Democrats face a politically tricky choice over whether to pursue a compromise with Republicans on immigration reform that was recently floated by Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

The Republican presidential contenders are willing to grant illegal immigrants legal status if they came to the country at a young age and served in the military.

It’s a tough election-year call for Democrats for several reasons.

Immigration reform has been a winning issue for them as staunch GOP opposition has driven Hispanic voters to support Democratic candidates in recent cycles.

Hispanic voters helped Democrats win tough Senate races in Colorado and Nevada in 2010. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) bolstered his standing among Hispanic voters by claiming immigration reform as one of his highest priorities.

During his State of the Union address last month, President Obama called for Congress to resurrect the DREAM Act, even though lawmakers say there is virtually no chance of it passing the GOP-controlled House.

Striking a compromise would allow Republicans to earn some points with Hispanic voters and lessen pressure on Republican lawmakers to support more comprehensive immigration reform.

Walking away from possible common ground, however, could leave Democrats open to criticism that they missed a chance to make incremental progress.

At a debate in Florida last week, Romney and Gingrich said they could support a scaled-down version of the DREAM Act.

The DREAM Act, which Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to pass the last several years, would grant legal status to illegal immigrants who crossed the border at a young age if they meet certain conditions. The legislation, which has previously gotten a few Republican votes, has been criticized by many in the GOP for granting “amnesty.”

Romney and Gingrich, the two front-runners for the 2012 GOP nomination, say they could support it only if it were scaled back.

“I wouldn’t sign the DREAM Act as it currently exists, but I would sign the DREAM Act if it were focused on military service,” Romney said.

That clarification came soon after Romney had vowed to veto the DREAM Act, triggering criticism from prominent Hispanic Republicans. During the presidential debates, Romney hammered Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) for signing into law a version of the DREAM Act in the Lone Star State.

Gingrich and Romney would lop off part of the DREAM Act that would grant legal residency to alien minors who came to the country at age 15 or younger, live in the country for at least five years and complete at least two years of higher education.

Some Democrats are unsure whether they will embrace the Gingrich-Romney approach.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act.

“If you are willing to accept that military service is the kind of bona fide that credentials a young person to take advantage of college benefits, I’d want to explore what other kinds of service might also qualify with them before I wrote off drawing the line there. I’ll do a bit more exploring but it’s a good start,” Whitehouse added.

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), a leading Democratic voice on immigration reform, said he would prefer to pass the DREAM Act in its entirety, but would not rule out a compromise.

“My belief is we should try to pass the whole DREAM Act. As for what compromise might come about, that’s down the road,” said Schumer.

Other Democrats reject out of hand the GOP proposal to rewrite the DREAM Act.

“I don’t support that,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the lead Senate sponsor of the DREAM Act. “That will literally mean that those who came to this country at an innocent situation early in life have only one way to become legal, and that’s to join the military. I want men and women to join the military out of a sense of duty and patriotism, rather than to feel they are desperate and have no other place to turn.”

The day after the GOP presidential debate in Tampa, Fla., Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.) introduced the Adjusted Residency for Military Service (ARMS) Act, which followed the outlines set by Romney and Gingrich.

Rivera said he first talked to Gingrich about the bill in November.

He said Democrats should support it because it’s the only immigration reform proposal that has a chance of passing Congress this year.

“Any Democrats who take a reasonable approach to immigration reform understand the realities we’re facing in the 112th Congress. If we want to do something to help young people in this Congress, this is the only option,” said Rivera, who has endorsed Gingrich.

“If Democrats want to take an all-or-nothing approach, there will be nothing. If someone is willing to die for America, we can give them a chance,” he said.

“I’m comfortable with that [the Romney-Gingrich position] and I think most Republicans are,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who backs Romney and is seen as a possible running mate.

Even if the Romney-Gingrich compromise passed the Senate, it’s unlikely it would pass the House because most Republicans in the lower chamber say the top priority on immigration is securing the borders.

Politically, the scenario of House GOP leaders breaking from their White House nominee would play well for Democrats just months before the election.

Meanwhile, immigration experts say Pentagon officials have tightened their application processes in recent years.

Gregory Chen, the director of advocacy at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), said illegal immigrants are currently prohibited from serving in the military.

He said military recruiters now carefully check Social Security numbers to make sure inductees are legal residents, a precaution not always taken in the past.

Chen noted that non-citizens receive expedited processing for citizenship if they serve in the military. He also noted that legal residents can win citizenship posthumously if killed in the line of duty, which can benefit surviving relatives.

“AILA would generally support providing a path to legal status, but this bill is very small in the sense that it will enable very few people to qualify,” he said of Rivera’s legislation.

Chen estimated that the Gingrich-Romney plan would only affect 1,000 people a year.

Rivera disputed that assertion.

“It’s impossible to estimate,” he said.

There’s no doubt immigration will be one of the critical political and social issues of 2012. While substantial progress has been made on one significant concern — improving border security — overall the system remains broken. Whether America is successful in reforming it depends on the tone of the discussion in this country, guidance from the courts, and the prevailing political winds.

So far, when it comes to immigration and efforts by some states to impose a solution absent federal reform, we have seen a combination of initiatives — unevenly applied at best, constitutionally untenable at worst — and a national discussion that has wavered between constructive debate and hateful, ugly stereotypes.

In short, the immigration reform debate has engendered a mix of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Let’s start with The Good: Both former President George W. Bush and President Obama have supported proposals for comprehensive immigration reform. In a 2006 speech, President Bush stated that “an immigration reform bill needs to be comprehensive, because all of the elements of this problem must be addressed together — or none of them will be solved at all.” Five years later, in his May 2011 address in El Paso, Texas, President Obama echoed those remarks, asserting that “what we really need to do is keep up the fight to pass genuine, comprehensive reform.”

This past August, in the absence of a legislative progress toward immigration reform, President Obama on his own took some small positive steps, using his executive authority to ease some of the hardships the broken immigration system is causing, especially for youth and families. For example, the federal Department of Homeland Security now exercises prosecutorial discretion to target the agency’s enforcement resources on those who pose the greatest risk to the public. However, the administration’s actions do not obviate the need for comprehensive legislative reform.

There’s also good news in the broad public support for meaningful reform. Recent studies indicate significant public support for reforms including streamlining the process for employers to hire foreign-born workers to perform seasonal work.

In an October 2011 national poll conducted by the Anti-Defamation League, we found that a strong majority of Americans — 60 percent — were in favor of a six-year path to citizenship if the children had arrived here before they were 15 years old and had lived here at least five years. And 65 percent of Americans said that children of illegal immigrants who were born in the U.S. should be considered American citizens.

Sixty percent of those polled indicated they would oppose any change in the 14th Amendment that would remove automatic citizenship for anyone born in the U.S.

Now comes The Bad: Many states across the nation — including Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina — have moved to pass anti-immigrant laws that are on shaky ground constitutionally and of questionable efficacy. Some courts are already reacting to these anti-immigrant laws by striking down the most controversial of the provisions.

The Supreme Court this term will rule on the legality of Arizona’s SB 1070, the state law which seeks to push undocumented immigrants out by way of punitive measures. Passed in 2010, the Arizona law was the first in a wave of harsh state immigration laws that are having detrimental consequences on industry, citizens, and documented and undocumented immigrants alike.

In many of the states that have passed SB 1070 “copycat laws,” local police are authorized to check an individual’s immigration status during a traffic or any other lawful stop; during an investigation of petty offenses like open container laws, underage drinking, jay-walking, or smoking in an elevator; even during domestic violence incidents where often both the perpetrator and victim are initially arrested. For example, should an undocumented victim of domestic violence call 9-1-1 to report an incident in one of these states, that victim could be deported as a result of the police investigation.

And, of course, there’s The Ugly: The stereotypes, hateful rhetoric, and dehumanizing language about Hispanics, Latinos or immigrants we’ve seen surrounding the issue, especially during the past year, threaten to derail meaningful reform and taint the national discussion.

Regardless of how Americans feel about immigration, appeals to prejudice and bigotry simply have no place in a civil debate.

The climate of bias and hostility toward immigrants that pervades the immigration debate hurts our country and stands in the way of the kind of reform Americans desperately seek to the broken immigration system.

Our own experience in the Jewish community has taught us that when a society begins to distinguish a group as less deserving of rights, then discrimination, exploitation, and worse can follow. The current system fails more than just immigrants seeking opportunity and fair treatment. It fails all of us by refusing to embrace a future that welcomes diversity and equal access to the American dream.

The consequences of a venomous, anti-immigrant climate impact us all. In Alabama, home to one of the nation’s most restrictive immigration laws, headlines report that in the days after the law took effect, as many as 15 percent of Hispanic students were too afraid to attend school. In other states we hear stories about families broken apart, unpicked crops rotting on the vine, the embarrassing arrest of an international car company employee, and damage to tourism.

Without a doubt these stories highlight the imprudence of harsh state immigration laws. These provisions drive a wedge between law enforcement and immigrant communities. In particular, they deter Hispanics or Latinos — whether documented or undocumented — from reporting or serving as witnesses to criminal activities, including hate crimes.

The most severe impact falls upon Hispanics or Latinos who are undocumented or have undocumented family members, friends or co-workers. For such persons, these laws can create credible fear that any contact with law enforcement will result in arrest or deportation.

As we begin a new year, one that promises to bring key decisions from the courts, let us remember that there is a direct connection between the tenor of this political debate and the consequences to our communities. It is incumbent upon all of us to press for fair and workable federal immigration reform and to demand civil dialogue and respect in the process.

THE immigration crisis that has roiled American politics for decades has faded into history. Illegal immigration is shrinking to a trickle, if that, and will likely never return to the peak levels of 2000. Just as important, immigrants who arrived in the 1990s and settled here are assimilating in remarkable and unexpected ways.

Taken together, these developments, and the demographic future they foreshadow, require bold changes in our approach to both legal and illegal immigration. Put simply, we must shift from an immigration policy, with its emphasis on keeping newcomers out, to an immigrant policy, with an emphasis on encouraging migrants and their children to integrate into our social fabric. “Show me your papers” should be replaced with “Welcome to English class.”

Restrictionists, including those driving much of the debate on the Republican primary trail, still talk as if nothing has changed. But the numbers are stark: the total number of immigrants, legal and illegal, arriving in the 2000s grew at half the rate of the 1990s, according to the Census Bureau.

The most startling evidence of the falloff is the effective disappearance of illegal border crossers from Mexico, with some experts estimating the net number of new Mexicans settling in the United States at zero. The size of the illegal-immigrant population peaked in 2007, with about 58 percent of it of Mexican origin, according to the Pew Hispanic Center; since 2008, that population has shrunk by roughly 200,000 a year. Illegal immigrants from Asia and other parts of the globe have similarly dwindled in numbers.

This new equilibrium is here to stay, in large part because Mexico’s birthrate is plunging. In 1970 a Mexican woman, on average, gave birth to 6.8 babies, and when they entered their 20s, millions journeyed north for work. Today the country’s birthrate — at 2.1 — is approaching that of the United States. That portends a shrinking pool of young adults to meet Mexico’s future labor needs, and less competition for jobs at home.

If the number of immigrants is declining, what about that other nativist bugbear, assimilation? There’s little doubt that immigrants’ potential as economic contributors turns on their ability to assimilate. Fortunately, recent studies by John Pitkin, Julie Park and me show that immigrant parents and children, especially Latinos, are making extraordinary strides in assimilating.

Today, barely a third of adult immigrants have a high-school diploma. But the children of Latino immigrants have always outperformed their parents in educational achievement. By 2030 we expect 80 percent of their children who arrived in the 1990s before age 10 to have completed high school and 18 percent to have a bachelor’s degree.

But it is immigrants’ success in becoming homeowners — often overlooked in immigration debates — that is the truest mark of their desire to adopt America as home. Consider Latinos. Among those in the wave of 1990s immigrants, just 20 percent owned a home in 2000. We expect that percentage to rise to 69 percent — and 74 percent for all immigrants — by 2030, well above the historical average for all Americans.

Who will be selling these homes to these immigrants? The 78 million native-born baby boomers looking to downsize as their children grow up and leave home. Fortunately for them, both immigrants and their children will be there to buy their homes, putting money into baby-boomer pockets and helping to shore up future housing prices.

Indeed, with millions of people retiring every week, America’s immigrants and their children are crucial to future economic growth: economists forecast labor-force growth to drop below 1 percent later this decade because of retiring baby boomers.

Immigrants’ extraordinary progress in assimilating would be faster if federal and state policies encouraged it. Unfortunately, they don’t. This year, the Department of Homeland Security plans to spend a measly $18 million — far less than a tenth of 1 percent of its budget — on helping immigrants assimilate. Meanwhile, states with large immigrant populations are cutting the budgets of community and state colleges, precisely where immigrant students predominantly enroll.

How do we change course and begin treating immigrants as a vast, untapped human resource? The answer goes to the heart of shifting from an immigration policy to an immigrant policy.

For starters, the billions of dollars spent on border enforcement should be gradually redirected to replenishing and boosting the education budget, particularly the Pell grant program for low-income students. Some money could be channeled to nonprofits like ImmigrationWorks and Welcoming America, which are at the forefront of helping migrants assimilate.

Second, the Departments of Labor, Commerce and Education need to play a greater role in immigration policy. Yes, as long as there remains a terrorist threat from abroad, the Department of Homeland Security should have an immigration component. But immigration policy is all about cultivating needed workers. That means helping immigrants and their children graduate from high school and college. It means that no migrant should have to stand in line for an English class. It means assistance in developing migrants’ job skills to better compete in an increasingly information- and knowledge-based economy.

Thanks to our huge foreign-born population (12 percent of the total), America can remain the world’s richest and most powerful nation for decades. Shaping an immigrant policy that focuses on developing the talents of our migrants and their children is the surest way to realize this goal.

Looking ahead to the new year ahead of us, these next two weeks I want to look at important developments affecting Latin America that are worth keeping a close eye on in 2012. The first is the changing nature of immigration.

The flow of immigrants from Latin America to the United States, a constant and often accelerating trend of the last three decades, slowed in 2011. The most prominent was the change from Mexico. New arrivals fell off a cliff, with apprehensions at the border hitting their lowest levels in seventeen years. The drop is so great that Doug Massey, head of the Mexican Migration Project (a long term survey of Mexican emigration at Princeton University), claims that for the first time in sixty years, Mexican migration to the United States has hit a net zero.

Though Mexico is the single largest source of migrants to the United States, providing roughly a third of all newcomers, they weren’t the only change. Anecdotal evidence at least suggests that many Brazilian migrants – which once numbered around one million – started heading home as well. Unemployment fell to all time lows, and numerous articles pointed out the labor scarcities both for high and low skilled workers.

There are many reasons behind these trends, some general, some country specific. Many point to the Obama administration’s rather tough immigration policy as one reason for the decline. A record-breaking 400,000 immigrants were deported last year, and immigration prosecutions increased almost eighty percent along the U.S-Mexico border in the last four years. For Mexico, others speculate that the rise of organized crime and violence along the border may deter some from contemplating the journey (though studies, such as that done by Jezmin Fuentes et al., suggest this may be less of a deterrent than many claim).

An important factor is the weak U.S. economy. With unemployment rates hovering at just over eight percent, there are fewer jobs for natives and migrants alike. This has occurred at a time when many of their home countries are growing steadily – at a decent 4 percent regional average clip, and much more in particular countries and economic strongholds. Better job opportunities in the region broadly — but particularly in Brazil — encouraged many to return home, and kept others from leaving at all.

Looking ahead, a U.S. economic recovery would recreate the pull north for Latin Americans seeking to improve their lot. If the Chinese economy stumbles this too could slow returns, or push more migrants north (especially from Brazil, which counts China as its largest trading partner). Meanwhile, flows from Central America are likely to continue as long as economic opportunities there remain scarce. The real question is Mexico. There, demographics have already shifted, with fewer Mexicans coming of age and entering the work force each year. As a result, the Mexican immigration boom of the 1990s and early 2000s is unlikely to be repeated ever again.

The 24-hour-a-day, 7-days-a-week hotline is part of a “broader effort to improve our immigration enforcement process and prioritize resources to focus on threats to public safety, (on) repeat immigration law violators, recent border entrants, and immigration fugitives while continuing to strengthen oversight of the nation’s immigration detention system and facilitate legal immigration,” a news release from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said.

The new measure was launched by the Department of Homeland Security to ensure detained individuals “are made aware of their rights” or “properly notified about their potential removal from the country,” according to the release. The hotline number is 855-448-6903.

A new “detainer” form — which includes Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese and Vietnamese translations — also is part of the new policy. The detainer — or notice to detain — form is official paperwork giving law enforcement the authority to hold a person in custody for a time.

Administration to lower number of troops on Southwest border

“The new form allows ICE to make the detainer operative only upon the individual’s conviction of the offense for which he or she was arrested,” the release said.

Immigration rights advocates told CNN there “has long been a need for more accountability and oversight of the issuance of immigration detainers.”

“The ACLU and other advocates identified four native-born U.S. citizens who were held unlawfully in custody through immigration detainers in Los Angeles County. One of these citizens was held for two days because of an immigration detainer despite repeatedly telling officers that he was a U.S. citizen,” Laura Vazquez, immigration legislative analyst for the National Council of La Raza, told CNN in a statement. The council is a national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization.

CNN attempted to get reaction on the new policy from the attorneys general in Alabama and Arizona — two states viewed as having among the most strict immigration reform laws — but were unsuccessful. An official in the Alabama attorney general’s office said Thursday officials had no comment.

The move by DHS comes just before the beginning of the new year, when new immigration laws in Louisiana, Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia will require businesses to enroll in the federal E-Verify program to ensure employees are eligible to work in the United States, according National Conference of State Legislatures.

E-Verify is a controversial program designed to check a prospective employee’s citizenship or immigration status.

Supporters say it helps businesses avoid unintentionally hiring illegal immigrants. Critics complain that it is expensive to operate, pushes undocumented workers further underground, and is not always accurate.

A growing number of United States citizens have been detained under Obama administration programs intended to detect illegal immigrants who are arrested by local police officers.

In a spate of recent cases across the country, American citizens have been confined in local jails after federal immigration agents, acting on flawed information from Department of Homeland Security databases, instructed the police to hold them for investigation and possible deportation.

Americans said their vehement protests that they were citizens went unheard by local police officers and jailers for days, with no communication with federal immigration agents to clarify the situation. Any case where an American is held, even briefly, for immigration investigation is a potential wrongful arrest because immigration agents lack legal authority to detain citizens.

“I told every officer I was in front of that I’m an American citizen, and they didn’t believe me,” said Antonio Montejano, who was arrested on a shoplifting charge last month and found himself held on an immigration order for two nights in a police station in Santa Monica, Calif., and two more nights in a teeming Los Angeles county jail cell, on suspicion that he was an illegal immigrant. Mr. Montejano was born in Los Angeles.

This year the immigration agency has been rapidly extending its leading deportation program, known as Secure Communities, with a goal of covering the whole country by 2013. Under that program, fingerprints of every person booked at local jails are checked against Department of Homeland Security immigration databases. If the check results in a match, federal immigration agents can issue detainers, asking local law enforcement authorities to hold a suspect for up to 48 hours.

Detentions of citizens are part of the widening impact on Americans, as well as on immigrants, of President Obama’s enforcement strategies, which have led to more than 1.1 million deportations since the beginning of his term, the highest numbers in six decades.

John Morton, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency gave “immediate and close attention” to anyone who claimed to be a citizen.

“We don’t have the power to detain citizens,” Mr. Morton said in an interview on Tuesday. “We obviously take any allegation that someone is a citizen very seriously.”

Later this month, Mr. Morton said, the immigration agency will publish new forms for its detainers. The forms, in several languages, will require the police to notify suspects who are being held on federal immigration authority, he said. They will also provide a hot line where detainees can call the immigration agency directly.

Exact numbers of Americans erroneously held by immigration authorities are hard to come by, since they are not systematically recorded. In one study, 82 people who were held for deportation from 2006 to 2008 at two immigration detention centers in Arizona, for periods as long as a year, were freed after immigration judges determined that they were American citizens.

“Because of the scale of enforcement, the numbers of people who are interacting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement are just enormous right now,” said Jacqueline Stevens, the study’s author and a political science professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

Ms. Stevens has concluded that “a low but persistent” percentage of the nearly 400,000 people held for deportation each year are citizens.

One was Mr. Montejano, when a holiday shopping outing on Nov. 5 to a Los Angeles mall with his four children ended badly. After his young daughter begged for a $10 bottle of cologne, Mr. Montejano said, he inadvertently dropped it into a bag of things he had already bought. As he left the store, he was arrested.

With no prior criminal record, Mr. Montejano, 40, expected to post bond quickly at the Santa Monica police station on the misdemeanor charge and go home. He had his driver’s license and other legal identification, but because of an immigration detainer he was denied bail and held even after a criminal court judge canceled his fine and ordered the police to let him go.

Mr. Montejano was freed on Nov. 9 after American Civil Liberties Union lawyers sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement his United States passport and birth certificate.

“Just because I made one mistake,” Mr. Montejano said, “I don’t think they should have done all those things to me.”

He said he thought the police did not believe he was an American because of his appearance. “I look Mexican 100 percent,” he said.

Mr. Montejano had triggered a positive match in the Homeland Security Department databases, A.C.L.U. lawyers discovered, because immigration officials had failed once before to recognize his citizenship, mistakenly deporting him to Mexico in 1996. His records were not corrected.

An American college student, Romy Campos, was also trapped in a California jail last month for four days on an immigration detainer. After her Nov. 12 arrest in Torrance on a minor misdemeanor charge, Ms. Campos, 19, was denied bail and transferred to a Los Angeles County jail. A public defender assigned to her in state court said there was nothing he could do to lift a federal detainer.

“Can’t they see in my file or something that I’m a citizen?” Ms. Campos said she asked him. “He said: ‘I’m sorry, but this is state court. I can’t do anything about it.’ ”

After four days, Ms. Campos was released, soon after Jennie Pasquarella, an A.C.L.U. lawyer, provided her Florida birth certificate to the immigration agency.

Ms. Campos said the experience was shocking. “I felt misused completely, I felt nonimportant, I just felt violated by my own country,” she said.

Ms. Campos, a citizen of both the United States and Spain, later learned that she had a Department of Homeland Security record because she had once entered the United States on her Spanish passport.

United States citizens can also be tagged in a Secure Communities fingerprint check because of flukes in the department’s databases. Unlike the federal criminal databases administered by the F.B.I., Homeland Security records include all immigration transactions, not just violations. An immigrant who has always maintained legal status, including those who naturalized to become American citizens, can still trigger a fingerprint match.

According to Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer in Alaska, under the nation’s complex citizenship laws, many foreign-born people become Americans automatically, through American parents or adoption. Often their citizenship is not recorded in Homeland Security databases, Ms. Stock said.

Other cases of possibly illegal detentions of citizens have been recently reported in Allentown, Pa., Indianapolis and Chicago.

ICE agents generally cancel detainers immediately when they determine that the suspect is a citizen. In no recent cases was an American placed in deportation.

But Ms. Stevens cautioned: “It’s sort of like the canary in the mine. If those who have the full due process rights of U.S. citizens are being detained, it tells us a lot about potentially unlawful people who do not have those protections.”

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SUMMARY

A series of polls – including one by Fox News released Friday – on immigration show that a majority of respondents, including registered Republican voters, think undocumented immigrants should have a shot at legalizing their status, as long as they meet certain criteria.

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When Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said in a November debate that undocumented immigrants who have deep roots in the United States should have a chance to legally work here, some jaws dropped.

His rivals questioned his conservative credentials. Observers wondered whether he had doomed his chances with Republican voters.

But a series of polls – including one by Fox News released Friday – on immigration shows that a majority of respondents, including registered Republican voters, think undocumented immigrants should have a shot at legalizing their status, as long as they meet certain criteria.

Some experts say the polls underscore that on the issue of immigration, at least, the GOP candidates are largely at odds with voters of their party.

“Gingrich at least put his finger on something – which is, we can play politics all we want but the reality is that these [undocumented] immigrants are integrating and becoming members of this society,” said Allert Grown-Gort, associate director of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michelle Bachmann, from Minnesota, assailed former House Speaker Gringrich for supporting “amnesty,” and has vowed that as president she would pursue deporting all the millions of undocumented immigrants.

But that, say many experts, is logistically impossible. And deporting — let alone finding — the millions of undocumented immigrants doesn’t ring as practical, or seem fair, to many Americans, Brown-Gort said.

“One of the ironies about immigration is that it’s the most human of stories,” he said. “Bachmann says she wants to send 11 million people back. What does 11 million look like?

“Well, it’s the entire state of Ohio,” Brown-Gort said. “When you deport somebody, you’re not just deporting them, you’re affecting — you’re doing damage to — the community, to the schools, these are steps that should not be taken lightly.”

GOP rival and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney criticized Gingrich’s stance on immigration, saying that it would serve as a magnet for more illegal border-crossers.

“That will only encourage more people to do the same thing. People respond to incentives,” Romney said. “If you could become a permanent resident of the United States by coming here illegally, you’ll do so.”

But in the Fox poll, 66 percent of the nearly 1,000 people surveyed nationally said there should be a path to citizenship if the a person meets requirements such as paying back taxes and learning English.  That goes further than Gingrich’s proposal, which just allows people who – in the example he gave – have lived here for 25 or more years to work here legally, but not be on a path to citizenship.

Nineteen percent of voters in the Fox poll thought all undocumented immigrants should be deported, and another 13 percent take the middle ground of a guest-worker program that would allow immigrants to remain in the United States for a limited time.

Regardless of political party affiliation, most respondents supported a path to legalization.

A majority of Republicans (57 percent), independents (68 percent) and Democrats (73 percent) said they supported giving undocumented immigrants a path to legalization.

Republicans were more likely than Democrats and independents to want the deportation of all undocumented immigrants. But even so, the percentage that did – 26 percent of Republicans, 14 percent of Democrats and 12 percent of independents – was dramatically smaller than those favoring giving a break to immigrants who meet certain criteria.

Another poll, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, a nonpartisan group in Washington, showed that 43 percent of respondents favor combining enforcement with a path to legalization. Another 24 percent thought the U.S. government should focus chiefly on a path to citizenship, and about 29 percent thought the focus should be just on enforcement.

The poll found that while Republican senior citizens preferred enforcement, younger Republicans favored combining enforcement with a path to legalization.

So why has the tenor of the comments on immigration in the GOP debates been decidedly hard-line when polls reflect a Republican voter preference for something softer?

“A lot of the GOP campaigns have been ill-advised by strategists who truly don’t understand the views of likely Republican voters on the issue of immigration,” said Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, a Washington, DC based advocacy group.

“The strategists have bought the argument of anti-immigrant restrictionists who in the past five, six years have penetrated the conservative movement.”

Aguilar, like other Latino conservatives, including  U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, has pushed for the Republican Party to soften its take-no-prisoners tone on immigration, particularly if it is to win the support of Latino voters.

“They [restrictionists] have hijacked the issue of immigration in the Republican Party,” said Aguilar, who served in the George W. Bush Administration as chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship. “While they’re a small minority [within Republicans], they’re very vocal, they have a very well-organized political machine and they’re very PR [public relations] savvy. They have convinced the people they advise that the majority of Republicans are anti-immigrant.”

It’s not just polls that indicate divergent views on illegal immigration between voters and campaign talk on the issue, Aguilar says. State Republican legislators themselves have issued warnings about, or helped shelve or defeat, hard-line immigration bills that were introduced in many states.

Of the GOP candidates, Aguilar said, “the only two that understand the importance of the Hispanic voter and view of American Republicans are Gingrich and [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry.”

Perry, who supports some hard-line positions on immigration, came under fire by his fellow GOP rivals for having backed legislation in his state that allows undocumented students to attend public colleges at in-state tuition rates. Perry also does not support the construction of a fence along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, calling it impractical.

“Perry started coming down in the polls,” Aguilar said. “Restrictionists said it was because of his [moderate] comments on immigration, but he came down in the polls because of his poor performance in the debates.”

Contrary to the predictions of many observers that Gingrich would hurt his surging support after his comments on immigration, he has seen an uptick in polls, Aguilar said.

Aguilar, whose group has reached out to various candidates’ campaigns to offer advice on reaching Latino voters, said a Republican candidate would be wise to support “a balanced, common-sense approach to immigration that goes beyond enforcement-only.”

That is an approach, Aguilar said, that can win a Republican candidate support from a conservative base and Latinos, including those who are disillusioned by Obama.

A recent poll by Latino Decisions suggests that immigration reform is the top issue influencing the Latino vote in the lead-up to next year’s presidential race, despite an overall waning interest in the race.

The poll reported that 42 percent of Latino voters were concerned about immigration. Unemployment – which remains higher for Latinos than for the general population — came in second, at a distant 23 percent.

Obama campaigned on a promise to reform immigration in his first year in office, a promise that is believed to have helped him win the majority of Latino votes. Increasingly, Latino voters who consider immigration a priority issue have expressed frustration over what they see as a failure by Obama to push harder for comprehensive immigration reform.

“[Republican candidates] can make inroads into a constituency that was key to Obama winning,” Aguilar said. “They need 40 percent of the Latino vote. Latinos are very upset with Obama. He pandered to them in a very crass way.”

If the Latino Decisions poll is any indication, swaying Latino voters will take work. Even though they are disillusioned,  54 percent Latinos still said in the poll that they were certain that they would vote for Obama in 2012.

Obama’s re-election campaign officials say that Republicans have been no friend to Latinos, and that they have been the obstacle to efforts to reform the immigration system.

“The choice for Hispanic Americans,” said campaign spokesperson Gabriela Domenzain, “is between  a President who passed legislation that kept two million Latinos out of poverty, provided 150,000 additional Hispanic students with the means to go to college, and fought to pass comprehensive immigration reform and the DREAM Act and a Republican field whose leading candidates oppose the DREAM Act and a path to citizenship for immigrants and would slash funding for education, Medicare, and Social Security.”

Agency focuses on fully realizing the job-creating potential of current immigration law

Released Oct. 11.2011

WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Alejandro Mayorkas joined the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in Pittsburgh to announce “Entrepreneurs in Residence.”  This new innovative initiative will utilize industry expertise to strengthen USCIS policies and practices surrounding immigrant investors, entrepreneurs and workers with specialized skills, knowledge, or abilities. Mayorkas announced the initiative at the Jobs Council’s High Growth Entrepreneurship Listening and Action Session at AlphaLab in Pittsburgh before the Council’s quarterly meeting with President Obama.

“This initiative creates additional opportunities for USCIS to gain insights in areas critical to economic growth,” said Director Mayorkas. “The introduction of expert views from the private and public sector will help us to ensure that our policies and processes fully realize the immigration law’s potential to create and protect American jobs.”

USCIS will launch the “Entrepreneurs in Residence” initiative with a series of informational summits with industry leaders to gather high-level strategic input. Informed by the summits, the agency will stand up a tactical team comprised of entrepreneurs and experts, working with USCIS personnel, to design and implement effective solutions. This initiative will strengthen USCIS’s collaboration with industries, at the policy, training, and officer level, while complying with all current Federal statutes and regulations.

The initiative builds upon USCIS’s August announcement of efforts to promote startup enterprises and spur job creation, including enhancements to the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program. Since August, USCIS is:

• Conducting a review of the EB-5 process
• Working with business analysts to enhance the EB-5 adjudication process
• Implementing direct access for EB-5 Regional Center applicants to reach adjudicators quickly; and
• Launching new specialized training modules for USCIS officers on the EB-2 visa classification and L-1B nonimmigrant intra-company transferees.

For more information on USCIS and its programs, please visit www.uscis.gov or follow us on Twitter (@uscis), YouTube (/uscis) and the USCIS blog The Beacon.

Only eight million people tried to win a green card in the latest U.S. diversity-visa lottery, the State Department said, compared with a record 15 million last year.

That figure could slide further in coming years, because the Senate recently passed a measure to charge a fee for entering the electronic draw, starting with next year’s drawing.

A State Department spokeswoman attributed the drop in entries this year to the fact that Bangladeshis—for many years the most numerous applicants—weren’t eligible to participate. The South Asian nation is no longer classified as a low-immigration country to the U.S.

The diversity-visa lottery is an immigration program that offers a quick path to permanent U.S. residence for 50,000 people each year who are selected randomly by the U.S. government from countries that send few immigrants to the U.S. Earlier this year, a computer glitch forced the government to redo the previous lottery, after 22,000 people were incorrectly notified that they had won.

During the monthlong entry period every fall, the green-card lottery generates a frenzy in countries across Africa, the source of most entries now.

This year, the three countries that submitted the most entries were Nigeria, with 1.36 million; Ghana, with 909,000; and Ukraine, with 853,000. Last year, Bangladesh accounted for 7.6 million entries.

Last month, Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) won approval for a bill to extend federal benefits to disabled refugees living within the U.S. The bill included a new $30 fee to enter the diversity-visa lottery. The House is expected to pass the same measure.

A spokesman for Mr. Schumer said the fee would help offset the cost of the program and avoid adding to the U.S. budget deficit. The Congressional Budget Office had estimated it would cost about $36 million to provide a one-year extension to the program for refugees.

The results of this year’s diversity-visa draw will be announced in May.