FOCUS ON U.S. IMMIGRATION
Bush immigration reforms
yet to be seen

By Wambui Wamuyu
Reporting from Boston

June 28 -- Proposals by the Bush administration and lawmakers to allow illegal immigrants to work in the United States were greeted with great fanfare early this year, but the reforms remain in limbo as the presidential campaign, war on terror and concerns about the economy take top billing.

If the proposals became law, Kenyan-born employees like Mureithi say they would have a chance to advance from the drudgery of low paying jobs and constant fear that authorities will discover their illegal immigration status. Mureithi, who asked not to be fully identified, shuttles between security guard jobs at various facilities in the South. Despite the long hours and boredom, he says the jobs still offer better pay compared to what he earned as a high school teacher in Kenya.

"I am doing this to survive," said Mureithi. "I have a family to support, I have my bills to pay."

Table 1 -/Illustration by S.G. Ogeto Based on available statistics from the United States Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), between 1992 and 2002, over 18,000 Kenyans have been admitted to the US as intended (such as diversity visa) immigrants. Over the same period, the International Institute of Education also reported about 70,000 non-immigrant Kenyans admitted as foreign students.

Mureithi is one of 8 million to 11 million illegal immigrants, who work low-paying jobs in retail, security, healthcare and other industries in the U.S., and pay millions of dollars in federal, state and social security taxes. The largest numbers of those undocumented workers live and work in California, Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Texas, according to the Migration Policy Institute, an independent think-tank based in Washington.

In January, President George W. Bush proposed a program to grant temporary work authorization to illegal workers in the U.S. The proposal dubbed Fair and Secure Immigration Reform would offer temporary legal status to undocumented workers and to those in foreign countries who have job offers in the United States.

Under the Bush program, which has not advanced beyond initial talks at the White House, legal status for illegal immigrants would be valid for three years and renewable thereafter. Those under the program who fail to get employment or break the law would be required to return to their home countries.

Some critics say the proposal is short on specifics and view it as Bush's bid to woo Hispanic voters, because the majority of illegal immigrants come from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Other detractors also argue the measure would create a class of menial workers, who have little hope of advancement.

In response to the Bush proposal, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota, and Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, in January co-sponsored a bill that would allow foreigners to receive temporary and renewable visas to enter the U.S. as temporary workers. A key difference between the Bush proposal and the Hagel-Daschle bill is that the latter measure would give undocumented workers and their families an opportunity to adjust their status to permanent legal residents.

The bipartisan bill known as the Immigration Reform Bill 2004 was referred to a committee for review, and like the Bush proposal, it's is unlikely to go anywhere this year because of the November elections and ongoing national debates about high unemployment.

Exact numbers of Kenyan immigrants in the U.S., both legal and undocumented is hard to come by, but Frank Mwaniki, president of the Kenya Community Abroad, estimated there are 150,000 to 200,000 Kenyans in the nation.

Many Kenyans -- driven to the U.S. by political and economic hardship in their home country -- do not register with the embassy when they arrive in the U.S., Mohamed Gello, a spokesman at the Kenyan embassy in Washington said earlier this year. That's part of the reason it's hard to keep track of the East Africans, he said.

While the Bush proposal was more likely to resonate among Hispanics, it could still benefit Kenyan nationals in the country, Gello said

"It s a good thing to know the U.S. government is ready to kind of reward foreign nationals in this country whose only crime is that they are illegal immigrants but they are doing good work and have no criminal records," Gello said.

For Kenyans like Mureithi, the Bush proposal would allow them to come to the U.S., make enough money to send to relatives and to save before returning home to the East African nation. The proposed reforms also would enable illegal immigrants to travel to and from their native countries without having to worry about being stopped from re-entering into the U.S.

Mureithi said he supports the Bush proposal because it could allow him to find a professional teaching job, with the youth. But Mureithi is also concerned that gaining temporary legal status would expose him to immigration authorities, who could turn around and deport him after the three-year temporary legal status expires.

"Currently as it stands you are able to disappear into the background and work there because ideally you don t exist," Mureithi said. "But once you've been made a legal worker you you've been identified and that can be used against you."

Click here to comment about this story