The White House put out a fact sheet in 2018 titled “Facing the Facts About Our Broken Immigration System.” It is indeed “broken,” and crying out for radical action.

While legal immigration has been an essential component of our growth and prosperity as a nation, we need a timeout; an immigration moratorium.

This suggestion is not made lightly. As a second generation Portuguese French-Canadian American, I have many childhood memories of my grandparents who came from the Azores, Portugal, and Quebec, Canada, to endure the many hardships of the typical immigrant in settling here, and providing a better life for succeeding generations.

But, we need a timeout to clear the backlogs of migration applicants and devote more time, and muscle to end illegal migration.

All areas of legal immigration overseen by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Customs and Border Protection have backlogs that will take years to clear. Officials of the USCIS testified on July 16 of this year that they had a backlog of 2,429,000 cases in fiscal year 2018, four times what it had been in 2015.

The Border Patrol, a component of CBP, has been overwhelmed with the recent influx of asylum seekers. Acting Director of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan says “by the end of the fiscal year, we will see numbers more than triple the record for family units arriving at the border.”

Asylum seekers have put an extra burden on the immigration courts. The Executive Office of Immigration Review, the agency that oversees the immigration courts, completed only 195,571 of 308,304 new cases in 2018. Their caseload in 2018 was 789,258.

It will take years to clear the backlog, which will never happen if we continue to have an influx of asylum seekers, and “open borders.” A timeout is needed.

There is at least one program, the Visa Lottery, that could be eliminated. This program was introduced in 1990, and its purpose was to provide green cards to countries that are “under-served.” Each year 55,000 are randomly selected for green cards from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, applicants don’t have to apply from their home country, they can be legal or illegal, and no sponsorship is required, which is a situation leading to fraud and abuse.

The affect of unchecked migration into the country is an increase in our foreign born population to 45.8 million, or 13.9% of our population of 330 million. This level is similar to the 13.2% in 1920, when concern for the burgeoning immigration population resulted in the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, drastically reducing the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country.

There was an outcry that this action was racist, anti-immigrant, etc., but you have to ask the question, a question I have not seen asked in the 17 years I have been immersed in this issue: “Where would we be now without the limitations of 1924?”

As a result of the 1924 limitations, the foreign born population fell from 13.2% in 1920 to a low of 4.7% in 1970, and started up again with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, and is now at 13.9%.

In some respects, the situation is more dire now. There were no backlogs for immigrants coming through Ellis Island and, as near as I can determine, there was little problem with illegal entry back then.

A timeout would benefit Maine, as it would allow for more effective and quicker assimilation of immigrants already here, and enable the U.S. Congress to pass legislation for the much discussed reorientation toward a skills-based immigration agenda so that future immigrants to Maine would more quickly adapt to local conditions and minimize dependence on welfare subsidies.

As in 1924, we need drastic action to bring our “broken immigration system” under control and a moratorium would be the opportunity to improve and reorient the many facets of our system, and free up resources to finally secure our border, eliminate illegal visa overstays, and provide a fair and equal system for natives and legal entrants into our country.

Robert Casimiro is executive director of Mainers for Responsible Immigration. He lives in Bridgton.

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