Allegations have surfaced that the Guinean woman who accused the former executive director of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, of sexual assault had lied during her asylum proceedings. This story has fed into a larger narrative that desperate immigrants, assisted by unscrupulous enablers, cheat their way through the system to gain asylum. Some media outlets played their part to further advance this impression.
Documents reporting how easy it is to illegally cross the Mexican/Guatemalan border reveal Mexican security conflicts but fail to address Guatemalan concerns.
Democratic Party leaders recently introduced their latest proposal to reform U.S. immigration policy. The proposal, which is given little chance of passage in a polarized election year, offers carrots and sticks in an attempt to bring some semblance of order to a broken and outdated policy that has left nearly 12 million people in the United States without legal documents.
Immigration reform advocates still disagree over the Senate’s failed 2007 attempt to push through legislation that would have provided a path to legalization for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Unions and big business had briefly allied in supporting a legalization program combined with an increase in visas. But the partnership collapsed after an ill-begotten attempt to secure the bill’s passage, which added so many noxious provisions that it lost many of its supporters while failing to win over implacable opponents.