Thousands of immigrant rights advocates pack the National Mall during an immigration reform rally in Washington, Sunday, March 21, 2010.

The Urgency of Immigration Reform

DENVER (By Joy Athanasiou, Denver Post) April 1, 2010 ― Last month, hundreds of thousands of Americans, including nearly 200,000 in Washington, D.C. and 750 in Denver, rallied in support of comprehensive immigration reform.

Most members of Congress know the current immigration system is unworkable and badly in need of reform, yet are afraid to act on this important legislation because of the current political atmosphere. There is also the common misperception any reform would only impact immigrants. On the contrary, our current immigration laws drastically harm U.S. citizens and U.S. companies and waste an enormous amount of our tax dollars.

Under current law, companies must follow a complex, time-consuming and expensive process to sponsor needed workers and can not apply for many of the workers they need the most. Even if the worker is approved, employers still face a Kafkaesque maze of rules, regulations and policies nearly impossible to comply with.

Multiple studies show even with the current high unemployment, there are still jobs Americans can not do or will not do, particularly at the top and bottom of our labor market. For instance, a laid-off accountant will not re-enter the workforce as a tomato picker or as a research scientist. We still need foreign workers in certain sectors and their employment actually helps our economy.

On the family side, U.S. citizens and permanent residents are denied the basic right of having their family members here or face years of long delays for their loved ones to gain legal status.

Consider the following example: John, a U.S. citizen, whose family has been in Colorado for several generations, marries Jane, who has resided in the U.S. since age 2. When Jane appears for her visa interview in her home country, she finds out she is barred from the U.S. for life because she traveled home for her grandmother's funeral 10 years ago. John is forced to become a single parent to their daughter, and sole provider of the family, while permanently separated from his wife.

This case is by no means the exception, other common examples include U.S. citizen teenagers left here while their mother gets deported because their father died just before his permanent residence interview after a 14 year wait; another family waits 17 years for permanent residence but the eldest daughter, who entered the U.S. at age 4, just turned 21 and is no longer eligible. She now faces deportation to a country she doesn't even remember.

Some couples must live together unmarried for years while others are forced to marry before they're ready. I routinely have to tell parents that they can not see their young child for 5 -7 years and tell children their elderly parents must wait outside of the U.S. for 10 years, even though all of the family and extended family has lived here for decades.

Even U.S. citizens themselves suffer under the current system, for example, Paul was born in the U.S. Now for the first time at age 63, his citizenship is questioned and he can't get a driver's license, employment, Medicare or Social Security because he doesn't have a birth certificate as he was born at home, which was very common at that time. It often takes months to get a birth certificate now and some people cannot get one at all. There have also been numerous instances of the government deporting U.S. citizens by mistake, including the shocking 2008 deportation of a mentally disabled man from North Carolina.

Our current system is convoluted, out-dated and simply absurd. In the end, it is also unjust, even when people try to comply with the law.

To make matters worse, anti-immigrant groups and the media continue to spread outrageous myths about immigration. Every credible study shows undocumented immigrants contribute far more to our economy than they use in public benefits, immigrants commit fewer crimes than citizens, and a legalization program would not let people to "jump to the front of the line" as many have been waiting in line for years and those not in line either can not get in line or got kicked out for trivial reasons.

We are literally pouring billions of dollars down the drain on the current system. You may recall the giant sinkhole on I-25 last year. Imagine dump trucks around the hole literally pouring dollars into it. Then, imagine the speed limit on I-25 being 20 miles per hour, with every 5th mile in reverse. This is how our immigration system functions. We detain undocumented immigrants who pose no threat to society for weeks, months or even years at a cost of approximately $95.00 per day in Colorado, not including court, transportation and other associated costs. Our immigration courts are backlogged for years. Two local judges have approximately 2,400 pending cases each with no end in sight.

Deporting all undocumented immigrants has been estimated to cost between $206 billion to $230 billion over five years, not including many indirect costs. Our economy would lose $551.6 billion in annual spending, $245 billion in annual economic output and hundreds of billions more in tax revenue as well as the enormous financial impact on the family members left behind.

In Colorado, Hispanic & Asian purchasing power totals nearly $26 Billion and Hispanic and Asian owned businesses employ more than 53,000 people.

In Colorado alone, if we simply "deport them all" a recent report shows we would lose $8 billion in spending, $3.6 billion in output and approximately $150 - 200 million each year in state and local taxes.

Both the human and financial costs of our current system demand Congress enact reform immediately. Our citizens and our economy cannot wait another minute.

Joy Athanasiou is an immigration attorney and the co-chair of the Legislative Advocacy Committee of the Colorado Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.