Reform inadequate immigration rules

The story of Andres Magana Ortiz is just one of many that arise from the national failure to confront immigration reform head-on.

Magana Ortiz is the Hawaii island coffee farmer who entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico nearly 30 years ago, brought here at age 15. Now facing deportation, his case has drawn headlines and the attention of the Hawaii congressional delegation.

Determining how many people are in this situation is educated guesswork, but one of the more educated guesses about Hawaii’s undocumented population puts it at roughly 35,000, That estimate for Hawaii, roughly 2.4 percent of the state population, comes from a 2013 report from the Pew Hispanic Center.

It’s a small percentage but not a small group of people. And for many, like Magana Ortiz, families and businesses have become rooted along with them, and also are affected. A rational rebalancing of the immigration system, so long overdue, would give such families options for getting right with the law.

Hawaii leaders have supported such an overhaul, but it’s not something they can settle. The complexities of the problem — needs for border security, surveillance and oversight of employers who often provide the lure — would require a level of cooperation that has eluded Washington for years.

Right now, the country is gripped by a paralysis on the question of who gets into the country, whether for a short or long period.

One manifestation is the legal battle still swirling around President Donald Trump’s executive order on travel restrictions for some Muslim-majority countries.

Hawaii has been on the front lines of the opposition, with a court challenge that recently was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. That fight, or at least the specific legal issue, should get resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The more pervasive dispute is the national standoff over who gets admitted to this country to live and work.

Last week, Magana Ortiz was granted a 30-day reprieve; his attorney, James Stanton, has said he is seeking a further stay but that the husband and father is prepared to leave, voluntarily at his own expense, if that fails.

There are other heartbreaking cases. Among immigration lawyer Clare Hanusz’s clients is a single mother of two, ages 10 and 20, both American-born. The harsh outcome for deportation cases like these is that the undocumented immigrant is barred from re-entry for 10 years.

And Hanusz counters the argument that people in their situation could have set things right by now. If someone is here illegally because they overstayed their short-term visa, she said, they can seek sponsorship through their American spouse or adult child.

However, she added, someone who entered without a visa does not have these routes to seek even limited work permits and residency. So these undocumented immigrants, who have generally found work in the cash-payment economy, choose to lie low rather than leave their families.

Immigration reform, for one thing, should bring better ways for employers to validate a worker’s documents and be held accountable for doing so. People are drawn to the U.S. to work, so there should be a way to control that pipeline.

There must be consequences for immigration violations, a range that can include heavy fines as well as expulsion in many cases. The government’s responsibility is to mete out those penalties in a timely way. An inept enforcement system causes more family trauma than it should, by allowing those families to form and become rooted in the first place.

That trauma will persist, until lawmakers come to terms with reality: People desperate for a better life, if not presented with a rational pathway, will forge one. Immigration reform to provide more sensible controls is a national economic and moral imperative.