This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Immigration reform is on hold indefinitely because of a stalemate, exorbitant costs and constitutional restrictions.
Republicans in Congress will not introduce immigration reform because the Democratic-controlled Senate and the president will stop it. The Democrats will not introduce reform because the Republican-controlled House will not fund it.
The 2000-mile southern border will not be sealed or even meaningfully secured because it would cost literally hundreds of billions of dollars to do so. The General Accounting Office recently reported that just constructing the 2,000-mile virtual fence would cost $30 billion, taking 10 to 15 years to complete.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement will not deport more illegal immigrants than last year because on Feb. 3, the Republican-controlled House introduced a budget plan that freezes the Department of Homeland Security's budget. And President Obama's budget for next year cuts DHS's budget 4 percent. Last year ICE deported a record 393,289 illegal immigrants. With its budget frozen or cut, ICE will likely deport fewer next year.
Birth citizenship would likely be upheld by the Supreme Court as constitutional, because of the precedents of three prior decisions: United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), Plyler v. Doe (1982), and Rios v. Pineda (1985). Even the Arizona Senate voted in March not to pursue the issue in court.
Even if we identify illegal-immigrant youths, there is little that federal or state officials can do about it. The Supreme Court's Plyler decision struck down a Texas law that denied public education funding to illegal-immigrant children and attempted to charge them tuition.
Pathways to citizenship and the Dream Act will get nowhere because of strong aversion to "amnesty."
Republicans in Congress and in the states will seek to crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. But this route is seriously flawed. Social Security cards can be bogus. In asking other personal questions of job applicants, employers are potentially liable to violations of civil rights laws and the Equal Protection Clause. Research costs for employers would be very expensive.
E-verify lists are not complete by huge measure and are vulnerable to identify theft and error. What's more, the federal agencies that provide E-verify lists are too broke to continue research.
A December 2010 GAO report states that the cost estimates and workload of agencies that research and prepare E-verify lists "are at an increased risk of not securing sufficient resources to effectively execute program plans in the future" — especially given a $1.48 trillion federal deficit.
State governments do not have the constitutional authority to implement immigration reform. That authority rest with Congress as enumerated in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution — a constitutional authority superseding the power of the 10th Amendment.
ICE's deportation last year of a record 393,289 illegal immigrants amounts to a mere 3.6 percent of the country's 11 million illegal immigrants. With cuts or a freeze on DHS's budget next year, the number of illegal immigrants in the country will likely exceed 11 million. The GAO reports 445,000 illegal entries across our southern border in FY 2010.
The only ameliorization of the immigration stalemate is compromise in Congress. The Utah plan, which levies fines and expands guest-worker provisions, would be a good place to begin discussion of a national compromise.
Ronald L. Trowbridge was chief of staff to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger and the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U. S. Constitution. He lives in Texas.