Last week the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, John Boehner, declared immigration reform dead in 2013.
That was hardly welcome news for the hundreds of government, business and NGO leaders arriving at the downtown Hilton on Sunday for the National Immigrant Integration Conference. But the organizers of the event – whose speakers include U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez – argue that it’s still imperative to usher immigrants into the American mainstream, with or without reform.Joshua Hoyt is co-chairman of the National Partnership for New Americans, one of the conference’s hosts.
“It’s not in anybody’s interest to have 11 million people hiding in the shadows", said Hoyt. "It’s not good for national security, it’s not good for the economy and it’s terrible for the immigrants. So this country needs to walk into solutions for how we help the foreign born and their children be successful.”
Congress may take up immigration reform again next year. The biggest stumbling block is whether to give those 11 million undocumented immigrants already here a path to citizenship. But Hoyt believes it’s just as important to get legal immigrants to that level.
“There are 8.8 million legal immigrants who could apply for citizenship today”, Hoyt said.
The conference, also hosted by the Florida Immigrant Coalition and the Knight Foundation, concludes today with a mass swearing in of new U.S. citizens in the Hilton ballroom.