Aloha, friend.I just joined my U.S. House Problem Solvers Caucus in a bipartisan Congressional delegation to the U.S.-Mexico border at McAllen, Texas hosted by my colleague and friend, Congressman Vicente Gonzalez (TX-15). It was my second visit, my first being to Matamoros, Texas early last year. Over the past few months, our Southern border has seen a huge surge in entries into our country by citizens of other countries who cross over without prior permission. In just the Rio Grande Valley sector that we visited, the number of “encounters” (as described by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP) in the first six months of the current fiscal year is already some 2 ½ times that of the entire prior year. My goal as with my first trip was to get out of the hyper-partisan debate in Washington, D.C. and understand actual conditions on the ground toward forging real solutions on immigration. Over two days we visited the ports of legal entry and illegal crossing sites and the processing, detention and humanitarian respite centers, were briefed by CPB and their federal, state and local law enforcement counterparts, discussed border community impacts with local elected officials, and compared thoughts with each other. What I saw and heard, and felt, should deeply concern any American. A flood of humanity seeking escape from intolerable conditions at home and a better life. Children, some barely walking, sent over the border alone. Foreign drug cartels and their “coyotes” controlling, exploiting and extorting the process start-to-finish. Facilities stretched way past their maximum. Border enforcement personnel stretched way past their limit and diverted from their primary functions. Insufficient border security. Laws, especially asylum, completely inadequate and often abused, and funding inadequate across-the-board. In short, I saw both a real immediate crisis and more broadly a breakdown in our immigration system.  None of this should surprise us, as that system has been broken for a long time. There are a host of proposals in Congress today to address individual parts, but fall short of a comprehensive update and reform of our immigration laws to meet the challenges of our times. In this e-newsletter (focusing on permanent immigration, not temporary visits), I summarize our immigration laws, review three main areas of reform, and ask for your views below. Governing immigration. Not only is our country largely forged by immigrants, but so especially is our Hawai‘i, and that continues to this day. Today around 14% of our national population is foreign-born, but closer to 19% in Hawai‘i, one of the highest in our country. It would be hard to cite an institution that has advanced our country more than immigration. Since 1952, our immigration policy has been governed largely by the federal Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The INA sets the overall framework for legal immigration, border security, and illegal immigration. However, the last major reform and update of the INA was in 1986, 35 years ago, with so much changed since and so many new developments simply not anticipated then. A prime example is asylum, our long-honored tradition of not returning foreign nationals to their countries because of persecution, or a well-founded fear of persecution, in five specific areas: race; religion; nationality; membership in a specific social group; or political opinion. Many if not most of Southern border crossings currently are claiming asylum, which requires a judicial determination that can take years. Many of those claimants are released into our country pending their day in court. CBP reported that only about 20% come to court on their appointed date, and of those that do, the claims of most are denied as not fitting our current INA factors. Asylum should be retained as reflecting the best of our values, but it is clear that as applied asylum is broken and must be reformed. For your further review, click here for a report by the Congressional Research Service, “A Primer on U.S. Immigration Policy.” Assuring legal immigration. The INA seeks to ensure that we continue our time-honored purposes of immigration in four categories: reuniting families; supplementing workforces; ensuring country-of-origin diversity; and pursuing humanitarian goals. All of these remain sound, but the application of the INA has grown into a hodgepodge of results that are often unfair and no longer accomplish our national purposes. As one example, many of our own first generation families in Hawai‘i have waited patiently for literally decades for an adult child or parent to join them legally. As another, whole industries such as agriculture increasingly suffer from worker shortages too often filled with illegal immigrants. President Biden’s proposed U.S. Citizenship Act would address many of these concerns by expanding legal immigration, as would the Farm Workforce Modernization Act in the agriculture sector which just passed the U.S. House on a bipartisan vote (I voted aye). But these are just parts of a long-overdue comprehensive updating of our legal immigration policy. Securing our borders. Every nation has the right to establish the conditions of legal entry and to remove illegal entrants, and any nation’s immigration policy that cannot be enforced means nothing. The best current estimate of illegal immigrants in our country is over 10 million (including somewhere around 40,000 in Hawai‘i). By that test alone, our immigration policy is a failure. Most unfortunately, the debate over border security has descended into the simplistic question of whether or not to build a wall, with one extreme accusing the other of wanting wide-open borders and the other accusing the one of wanting to shut down all immigration. But most of us can begin by reframing the question to not whether but how best to secure our borders and enforce our policies. There are four approaches. Physical barriers can be effective in specific situations, but to assume that barriers alone will solve the issue is naïve. Agreements with other countries to improve conditions at home and discourage out-migration to start with are long overdue, but won’t themselves do the job. Increased border surveillance whether by personnel or technology will help, but can’t accomplish a secure border alone. Stiffer penalties for illegal entry may discourage some but, absent other measures, too many will continue to take the chance. Only an across-the-board coordinated approach using the best of all of the above will really enhance border security and immigration enforcement over time. Addressing illegal immigrants. What is the fair, right and just policy to address the reality of an estimated ten million-plus immigrants in our country illegally today? Many are leading lives of contribution to our communities and reflecting the best of American citizenship. Somewhere around a million-plus, including many in Hawai‘i, were just children when they came (Dreamers); they have never known another country.  Again, the hyper-extremes of the debate complicate a real solution. One extreme says just deport them all, without considering whether that is fair and just to all or how that would ever be achieved. The other says provide all amnesty, without making any distinction between those who have lived as good citizens and those who have not, or considering that that rewards further illegal immigration.  I believe that there should be a specific path to legal permanent residence and citizenship for those who have lived and contributed as the equivalent of good citizens and that we should continue to seek out and deport those who haven’t. That is what the American Dream and Promise Act, which I cosponsored and which recently passed the U.S. House, provides for those who entered as children, and that is what the U.S. Citizenship Act provides for others. These are difficult policy and political solutions, but they at least represent pragmatic and realistic approaches to perhaps the most complex part of immigration reform. Charting reform. Assuring legal immigration, securing our borders and addressing illegal immigrants are just parts of one connected issue, and solving one part without solving the others will only worsen our broken system. That makes all-parts comprehensive immigration reform both necessary and one of the most complicated and difficult issues we all face today. It has been so for decades, and I have seen the real consequences of kicking the can down the road to avoid the hard decisions up close and personal on the Southern border. But immigration reform can and must be done; in fact, it presents one of the best opportunities for us all to find solutions together that will preserve the best of immigration for our country for the next generations. Your thoughts? Survey. I need and ask for your continued guidance on this critical issue by taking my anonymous online survey here. This survey is completely anonymous. I won’t know who is replying and can’t track your responses back to you.  As always, I welcome you to go to my website at case.house.gov for much more information on me, my office and my activities as your Congressman. Please also email me at ed.case@mail.house.gov or call my Honolulu office at (808) 650-6688 with any questions or comments or needs. Be safe and be well.