On several occasions, I’ve touted Boston College political scientist Peter Skerry’s proposal that unauthorized immigrants be granted normalization without citizenship, as outlined in “Splitting the Difference on Illegal Immigration,” published earlier this year in National Affairs:

All of us should stop to appreciate that America is a remarkably open and absorptive society, where newcomers and their children put down roots and develop ties rapidly. Indeed, these forces are so powerful that they overcome much of the indecision and ambivalence of illegals who typically do not arrive planning to stay here. We should allow ourselves to feel good about this, and use such positive sentiments to help us address a dilemma that, in its intractability, does not reflect well on any of us.

Yet the equities that illegal immigrants build up over time cannot become an excuse to ignore or deny the understandable anxieties, and even outrage, that many Americans feel in response to their presence here — however intemperately such sentiments may at times be expressed. And while we should criticize politicians who pander to not irrational but nevertheless highly volatile fears about illegals, we must not lose sight of the need to sanction those same illegals. As President Obama put it at American University in 2010, “We have to demand responsibility from people living here illegally.” Indeed, as we have seen, the undocumented are hardly blameless for the difficult circumstances in which they now find themselves. Yet holding them accountable for their decisions need not be done in a punitive or vindictive spirit.

To strike this balance, we should offer lenient terms of legalization to illegal immigrants but prohibit them from ever becoming eligible for naturalization. They should instead become “permanent non-citizen residents.”

The chief virtue of Skerry’s proposal is that, as he explains, barring unauthorized immigrants who arrived in the country as adults is a straightforward, credible penalty that U.S. immigration enforcement officials can actually enforce, as opposed to the convoluted penalties dreamed up by the architects of comprehensive immigration reform. Imposing back taxes sounds attractive, but consider the economic profile of this population, as recently described by the Migration Policy Institute: as of 2011, 32 percent of unauthorized adults and 51 percent of children had family incomes below the poverty level; 44 percent of adults and 63 percent of children have incomes below 138 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), which is the eligibility cutoff for the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act; and only 14 percent of adults and 8 percent of children have incomes above 400 percent of FPL, the level above which households are no longer eligible for means-tested subsidies under the ACA. That is, this is a very poor population, and unauthorized adults with children are poorer than unauthorized adults without children, which presumably will have consequences for the well-being of these children. Even if we deny this population access to various means-tested benefits, including subsidies for medical coverage, the problems that flow from its poverty won’t simply disappear. So the idea that the federal government will yield a significant amount in back taxes is faintly preposterous — it is more likely that the federal government will spend more to collect back taxes than it will actually yield, particularly since the tax liability of many of these households would be negative. (No, I’m not claiming that the Gang of Six proposal will retroactively pay out EITC benefits, etc.) It is possible that income is underreported for unauthorized immigrants, given that large numbers work in the informal sector. It seems difficult to imagine that the immigration enforcement bureaucracy will be able to determine the actual income levels of unauthorized immigrants over time to charge appropriate back taxes. 

Though the Skerry proposal has largely faded from the scene — a handful of congressional conservatives have suggested a path to legal status rather than a path to citizenship, but it hasn’t gone much further than that — a new champion has just emerged, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez. Reid Wilson of National Journal reports:

Martinez, a border-state governor who has been critical of the Obama administration’s efforts to secure the border with Mexico, also said that while she supports some aspects of the immigration, she has concerns with other areas of the bill — notably, the pathway to citizenship that undocumented immigrants currently in the United States would win under the current proposal.

“What I want to see come out is certainly securing our border, because otherwise I think all we do is have the next wave after we find a comprehensive solution,” Martinez said. “The goal would be legal status for those that are deserving of legal status, not a pathway to citizenship.”

“I don’t think we should disrespect the people who have done this the right way and have done all the things that the laws require of them to gain citizenship. If those that are here illegally right now want citizenship, then they should move forward in that direction but go to the end of the line. I think there are parts of it that I do support. I prefer a pathway to legal status and not a pathway to citizenship,” she added.

A Martinez advisor stressed that the governor would only support a pathway to legal status for those undocumented immigrants who go to the back of the line. Martinez singled out immigrants who come to the U.S. on educational visas and those who came with their parents as children as examples of residents who shouldn’t get the boot.

“We’re very open to immigration, but immigration doesn’t always necessarily mean citizenship. Some people don’t want to change their citizenship. But we shouldn’t have kids coming on a visa, for example a student visa, and then saying you’ve got to go back home. We want to keep them. Let them stay here and have legal status,” she said. [Emphasis added]

This might be the smartest, most articulate pronouncement on immigration I’ve ever heard from an elected official. I’ve always liked Martinez. Now I have another reason to do so. One slightly confusing aspect of her statement is the notion that unauthorized immigrants should go to the end of the line — this is consistent with the rest of her statement if she means that they ought to return to their native countries and apply from there, as provisional legal status represents an enormously valuable legal privilege that definitely does not represent the back of the line. My guess is that Martinez won’t actively insinuate herself into the national immigration debate, but one wishes she were in the U.S. Senate right about now.