By BRIAN FEAGANS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/10/07
earn little more than the minimum wage in metro Atlanta's northern suburbs. And each says he'd jump at the chance to gain legal U.S. residency.
But ask them to put a price on that green card, and the two buddies are much like the country when it comes to immigration reform: divided.
the $10,000 fine the White House proposes illegal immigrants pay before they could apply for legal residency. President Bush promoted the plan Monday in a speech along the Arizona-Mexico border.
Enriquez, a fast-food worker from Alpharetta, considers $10,000 a bargain for a legal shot at the American Dream.
"We spend that much for a new vehicle," an indignant Enriquez told his friend in Spanish. "This is a vehicle for a better life."
How much illegal immigrants should have to pay in fines and back taxes to be eligible for legal status will be debated as immigration overhaul gains steam again in Washington.
Where Congress might set the fine, experts say, could determine how many of the nation's estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants participate in any large-scale legalization program.
The amount is particularly important in Georgia, a relatively new immigrant magnet whose fast-growing undocumented population has rocketed toward half a million, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The state's illegal immigrants tend to be low-skill, low-wage workers who support families here and in their native countries. Many harvest onions, hang Sheetrock or spread pine straw for less than $10 an hour.
"We tell ourselves that these people will pay whatever [to be U.S. citizens]," said Roswell immigration attorney Christopher Taylor, "but that's not necessarily true."
News of the proposed $10,000 fine sent groans rippling through a crowd of 80 or so people listening to Taylor at a seminar in a Roswell hotel this month.
Under the plan floated by the White House, illegal immigrants could have another option than paying $10,000 to be eligible for a green card. They could apply for renewable three-year work visas at the cost of $3,500.
U.S. Reps. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) last month proposed a lower amount — $2,000 in fines plus back taxes — to qualify for green cards. Their bill would apply to illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States before June 2006. After six years they could earn permanent residency — considered a steppingstone to citizenship — by learning English, staying out of jail and re-entering the country legally. Critics have labeled the bill an "amnesty" plan.
"I don't think they should be able to pay their way out after being illegal," said Marion Goodman, a former bakery owner from Loganville who has struggled to find work in a job market she believes in flooded with illegal labor. "They should have to go through the system like anybody else."
But President Bush and leaders in the Democrat-controlled Congress say the system has long been unable to provide enough legal avenues for workers to enter the United States. A majority of Americans surveyed by USA Today/Gallup last year said the government should give illegal immigrants an opportunity to remain in the country if they meet certain requirements. A majority in that same poll, however, demanded a fine for entering the country illegally in the first place.
The question, then, is how much? Set the fine too high, immigrant advocates warn, and Congress may find that its immigration fix only works on paper.
People who are in the country illegally tend to be among the poorest clients at the Center for Pan Asian Community Services, said Chaiwon Kim, executive director of the Doraville nonprofit. So she doubts many could pay a fine beyond a couple thousand dollars.
"Most of the undocumented, they are really underpaid," she said. "In a way, they've already paid society."
But Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, said legislators are under tremendous pressure not to appear as if they're handing out sacred rights to lawbreakers. She considers the $10,000 figure a trial balloon.
"It's clearly an effort politically on the White House's part to win over as broad a group of Republicans as possible," said Meissner, who headed the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the Clinton years.
The last sweeping legalization program, enacted in 1986, had a two-thirds participation rate, Meissner said. Then the fees were in the hundreds of dollars and meant to cover the expense of the program. So the concept of a fine, especially one in the ballpark of $10,000, raises new questions, Meissner said. "Is there a tipping point," she asked, "where the amount is so high where it would frustrate the goals of the program?"
That point may be lower than one might expect, said Dale Schwartz, an Atlanta attorney and adjunct professor at the Emory School of Law. Any fine would come on top of the roughly $5,000 to $6,000 in legal fees needed to move through the legalization process over several years, he said. Schwartz said most of his clients have to scrape just to afford that.
"As for $10,000," Schwartz said, "most of our clients will never be able to pay that kind of penalty."
Ramirez, the Roswell gardener, said he'd certainly have to forgo a green card at that rate. The reality, he said, is that he already struggles to support himself and three sisters on a salary of little more than $300 a week. "I've got to pay the bills," Ramirez said.
His friend, Enriquez, shook his head. The most difficult hurdle, Enriquez said, will be gaining political consensus on a fine amount.
