Families Central to Immigration Talks

Immigrant rights supporters march through Phoenix, Tuesday, May 1, 2007. Demonstrators demanding a path to citizenship for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants rallied around the nation Tuesday, hoping to spur Congress to act before the looming presidential primaries take over the political landscape. (AP Photo/Matt York) (Matt York - AP)

Temporary workers could not bring family members at all unless they met a certain wealth threshold and had health insurance.

Last year's Senate-passed immigration bill did not change the treatment of family members. Conservatives are pleased the issue is now on the table; Democrats are alarmed.

A spat among Senate aides over how to draft the family-related provisions led to a blowup last week, briefly stalling the negotiations. The talks picked up again this week.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said the vast majority of legal immigrants have entered the country on the basis of a family-based preference, meaning they "have no bearing on our national competitiveness or our global race for brains." Changing that, he said, is "a central reform."

Religious groups and Asian-American advocacy organizations are among the strongest opponents of the proposed changes.

"It would be a historic shift in U.S. immigration policy for them to do this," said Kevin Appleby of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "Immigration reform cannot be won on the backs of families. ... You can't do reform on the cheap that way."

Karen Narasaki of the Asian American Justice Center said the proposal to do away with family-based visa preferences is "a cold calculation about numbers. They're trading off families for employers."

"They forget that there's value in family, that family is necessary in order to help immigrants integrate," Narasaki said.

Anti-immigration activists, however, say numbers matter.

"Our view is that the numbers are too high and we have to look at where they should be cut, and these (family) categories, it seems to us, are the easiest to cut because there's no real justification for them," said Rosemary Jenks of NumbersUSA.

Matthew Spalding, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said allowing guest workers to bring family members puts a burden on taxpayers and encourages temporary workers to settle permanently in the U.S.

"Having (family preferences) defined too broadly essentially causes one to lose control of one's immigration policy," Spalding said. "To cut some sort of deal, they've got to figure out ways to keep this all under control."

Recent polls have shown that people overwhelmingly support giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, creating a temporary worker program and strengthening border security. But voters are more ambivalent about family-based immigration.

"People are really supportive of family immigration as a principle," said pollster David Mermin. "At the same time, there's this feeling that there need to be some limits, and nervousness about how easy and how extensive it will be."