President Obama Launches Immigration Reform

The long-awaited immigration reform meeting between President Obama and members of Congress took place on Thursday. There were few details about the meeting leading up to the event, but on Thursday morning the White House released information about the meeting's purpose and a list of attendees:

The meeting is intended to launch a policy conversation by having an honest discussion about the issues and identifying areas of agreement and areas where we still have work to do, with the hope of beginning the debate in earnest later this year.

President Obama said the meeting was "very productive" and listed border security, employers using undocumented workers, and recognition and legalization of undocumented workers as key issues. "My administration is fully behind an effort to achieve comprehensive immigration reform," the President said, adding that the people at today's meeting want to start working on immigration reform immediately.

Current Progress

The administration has already made some progress on the issue. President Obama mentioned the elimination of the FBI name check backlog, and Homeland Security's enforcement of immigration laws against employers who exploit undocumented workers and protection of those workers in collaboration with the Department of Labor.

The President also noted Homeland Security's progress in speeding up the processing of citizenship applications "which has been far too slow for far too long." In all fairness, this work started well before the new administration took over.

On the Horizon

"We're going to leverage cutting-edge technology to reduce the unnecessary paperwork, backlogs, and the lack of transparency that's caused so many people so much heartache."

Layers of leadership have been created for the purpose of working systematically through the issues. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will head-up a group that will work with a leadership group from both chambers to go through these issues from congressional leaders both in the House and the Senate "in a process of regular order."

In addition, President Obama's Chief Information Officer, Chief Performance Officer, Chief Technologies Officer and USCIS will form a collaboration "to make the agency much more efficient, much more transparent, much more user-friendly than it has been in the past."

Watch for the USCIS website to get a facelift:

"In the next 90 days, USCIS will launch a vastly improved Web site that will, for the first time ever, allow applicants to get updates on their status of their applications via e-mail and text message and online. And anybody who's dealt with families who are trying to deal with -- navigate the immigration system, this is going to save them huge amounts of time standing in line, waiting around, making phone calls, being put on hold."

I'm all for a technology update if it makes the site easier to use, but I don't understand the President's point about the status updates. Users can already get updates for applications and petitions online and via e-mail. Text messages would be a new offering, but should this really be billed as "for the first time ever"? Perhaps the level of detail provided in these new updates will be increased. We'll see what happens in the next three months.

The Big Issues

As expected, we should expect border security to play a huge role in the immigration reform debate:

"One of the things that was said around the table is the American people still don't have enough confidence that Congress and any administration is going to get serious about border security, and so they're concerned that any immigration reform simply will be a short-term legalization of undocumented workers with no long-term solution with respect to future flows of illegal immigration."

Legalization discussions, also known as a path to citizenship, will be just as volatile:

"What's also been acknowledged is that the 12 million or so undocumented workers are here--who are not paying taxes in the ways that we'd like them to be paying taxes, who are living in the shadows, that that is a group that we have to deal with in a practical, common-sense way. And I think the American people are ready for us to do so. But it's going to require some heavy lifting, it's going to require a victory of practicality and common sense and good policymaking over short-term politics."

Timeline for Reform

In today's meeting, the President called our broken immigration system "one of the most critical issues this nation faces" and assured the public that "we've got a responsible set of leaders sitting around the table who want to actively get something done and not put it off until a year, two years, three years, five years from now, but to start working on this thing right now." His hope is to begin the debate later this year.

The complete transcript of today's meeting including video is available at the White House blog.

Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

See Also:

• Speaker Pelosi Ready For Immigration Reform Debate
• Immigration Reform - Latest News and Information