SAN FRANCISCO -  Today, a bipartisan group of Senators proposed a troubling first step in reforming our country's immigration system. While the Senators recognize the need to modernize deeply-antiquated components of our immigration laws, the framework will fail to ensure equal opportunity for the millions of undocumented immigrants already calling the U.S. home as well as future newcomers to the U.S. Under the proposal, undocumented immigrants would have to wait nearly three decades before being able to apply for citizenship with expanded enforcement measures in the interim.

"It is a flawed strategy to enact enforcement measures before meaningful opportunities are granted to the 11 million undocumented immigrants to access permanent status," stated Anoop Prasad, Immigrants' Rights Attorney at the Asian Law Caucus (ALC), a member of the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice.

In a recently released report by the Migration Policy Institute, the U.S. government spends $18 billion annually on enforcement measures against immigrants. This is greater than the total of all other federal law enforcement agencies combined, including the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, the Secret Service, and others. In addition, government enforcement measures have been highly effective to date. Rates of deportation have doubled since 2001 and the numbers of border crossings have declined sharply in recent years. Given the harsh results of current enforcement measures, it is unnecessary and unwise for the Senate immigration proposal to allocate sparse federal resources on the increased militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border and implementation of a new electronic employment verification system, E-verify.

"Expanding or mandating the E-Verify system will have a devastating impact on immigrant workers," said Gina Szeto, Employment and Labor Rights Attorney at ALC. "E-Verify only incentivizes employers to move production off the books, driving vulnerable workers further underground where wage theft, indentured servitude, and unsafe working conditions dominate." The due process and other protections currently being discussed to mitigate E-Verify's adverse effects do not address these concerns, the reality of our economy's reliance on a continued flow of undocumented workers, nor the E-Verify implementation costs for employers. "Rather than spurring a race to the bottom that drives down working conditions for all workers, we should instead promote and enforce full workplace rights and protections for all workers regardless of immigration status," said Szeto.

Similarly, the Senate Plan's guestworker program only continues a broken system that allows the employer to subject temporary workers to exploitation and forced labor.

"Keeping immigrant families together should be the central pillar of immigration reform. This basic American value is missing from the debate. We can and need to do better," stated ASPIRE member Wei Lee. "Over the past decade, millions of fathers, mothers, sons and daughters have already been deported from the country, and this trend must be stopped once and for all," he noted. ASPIRE is the first undocumented Asian American immigrant youth group in the country.

The four basic legislative pillars of the Senate plan are to create a path to citizenship that is contingent on border security; improving the legal immigration system; the E-verify system; and addressing future flows of immigrant workers. The proposal was introduced by Senators Schumer, McCain, Durban, Graham, Menendez, Rubio, Bennet, and Flake.