FERRECHIO: Governor Romney, turning to you, in 2008, you said you favored allowing American companies to hire more skilled foreign workers. With the unemployment rate now at 9.1 percent, do you still think that employers need to import more foreign labor?

ROMNEY: Well, of course not. We’re not looking to bring people in and — in jobs that can be done by Americans. But at the same time, we want to make sure that America is a home and welcome to the best and brightest in the world.

If someone comes here and gets a Ph.D in — in physics, that’s the person I’d like to staple a green card to their — to their diploma, rather than saying to them to go home.

Instead, we let people come across our border illegally or stay here and overstay their visa. They get to stay in the country. I want the best and brightest to be metered into the country based upon the needs of our employment sector and create jobs by bringing technology and innovation that comes from people around the world.

Romney has used the “stapling a green card” line before many times, both in this campaign and in his 2008 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. Despite being the preferred candidate for many immigration enforcement hawks who distrusted Romney’s opponent Sen. John McCain, Romney joined McCain in voicing strong support for giving foreign students at U.S. graduate schools permanent residence.

Indeed, “stapling a green card to their diploma” has become a catchphrase for high-skilled immigration reformers. It’s a policy strongly favored by many Silicon Valley and high-tech firms, whose workforce is disproportionately foreign-born. It’s even inspired the name of a bill, the STAPLE Act, repeatedly introduced by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). Flake’s bill, which has both Democratic and Republican cosponsors, grants an exemption to the cap on permanent visas to any Ph.D graduate in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM).

Permanent residency for U.S. Ph.D grads is one of the few policy ideas that establishment Republicans and business lobbies like the Chamber of Commerce see as something that shouldn’t cause much partisan friction and thus can be dealt with on its own. But Democrats, including Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) who chairs the immigration subcommittee in the Senate, have rejected the idea of pushing high-skilled immigration reform bills, such as the STAPLE Act, without a comprehensive reform effort that also deals with issues related to low-skilled and undocumented immigration. And many tea party and conservative Republicans reject the idea of any immigration reform, including the STAPLE Act, without further border security measures.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the chair of the House immigration subcommittee, this year introduced the IDEA Act, which goes further than the STAPLE Act by expanding permanent residency visas for foreign-born entrepreneurs and STEM workers. Not a single Republican has endorsed Lofgren’s bill.

Nevertheless, Lofgren’s bill has strong support among high-tech companies, which have signaled impatience with the GOP’s current enforcement-only ideology. Unusually, these companies have given more to Democrats than to Republicans, and in particular to Democrats who care about issues such as high-skilled immigration. This can be seen in the strong support Lofgren receives from Silicon Valley: Computer- and internet-related industries were far and away the top donors to her 2010 campaign, and no single House candidate received more from internet-related companies than Lofgren in the 2009-2010 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

It’s clear that among the GOP candidates currently running for president, Romney is Silicon Valley’s pick. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, computer- and internet related industries have donated $145,805 to Romney’s campaign in this election cycle, more than any other candidate except for Barack Obama. But whether Romney will continue to toe the strict “border security first” line that has become a tenet of GOP and tea party orthodoxy by endorsing, even in the smallest way, policy innovations like STAPLE remains to be seen. With the entrance of Gov. Rick Perry (Texas), himself a candidate with an ambiguous history on immigration, into the GOP primary, the question of whether enforcement-only is a necessary position for a GOP presidential candidate may become a salient issue in the weeks and months to come.

House Speaker: If the House flips to a GOP majority, current Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will have to turn over her title to current Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). Handing the reins to Boehner could be a huge blow to the odds of comprehensive immigration reform, or any bill that would allow some of the undocumented immigrants in the country to earn legal status. Boehner expressed doubt earlier this year that Democrats could pass immigration reform — he was right — and said he favors a border security-first approach. The GOP’s Pledge to America, which was unveiled in September, has few details on immigration-related issues, but mostly focused on enforcement and border issues rather than changes to the legal immigration system.

Immigration subcommittee: The House immigration subcommittee would be chaired by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) instead of Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) if Republicans took control of the House. On immigration, it would be hard for any two House members’ positions to be more different: King favors a number of anti-illegal immigration crackdowns and interrogation of immigration enforcement officials, while Lofgren focused her efforts on reform to make legal immigration more efficient. If King heads the subcommittee, he has promised to try to pass a birthright citizenship repeal bill, a bill punishing employers of illegal immigrants, a crackdown on so-called “sanctuary cities” and legislation that would assert states have the right to create immigration laws like Arizona’s SB 1070.

Other immigration-related races: More broadly, the election could see a number of advocates of comprehensive immigration reform replaced by immigration hardliner opponents. In Colorado, Rep. John Salazar (D) is trailing Republican Scott Tipton in the polls. Salazar supports enhanced border security measures as part of a comprehensive immigration reform bill, but voted against building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Tipton opposes “amnesty,” the general Republican term for paths to legalization for illegal immigrants already in the country.

Four of Arizona’s five incumbent Democratic representatives could lose their seats to Republicans, which would make a splash because of the state’s importance on immigration and border issue. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who easily won previous elections in his heavily Democratic district, faces strong competition from Republican Ruth McClung. Grijalva is a strong supporter of immigration reform and Latino and immigrant rights. He drew fire for his staunch opposition to SB 1070 after he called for a boycott on his state — which he has since said was a misstep.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) is facing Republican Jesse Kellly, who has been criticized for accepting an endorsement from Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, or ALIPAC. Giffords is a supporter of border enforcement before other immigration reform, but Kelly is much further to the right: He says the government should construct a double-layer border fence, hire more Border Patrol agents and deploy 10,000 National Guard troops.

Illegal immigrants are held at a detention facility in Phoenix, Ariz. (Mary F. Calvert/ZUMApress.com)

Until last week, local officials in Arlington, Va., Santa Clara, Calif., San Francisco and Washington, D.C., thought they’d have no trouble opting out of the Secure Communities program, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiative that runs fingerprints collected by local police through federal immigration databases. After all, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and an assistant attorney general had both written letters confirming that an opt-out was possible, and the ICE website even lists steps for communities to opt out.

[Immigration1] But in the past week, these local officials’ plans have been thrown into turmoil, as a senior ICE official told The Washington Post that opting out of the program was impossible and Napolitano confirmed on Wednesday, “We don’t consider Secure Communities an opt-in, opt-out program.”

Now, however, local officials say they plan to go ahead with the opt-out process. Arlington County Board member J. Walter Tejada, a Democrat, told TWI the county still intends to contact state and ICE officials to begin removing itself from the program.

“I’m aware there is some internal turmoil with ICE, but for us nothing has changed,” Tejada said. “We’re moving forward.”

Local politicians and activists say Napolitiano’s statements have not deterred them from pushing back against Secure Communities, arguing that ICE cannot impose the program without their consent. In many cases, however, it already has: ICE signs a memorandum of understanding with state officials to agree to the program, and local communities are often only notified they are participating after it has already taken place. If guidelines for opting out turn out to be meaningless, critics of the program say, then ICE has misled the public.

“If ICE for some reason decides not to follow through, I think we’re looking at possible massive deception,” said Sarahi Uribe, lead organizer of the Uncover The Truth Campaign, a coalition that opposes Secure Communities. “We’re going to continue to push for transparency and accountability.”

The path of fingerprints from local police stations to ICE has been obscured in public statements from the agency. Secure Communities is often explained as a fingerprint-sharing program between local law enforcement and federal immigration officials, which hints at a straight transfer of biometric information. But as The Washington Post reported, the program actually depends on an agreement between the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, meaning local jurisdictions have little control over where information they provide to one agency ends up. When fingerprints are submitted to the FBI to check for criminal records, they can be sent along to ICE without additional consent from local law enforcement agencies, an ICE official confirms.

This means opting out, at least in the sense local jurisdictions understood it, is impossible. All local police send fingerprints to states, which send it to the FBI for criminal background checks. The only way to withhold information from ICE under such a system would be to eliminate these checks entirely — something no jurisdiction has indicated it would be willing to do.

Local communities can only opt out of receiving information about why specific individuals needed to be detained; they cannot opt out of sending the fingerprints that could lead to their detention.

“That’s not really opting out because you’re still going to send a lot of people to ICE without due process,” said Angela Chan, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco. “‘Opt out’ means something much more: It means the information is never sent to ICE in the first place.”

Previous statements by government officials seem to back up that definition. Last month, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), chairwoman of a House subcommittee on immigration, sent a letter to the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security requesting clear instructions for the opt-out process, which she defined as “how local law enforcement agencies may opt out of Secure Communities by having the fingerprints they collect and submit to the [state identification bureaus] checked against criminal, but not immigration, databases.”

In his Sept. 8 response, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich quoted her definition of opting out, then listed instructions for how a local jurisdiction could remove itself from the “Secure Communities deployment plan.”

Napolitano also responded without correcting Lofgren’s definition of what “opt out” would mean. A month later, as communities began to vote to opt out, the message seems to have changed. Immigrant rights groups and local officials are baffled — and angry — after beginning an opt-out process Napolitano now claims does not exist.

“We definitely were led to believe that we could opt out,” said D.C. City Council member Jim Graham, who led the charge for the District to opt out of the program. “Our chief of police had been negotiating a memorandum of understanding with the FBI.”

In San Francisco County, officials say they plan to move forward with removing the county from the program. Sheriff Michael Hennessey has already notified officials his county would like to opt out of the program and plans to meet with ICE staff and the California attorney general’s office after the Nov. 2 elections. Still, he said, the constant confusion over the program is frustrating.

“Obfuscation and misdirection seem to be ICE’s preferred method of communication, because that is all we have been getting so far,” Hennessey said.

Although ICE has said it prioritizes criminal illegal immigrants for deportation — and does deport more criminal than non-criminal illegal immigrants — some critics express concern about those caught up in the system by Secure Communities. Anyone who is arrested has his fingerprints taken, even if he is not ultimately charged with a crime. Even victims of crimes such as domestic abuse can be fingerprinted, and critics of the program argue they might not come forward if they fear they could be deported by reporting their abusers. According to ICE data released in August, one-quarter of the illegal immigrants deported through Secure Communities had no criminal records.

Opting out is also an issue of cost, critics claim. Secure Communities nets a larger number of illegal immigrants than routine law enforcement, particularly in communities that instruct officers not to ask about immigration status. This means higher costs when ICE asks police to hold people for immigration violations, Chan said.

ICE officials say they routinely ask local police to hold suspected illegal immigrants and that Secure Communities does not change that process.

Still, immigrant rights advocates argue the program must be voluntary because it was not created by federal law. Since local law enforcement agencies are not given additional funding for the program, requiring them to participate amounts to an unfunded federal mandate, Chan said.

“Unless it is federally mandated by Congress, then it seems they have to make sure there is a real mechanism for opting out,” said said Margaret Huang, executive director of the Rights Working Group, who lobbied for Arlington to opt out of the program. “If ICE has created a program that cannot respond to jurisdictions that want to be removed, they need to fix the program so they can.”

Local law enforcement agencies share fingerprints of those they arrest with the FBI to detect fugitives. Some, though, do not want to share this information with immigration enforcement. Four communities — Washington, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Calif., and Arlington, Va. — have so far attempted to opt out of Secure Communities, arguing the program can damage trust in police and threaten public safety.

This is a marked change from previous statements from ICE and Napolitano herself. ICE laid out a process for opting out of the program in an August document called “Setting the Record Straight,” writing that communities could be removed from the “deployment plan” after meeting with state officials and ICE.

In a Sept. 7 letter to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Napolitano confirmed the steps for communities to opt out of the process, even if she never used the words “opt out”:

A local law enforcement agency that does not wish to participate in the Secure Communities deployment plan must formally notify the Asisstant Director for the Secure Communities Program, David Venturella…. The agency must also notify the appropriate station identification bureau by mail, facsimile, or e-mail. If a local law enforcement agency chooses not to be activated in the Secure Communities deployment plan, it will be the responsibility of that agency to notify its local ICE field office of suspected criminal aliens.

It sounds like it’s optional there, but an ICE official confirmed to TWI today that communities can only opt out of receiving information back about the illegal immigrants they detain — not actually opting out of sharing the biometric information itself. As The Washington Post reported last week, Secure Communities is actually an information-sharing program between the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Communities cannot opt out of giving their data to the FBI, so they also cannot opt out of the data going to ICE.

That also directly contradicts previous statements from the government. Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general, restated Lofgren’s definition of “opting out” in another letter to the congresswoman, implying localities could, in fact, opt out (emphasis mine):

In your letter, you specifically asked for “a clear explanation of how local law enforcement agencies may opt out of Secure Communities by having the fingerprints they collect and submit to the SIBs checked against criminal, but not immigration, databases.” A local law enforcement agency that does not wish to participate in the Secure Communities deployment plan must formally notify the Assistant Director for the Secure Communities program at ICE and the appropriate state identification bureau (SIB).

“America cannot continue to bring in low-skilled guest workers to compete with its most vulnerable citizens: the poor whites, the blacks, and the legal Hispanics,” Carol Swain, a professor at Vanderbilt University, said in her testimony, which was applauded by Republican committee members Steve King (R-Iowa) and Lamar Smith (R-Tex.).

Failure of United Farm Workers of America’s “Take Our Jobs” initiative, admittedly a tongue-in-cheek effort to give farm jobs to Americans, was used as proof of the agricultural industry’s need for migrant labor. “As the campaign of the farm workers has shown, there are some jobs that are not a good fit for people who are unemployed,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said.

The problem is that many agriculture jobs are seasonal, meaning they require workers to move around the country to find work. Migrant farm labor is also difficult and requires long hours at often low pay, with fewer rights than are afforded to other types of laborers. The system is not designed in a way that makes it attractive to American workers, argued Arturo Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers of America.

“Our society places all the risks and costs associated with a seasonal industry — featuring millions of short-term jobs — on the backs of the workers,” Rodriguez said. “If a worker is injured on the job or stiffed on payday, too often there is no real recourse. Is it any wonder that Americans don’t want these jobs?”

Still, the jobs are critically important to agricultural production in the U.S., said Phil Glaize, who runs Glaize Orchards in Winchester, Va. Without workers, some agricultural production could halt, causing growers to lose crops and shut down. Glaize said the legal method for allowing migrant workers into the country is too slow and argued visa reform is necessary.

“Growers are forced to choose between using the broken H-2A guest-worker program which is bureaucratic, inefficient and downright unreliable, or hire migrant workers who present documents that appear to be ‘good’ but who may or may not be in this country legally,” he said.

Although about two million workers are needed to keep American agriculture running, only 5,000 visas per year are set aside for migrant workers, Lofgren said. Advocates of worker visa reform argue foreign workers should be allowed in the country to help spur growth in certain industries, including agriculture.

The AgJOBS would be one way to enact that reform, if comprehensive immigration reform proves impossible. The bill would allow two million farm workers to work in the U.S. eventually become legal residents.

This ranks lower than a high-level punishment like censure or expulsion and it requires a full House vote to approve it. It’s also just a recommendation, though one that the full ethics committee is likely to weigh heavily when coming to a decision in the fall.

Meanwhile, Rep. Green is busy apologizing to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), chairman of the House ethics panel, for revealing the subcommittee’s recommendation, telling The Hill that he “screwed up” by letting the cat out of the bag.

As far as a possible deal with the ethics committee, Reuters reports that an aide to Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) said that there are “still some sticking points,” but negotiators for Rangel and the bipartisan ethics panel are now “close.” It’s unclear whether the meeting delay and the ongoing negotiations are in any way related.

Republicans, for their part, have had a field day singling out Democratic lawmakers who have thus far held on to campaign funds linked to Rangel, but appear in no rush to call for Rangel’s resignation:

The National Republican Congressional Committee issued more than 40 news releases criticizing lawmakers who had not returned their Rangel-linked donations, such as Rep. Dan Maffei (D-N.Y.), a former Ways and Means aide who has collected more than $80,000 through Rangel. But Republicans have been careful not to call for Rangel’s resignation, hopeful that he will fight out the public trial throughout September and place Democrats in an uncomfortable spot.

House Democratic leadership, on the other hand, continues to withhold judgment, claiming yesterday that they had not spoken to Rangel on the issue. Aware of the potential political cost of an open ethics trial against Rangel in September, they nonetheless appear hesitant to force the 40-year incumbent’s hand. Nor do they seem particularly eager to further alienate the Congressional Black Caucus, which threatened last December to withhold support for financial regulatory reform until the administration did more to help minority-owned businesses.

Yesterday evening, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, issued a statement that warned against casting premature judgement in the case of the Black Caucus’s co-founder, arguing that such a stance “violates the core American principle of the presumption of innocence.”

Witnesses included the obligatory consumer advocates, a conservative think-tanker and a university professor. But the Treasury Department, although asked to send a representative of its own, declined to do so.

A Democratic aide said the agency was simply too slammed this week with other hearings to meet the request (and the Treasury didn’t respond to requests for comment), but the pattern is getting suspicious.

President Obama campaigned in support of cramdown last year, and endorsed it again in February when he unveiled the administration’s foreclosure mitigation plan. But since then, the White House has done very little to ensure the bill’s success. In April, for example, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was hardly enthusiastic when asked if bankruptcy changes were a vital element of the administration’s plan to stem foreclosures.

More recently, the White House watched in silence as the cramdown bill was obliterated in the Senate, where 12 Democrats voted against it. Some Democrats said later that they interpreted the president’s silence to mean they were free to oppose the measure.

And now here’s the Treasury, in the middle of the continued foreclosure crisis, saying it’s too busy to talk with Congress about ways to keep folks in their homes?

Are we missing something?

–

You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook.