Dear Readers:

I’m writing to you on a three-leg road trip this week. I start with a trip to New York to attend the annual meeting of the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, an agency to which I serve as a board member. HIAS is the world’s oldest refugee resettlement agency and is now in its 13^th decade of operation. It helped my family when they came to the US as refugees more than 100 years ago and its mission has evolved to working with people of multiple religious faiths from all over the world. HIAS also holds a major scholarship awards ceremony every year at the annual meeting. I’ve been privileged to serve on the awards committee in the past and have been inspired at the amazing achievements of young people who entered the US with nothing and have gone on to take advantage of the great opportunities of Americans.

I’ll leave from New York to attend the annual meeting of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Philadelphia. The AILA annual meeting is a “must attend” event for immigration lawyers. The program features four days of educational programming, an exhibit hall with vendors offering just about every service an immigration lawyer could need and an opportunity to interact with nearly 3,000 fellow immigration lawyers. I’ll be speaking on two panels at AILA. Like last year, I’ll be speaking on technology and immigration law. And I’ll be moderating a panel on physicians immigration. I’m looking forward to seeing many of you there.

Finally, I’ll end my trip in Chicago where I will speak at a meeting of the administrators of the Conrad 30 J-1 physician waiver programs. That program is in danger of ending and I’m sure the talk at this meeting will be on what the future holds for J-1 waivers. More information on this hot topic can be found later in this issue.

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President Ronald Reagan died this afternoon and there is no shortage of people discussing his legacy for this country. From an immigration point of view, Reagan will best be remembered for signing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (“IRCA”). IRCA was a contradiction of idealism and pragmatism, as was the case with the President who signed the bill into law. It took the pragmatic view that the while the government frowned on illegal immigration, we could provide an amnesty to help normalize the lives of millions of American residents. Indeed, millions of American citizens were legalized under the program and owe a thanks to the President for proposing what was then a very controversial plan.

IRCA also provided hardliners with something they too sought – the deputization of millions of American employers to assist the then Immigration and Naturalization Service. IRCA created the I-9 forms that every employer must check to ensure that an employee is authorized to work in the US.

The theory of IRCA was that by legalizing the country’s undocumented population and then creating a stronger enforcement system, we would end illegal immigration. That was, of course, a naïve proposition. Market forces would soon come into play and the flow of illegal immigrants has only intensified over the last 18 years. That has brought us to the current debate over what to do about our immigration system and the debate continues on whether we need a more open system where employers can simply petition to bring over an immigrant worker when it can show that Americans are not available to do the work at an acceptable salary.

However one feels about immigration, Ronald Reagan deserves at least some credit for trying to address an issue that has been controversial since the country’s founding. He attempted to craft a compromise and cashed in his “political chips” to get the bill passed. Other Presidents have only offered rhetoric and hoped the immigration debate would not get too fierce. Whether IRCA was ultimately helpful or harmful is certainly subject to argument, but no one can say Reagan shirked his responsibilities to try and improve the system.

Regards,

Greg Siskind