Yesterday, President Obama outlined broad immigration reform principles that called for legal status for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. While many undocumented Asian and Pacific Islander immigrants could benefit from these changes, the focus on increased enforcement measures poses a direct threat to the very immigrant communities he praised throughout his speech. The Asian Law Caucus, the nation's first Asian American civil and legal rights organization founded in 1972, calls for the President and Congress to act urgently to prevent the undue separation of families and to uphold the rights of workers.

E-Verify is fatally flawed 

A key feature of the President's plan is to mandate an electronic employment verification system (E-Verify) that would would in effect compel employers to act as immigration agents, responsible for verifying employees' immigration status. This approach has not only proven ineffective in deterring people from coming to the U.S., it inhibits workers from exercising their basic workplace rights and protections. E-Verify in particular is a costly and inaccurate system, which only incentivizes employers to push workers off the books into the underground economy. It encourages a race to the bottom that harms all workers, disadvantages law-abiding employers, and hurts the economy by decreasing tax revenue and crippling consumer spending. Immigration reform should be an opportunity to strengthen the rights of vulnerable workers, not diminish them.

Legalization must be broad-based in order to be successful

The most effective approach to keeping families together is to maximize channels for immigrants, including those in the U.S. without status, to access permanent resident and citizenship status. The President's plan would require undocumented immigrants to go to the "back of the line" and fulfill numerous other requirements before being able to earn citizenship. This approach would result in decades-long wait times as the current immigration backlogs ("the line") are addressed, making permanent residency and citizenship, and ultimately the opportunity to fully contribute to our country, practically inaccessible to many aspiring Americans.

Approximately 1 million undocumented immigrants in the United States are from Asian countries. Estimates from the Department of Homeland Security indicate that 280,000 are from the Philippines, 200,000 from India, 170,000 from Korea, and 130,000 from China. The Philippines, China, and India are also three of the top four countries facing the worst legal immigration backlogs in the world, which prevents families from reuniting for years and even decades.