immigration reform

Odds and Ends

/ The Old Crank

I’ve been under the weather for several days and haven’t had the energy to post anything. A couple of quick things:

  • Also on Friday, Democrats on the House Education and the Workforce Committee reintroduced their WIA reauthorization bill from last year. It’s now called the Workforce Investment Act of 2013 (H.R. 798). Press release here.

A lot of old legislation gets reintroduced at the beginning of a new session, so I have no idea how excited to get over this. It’s worth remembering that it has zero chance of passing the Republican-controlled committee.

My recollection is that Republicans on the committee were planing to reintroduce their WIA reauthorization bill early this year as well, and while that presumably would pass the committee (like their bill did last year), whether it would get to the floor anytime soon, and whether it would get through the Senate or form the basis for a compromise bill is another question.

Adult Education Provisions in 2010 Immigration Reform Bill

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

Earlier this week I suggested a few broad adult education issues that might potentially be addressed in the bipartisan immigration reform bill the Senate hopes to release sometime in March.

But I hadn’t had a chance (until today) to look at what specific adult education provisions might have been proposed in prior immigration reform legislation. Most notably, I had not reviewed the not-so-old Democratic bill introduced by Senators Menendez (D-NJ) and Leahy (D-VT) late in 2010, which included a number of specific provisions designed to strengthen adult education in the context of immigrant integration. “The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2010” (SB 3932) not only included an expansion of federal investments in English literacy and civics education, but included other programs and policies designed to encourage English literacy instructional opportunities—such as tax credits for English literacy teachers and for businesses that provided English language instruction for their employees.

Sen. Menendez is one of the eight lead Senators hammering out the bipartisan bill we expect to see in a few weeks. I haven’t spoken to anyone about any conversations with Sen. Menendez on what might be in this new bill, and I don’t know if any of the adult education pieces in SB 3932 have come up during his discussions with his Republican colleagues. I don’t even have a solid sense of what my colleagues in the adult education field in general think about these provisions, although they look pretty good to me.

But since we know that Sen. Menendez is part of the team developing the new legislation, and that Sen. Leahy will have an influential role in the process as the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, it seems to me that it’s instructive to review what they were thinking back in 2010.

Is a House Immigration Reform Bill Imminent?

/ The Old Crank

(Updated Below)

This week I’ve been hearing from some my friends in the field that the House is getting ready to introduce an immigration reform bill in the very near future—even, perhaps, ahead of the Senate. I’ll believe it when I see it. After reading some of the published reports about House action on this issue, I still think that the Senate, where a bipartisan group of influential Senators has actually put out a plan, is going to be first up with a bill.

The Hill did report Monday that a “bipartisan group of House negotiators is even further along in drafting a comprehensive immigration overhaul than its counterpart in the Senate,” and that this group was trying to release a draft bill directly before or after President Obama’s State of the Union address on February 12th.

But The Hill also noted that even though House Speaker John Boehner told a Republican advocacy organization last month that the House immigration group “basically [had] an agreement,” an aide later said that the Speaker’s assessment was “overly optimistic” as they “have not come to agreement on some of the big stuff.”

Moreover, Caitlin Huey-Burns, writing today forRealClearPolitics, suggests that Republican leadership is actually tapping the brakes on this effort:

House Speaker John Boehner… has advised his chamber to approach immigration reform slowly. “This is not about being in a hurry. This is about trying to get it right on behalf of the American people and those who are suffering under an immigration system that doesn’t work very well for anybody,” he told reporters Tuesday.

She also reports (as many others have) that there are still a significant number of Republicans in the House who are opposed to introducing a comprehensive bill, and would rather take on reform in a piecemeal fashion, through a series of separate bills.

Mike Flynn, writing for Breitbart.com about the revelation that a group of House members has been meeting to draft legislation on immigration reform reminiscent of the Senate talks, thinks that “the talks are even more political theater than the Senate effort.”

If I were in a position where I had to choose between focusing my advocacy efforts between the House and the Senate over the next few weeks, I think I’d go with the Senate. In particular, considering Sen. Marco Rubio’s strong interest in this topic—and apparent influence within his party on the pending legislation—the sizable number of adult education advocates in Florida seem to me to be in an interesting position to advocate for adult education resources in the Senate bill.

UPDATE 2/7/13: The National Journal seems to agree:

[[T]he House will likely hold hearings and markups, and maybe even offer the bipartisan bill, but they’re not going first. House Republican leadership thinks immigration will likely fail in the Senate, and they’re not wild about the idea of making their members take a politically tough vote only to have reform die.

Educational Opportunities for Adult Immigrants

/ The Old Crank

I didn’t watch any of the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on immigration yesterday but I would guess from a quick scan of the written testimony that there wasn’t any significant discussion about the role of adult education in immigrant integration.

It appears that the best opportunity might have been during the testimony of Michael Teitelbaum, who served as the Commissioner and Vice Chair U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform back in the 1990s. For his written testimony, he attached the commission report—which is now over 15 years old. But the commission’s assessment of the state of adult education could have been written yesterday:

The Commission urges the federal, state, and local governments and private institutions to enhance educational opportunities for adult immigrants. Education for basic skills and literacy in English is the major vehicle that integrates adult immigrants into American society and participation in its civic activities. Literate adults are more likely to participate in the workforce and twice as likely to participate in our democracy. Literate adults foster literacy in their children, and parents’ educational levels positively affect their children’s academic performance.

Adult education is severely underfunded. Available resources are inadequate to meet the demand for adult immigrant education, particularly for English proficiency and job skills. In recognition of the benefits they receive from immigration, the Commission urges leaders from businesses and corporations to participate in skills training, English instruction, and civics education programs for immigrants. Religious schools and institutions, charities, foundations, community organizations, public and private schools, colleges and universities also can contribute resources, facilities, and expertise.

In his written testimony, Teitelbaum said he “was pleased to learn only recently that many of recommendations designed to facilitate the integration of legal immigrants, “including a welcome guide for new immigrants, orientation materials and information clearinghouses, and facilitating access to adult education in civics and English” had been implemented after the Office of Citizenship was created in the office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security. (my emphasis)

But while it’s true that USCIS has developed many of the materials and resources envisioned by the commission (and has offered some grants for adult EL/civics education), there has been virtually no progress over the last 15 years to significantly expand educational opportunities for adult immigrants. Funding for the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), the primary vehicle for federal investment in adult education in the U.S. (which includes a set-aside for EL/Civics) has been stagnant for years; in fact, taking inflation into account, it’s actually gone down.

Moreover, the EL/Civics grant program, which began as as a demonstration grant at the U.S. Department of Education, isn’t actually authorized by WIA. The set-aside has been approved by Congressional appropriators for years now, but the lack of authorization leaves the program more vulnerable to elimination than other programs under WIA. Proponents have been trying to get it authorized in the next version of WIA, but WIA reauthorization itself  has been delayed for about a decade. (A modest—but significant—win for adult education in the immigration reform bill would be to finally codify and authorize the EL/Civics grant program in WIA.)

I don’t think Teitelbaum meant to suggest that the adult education recommendations made by the commission had been achieved, but anyone not familiar with the state of adult education, WIA and EL/Civics education might have been given the impression from his testimony that significant progress has been made made in this area, which is not the case.