercrombie, Chair

Immigration law and policy has had and will continue to have a tremendous impact on the Asian American community. Beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, immigration law and policy was used to systematically exclude Asians from the United States. National origin quotas that discriminated against Asians were not fully eliminated until 1965. The few Asians who were allowed to immigrate to the U.S. were prohibited from becoming U.S. citizens until the 1940s. As a result, Asian Americans became easy targets of discriminatory measures such as the Alien Land Law, which prohibited noncitizens from owning property.

Because of the discriminatory laws discussed above, Asians are relative newcomers to the United States. Of the 13.5 million Asian Americans currently living in the United States, 8.7 million immigrated to the U.S. 31% of the Asian American community are native-born U.S. citizens, 34% are naturalized U.S. citizens, and 35% are noncitizens ( lawful permanent residents, asylees and refugees, legal nonimmigrants in the United States to work or to study, and people currently without access to legal immigration status).

Asian Americans are still in the process of being reunited with their families, yet U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who petition for their family members from Asia must wait for years, if not decades, in order to reunite with their families. A U.S. citizen mother who petitions for her unmarried son or daughter from the Philippines will have to wait approximately 14 years before her child can join her in the U.S. If the citizen is petitioning for her sibling from the Philippines, she will have to wait roughly 22 years. A lawful permanent resident who petitions for his wife from India must wait approximately 4 years before she can join him in the U.S.

Approximately one million Asians living in the U.S. are undocumented immigrants. In other words, 1 in 13 Asian Americans are forced to live in the shadows, unable to have access to higher education, good jobs, or proper healthcare. They are also vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous employers and criminals who seek to exploit their lack of immigration status.

A wide range of crucial industries in our economy (agriculture, healthcare, restaurant, and hospitality, to name just a few) have labor needs that cannot be met by the domestic labor force alone. Yet our immigration system fails to recognize the need for these essential workers. Unless you have a qualifying U.S. citizen or permanent resident family member who can and is willing to petition for you, or have highly specialized skills and/or post-secondary education, you will not be able to immigrate to the U.S. As a result, the population of undocumented immigrants continues to rise.

At the same time, the rights of noncitizens, including long term lawful permanent residents, have been under continuous assault since 1996. Grounds of deportability continue to expand and be applied retroactively to acts that occurred years, sometimes even decades, ago. One-size-fits-all detention and removal policies are being enacted administratively and legislatively, leaving administrative officials and judges powerless to adjudicate cases based on the actual facts. Even worse, after 9/11, immigrants are being targeted in the name of national security, even when the anti-immigrant measures have tenuous connections at best to national security.

Finally, Asian Americans naturalize at high rates. 52% of the foreign-born Asian Americans become U.S. citizens, as compared to 38% of the total foreign-born population. However, Asian Americans face many challenges in becoming U.S. citizens. The problems range from lack of English as Second Language and citizenship classes, delays in processing naturalization applications, and arbitrary and/or overly stringent applications of the English and civics requirements for naturalization, particularly for the elderly.

Recommendations

In order to address the problems discussed above, CAPAC will work:

• To pass comprehensive immigration reform that will provide undocumented immigrants the opportunity as well as the responsibility of becoming fully integrated members of our society; reunite families by eliminating or reducing the family immigration backlogs; and create safe and orderly temporary worker programs that will protect the rights of U.S. and immigrant workers alike.
  
  
• To give meaningful, individualized, and independent consideration in detention, removal or other immigration proceedings, with access to counsel.

• To ensure that the naturalization process is fair and nondiscriminatory.

The Search for Comprehensive Immigration Reform
By Congressman Neil Abercrombie

For more information about CAPAC visit its website at http://www.honda.house.gov/CAPAChome.shtml