U.S. Tightening Rules to Sponsor Immigrants

Federal officials are nearing completion of controversial new rules that will greatly restrict the ability of many low-income legal immigrants residing in Southern California and elsewhere to bring in spouses, children, parents and other loved ones from their homelands.

The sweeping guidelines arose from last year’s congressional overhauls of federal welfare and immigration laws--revisions that highlighted growing public concern about the use of government benefits by noncitizens.

For the first time ever, strict income thresholds will be used by the U.S. State Department and Immigration and Naturalization Service in determining which U.S. residents may bring in relatives from abroad.

In addition, the new regimen departs radically from longtime practice by requiring that U.S. sponsors assume full legal and financial responsibility for their family members who immigrate into the United States.

Sponsors, typically the close kin of immigrants, will remain liable for years--possibly for their entire lifetimes--should their beneficiaries begin receiving public assistance from federal, state or local governments. Sponsors must sign legally binding affidavits of support and could find themselves sued by government agencies--or by the immigrating relatives themselves--should they fail to maintain aid levels.

In fact, sponsors will be off the hook only when the immigrants become U.S. citizens, a process that takes at least five years, or until the sponsored settlers have worked and paid taxes for 10 years.

Would-be immigrants unable to convince authorities that they could support themselves have long had to find financial sponsors or face being denied a visa as a “public charge,” a likely burden on U.S. taxpayers. But the current system has a glaring loophole: Courts have ruled that existing sponsorship agreements are not legally enforceable.

As a result, relatives now only assume what amounts to a moral obligation--one frequently ignored by “deadbeat sponsors” who abandon financial responsibility for their loved ones, despite sworn vows to maintain aid. That trend should drop precipitously once sponsorship becomes the equivalent of a legal contract, supporters say.

“The new law restores to U.S. immigration policy the principle that immigrants must be self-reliant and that their sponsors should take care of them and not the taxpayers,” said U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), head of the House immigration subcommittee and the author of the strengthened requirements.

To Smith and other supporters, the provisions represent long-overdue safeguards to help ensure that the United States is bringing in productive immigrants--not importing future welfare cases.

Though the issue is hotly disputed, studies have generally found that immigrants overall have higher welfare use rates than natives. A recent U.S. census study found that 5.8% of the foreign-born receive cash income from public assistance programs, compared with 4.5% of the U.S.-born population. However, another category of immigrants who are considered most likely to be on welfare--refugees who have fled persecution--remain exempt from sponsorship requirements.

“It is essential that we hold individual immigrants and their sponsors financially accountable,” said Sean Walsh, spokesman for Gov. Pete Wilson. “If we do not, this has the potential to undermine public faith and belief in the immigration process.”

Opponents call the sweeping new sponsorship rules an unsavory “affluence test” that betrays the nation’s historical commitment to reuniting families. Paradoxically, they add, the changes will serve to encourage illegal immigration by people newly prevented from coming through lawful channels.

“Those who are poor, who are doing the hardest work here, once again will get the toughest treatment and may be barred from unifying their families,” said Judy London, an attorney with the Central American Resource Center in Los Angeles. “But wealthy immigrants are going to have the red carpet rolled out for them.”

Many critics say the rules amount to a back-door effort to cut family immigration, a goal that Rep. Smith and congressional allies were unsuccessful in accomplishing through direct legislation last year. Legal immigration is now approaching record levels, driven largely by the continued influx of relatives of people already settled here--the so-called “chain migration” of loved ones.

But it remains to be seen whether the new rules actually will curb overall immigration.

A more likely scenario, many experts predict, is that the revisions will alter the demographic composition, creating a relatively wealthier mix and including proportionately fewer people from Mexico, El Salvador, Haiti and other countries that send poorer and less-educated immigrants compared to other nations. Many slots now available to poor families will likely be assumed by others.

“You don’t end up with fewer immigrants, but you do theoretically have better-off immigrants,” said Michael Fix, who directs immigrant policy at the Urban Institute, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

The sponsorship crackdown is the latest example of how immigration and benefit issues have become entwined in public policy. Last year’s federal welfare law greatly reduced legal immigrant access to dozens of benefit programs.

The pairing of the two issues “is a logical corollary of the big increase in immigration and the growth of the welfare state,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington group that supports reduced immigration levels. During previous great waves of immigrants, observers note, there was no substantial benefit infrastructure to assist downtrodden new arrivals.

The changes in sponsorship are expected to exact a particular toll on family unity in Southern California, with its huge population of working-poor immigrants, many of them from Mexico and Central America. Nationwide, millions of families are divided between the United States and their nations of origin, with waits of 10 years or more even for U.S. citizens who petition to bring in loved ones abroad.

According to a study by the Urban Institute, more than 40% of all immigrant-headed U.S. families--and well over half of all families headed by immigrants from Mexico and Central America, the largest groups here--would no longer qualify to bring in loved ones.

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Once the new rules are in place, most sponsors must earn at least 125% of the poverty line, currently $20,063 for a family of four.

The new income mandate for sponsors may seem modest, but it could prove insurmountable for many mired in the low-wage factory, agricultural and service jobs that are the mainstay of recent immigrants. Even a worker earning $9 an hour--considered decent earnings among many immigrants here--has an annual salary of only $18,720 based on a 40-hour week.

“I don’t think it’s fair that just because we earn less, because we do the work that no one else wants to do, that we shouldn’t be able to bring our families,” said Ana Reyes, 50, a legal immigrant from El Salvador who would like to petition for her 77 year-old mother, Mercedes Jaco. Reyes and her husband, a carpenter, earn $17,000 a year, she said. “People want us here to work, but they don’t want us to have our families,” Reyes said. “That’s not just.”

The new sponsorship guidelines were originally due in December, but INS officials now say the oft-postponed rules should be unveiled within weeks. Amid reports that U.S. consulates abroad were already imposing stiffer standards, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright cabled all diplomatic and consular posts this spring reminding them that immigrant visas should be processed under the longtime standards.

A key imponderable in the new guidelines is to what extent sponsors facing unprecedented obligations will be willing to put themselves on the line, even for loved ones or close friends. An unforeseen event, such as a serious illness to an immigrant beneficiary, could easily force sponsors to exhaust their savings.

Under the law, those lacking sufficient income to bring in relatives have another option: They may seek outside sponsors willing to put their financial assets at risk for the new immigrants. These co-sponsors, who need not be relatives, will essentially act like co-signers on a loan, assuming the same risks as direct sponsors. Observers predict a sharp rise in “sponsor-shopping,” but convincing would-be sponsors may be a difficult task.

“I think a lot of people are going to be hesitant to sign those agreements and assume these responsibilities under the new sponsorship law,” predicted Juan Jose Gutierrez, executive director of One Stop Immigration, a social service agency in East Los Angeles. “You’re putting a lot on the line.”