Half Done

This weekend marks the midpoint of my Guatemalan adventure. Seven days ago, I was just arriving in Xela after a quick weekend as a tourist in Antigua, meeting my hosts and unpacking. In seven more days, I’ll be having Father’s Day dinner with my grandfather in Miami. While I’m very glad I’m here, I admit I am looking forward to going home.

The school part of my stay has been great so far. My teacher, Pablo, does a great job of talking, getting me to talk, correcting me enough that I learn but not so much that I give up in frustration, and getting in the grammatical points that are in our curriculum. He’s also a really interesting person, and we have things in common—it would be nice if we could have a conversation in a language we both spoke comfortably.

I have mixed feelings about the homestay component. On the one hand, I have two more people that I talk to every day, and they too are interesting people. And the cost of accommodation doing it this way is insanely low. Por otro lado, I don’t really have that much to say to Maria and Eduardo; we don’t have much in common. In a strange way, staying in someone’s home, but not really interacting with them except at mealtimes, is more lonely that being on my own in a hotel room. On balance, I think I’m glad I’m doing a homestay, if for no other reason than that it has forced me to interact with two more Guatemalans besides Pablo. But if I do it again, I’ll probably choose to spend a little more money for a hotel room with an internet connection.

Un Día en Quetzaltenango

Three days into my Quetzalteco adventure, and I have developed something of a routine:

Upon my arrival, Maria explained to me that I should shower at 7:00am, and breakfast is at 7:30. And so that’s what I do. At about 7:45, I depart for the seven-minute walk to La Democracia Spanish School, giving me time to do a quick email check on my iPhone with the school’s wifi. From 8:00 to 1:00, Pablo and I talk—I let him lead the conversation, which goes back and forth between explaining grammatical points and talking about whatever comes up. He talks more than I do, which is fine with me. There’s a break from 10:30 to 11:00, when I get some instant coffee, check my email, maybe the NYTimes.com headlines and Facebook, and chat a little with Joel and David, two of the other students. So far, I haven’t said more than hello to Jennifer the fourth student.

At 1:00, I walk back to Maria & Eduardo’s house for lunch at 1:30. Lunch is the big meal here. Eduardo works until 2:15, so they don’t eat with me; instead Maria serves me, and we chat a little while I eat. I feel a little weird about this set-up, but she seems happy with it. Lunch today was chicken wings with barbecue sauce and a vegetable I had never heard of (whose name I have already forgotten). Yesterday was a little more traditionally Guatemalteco, pork with white beans. Maria prefers tamalitos to tortillas, so that’s what we have.

After lunch, I retreat to my room, read a little, and take a little nap. Siesta is a wonderful thing. When I’m ready, I venture out to see the sites. Monday and Tuesday, I walked around the center of town with no particular destination. Today, I headed up the hill just south of town toward Iglesia Christo Viene, a church with a huge sign, visible from el centro, reading—you guessed it—Christo Viene. Picture a cheaper, more religious version of the Hollywood sign. I didn’t go into the church; I was in it for the view from the hillside.

After my explorations, it’s time for coffee and internet. Monday I went to a place called “coffee shop,” which was fine, but didn’t excite me. Yesterday, I found “& Café,” right on the central square, a very modern, American-style chain that I had also found in Antigua. I went back today, and may make it my daily hangout. It has decent coffee and sweets and fast, reliable wifi; and I got a bit of a gay vibe from the staff and some of the customers. Maybe I stumbled onto Xela’s gay hangout.

After an hour or two of coffee and internet, it’s time to make the 20-minute walk back home. La cena is at 7:30, consisting of coffee for Maria and Eduardo (water for me, I can’t drink coffee at night) and a light snack. Yesterday was ham and cheese sandwiches; the day before was quesadillas; today was hot dogs. After la cena, I’m back in my room to do my homework (so far, write a paragraph or two per night), write blog posts, and read. I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; now I’m getting into Daughter’s Keeper, by Ayelet Waldman, whom I sort of know. I think I have enough books to get me through the next ten days.

Vos

I studied Spanish for a couple of years in high school; lately I’ve been studying a grammar text and listening to podcasts aimed at teaching Spanish. All of them say that there are two translations of the word “you”: usted and tú. Why do none of them mention “vos,” the familiar you used in much of Latin America? I asked Pablo about vos today, and he explained as follows: People use usted with their parents or other people much older than they, or in very formal situations (ok, I knew that). Chicas use tú with each other, and chicos use tú when talking to chicas. Chicos, when talking to each other, always use vos; in Guatemala, the only time two chicos would use tú with each other is if they’re gay. Wow! All these years, textbooks and teachers have been teaching me how to talk gay! (Apparently this is the case only in Guatemala.)

Pablo was very matter of fact in the way he told me this, and didn’t seem to be making any judgments about the gays. He’s an educated guy, with clearly lefty politics (today he was wearing a shirt that said “revolucion” in big letters, and spoke with some pride of his public university’s reputation for producing revolutionaries). And yet I didn’t feel comfortable saying, “I’m gay!” Maybe he’s figured it out already (we’ve already covered the fact that I’m still soltero, and I’m clearly older than him). Or maybe he hasn’t, and if he knew, he’d totally freak out. I’m not ready to find out yet. I’m enjoying our conversations every morning, and don’t want to risk ruining them, even though it means retreating to the closet for a couple of weeks. Perhaps I’ll find a way to work it into conversation during the last couple of days, and see how he reacts. Meanwhile, he says it’s fine for teachers and students to use tú with each other, even if we’re both guys, but he was very impressed when I threw in a vos later in the conversation.

Perspective

I spent the weekend before my little trip to Guatemala at my friends Jim and George’s beautiful house in East Hampton. I had a great time, and would love to go again soon (are you reading this, Jim?). But I must confess to a little bit of envy while I was there, seeing so many people, including my good friends, who have such a nice house that I could not come close to affording, and probably never will. I know that my inability to have such things is the direct result of decisions I’ve made, and I don't regret those decisions (most of the time), but there it is. Living in New York, I am constantly reminded that there are so many things I can’t afford, even though I make (or at least made until recently) a very good living by most standards.

Well, there’s nothing like a few days in a developing country to put things in perspective! Thank you, Guatemala, for reminding me how spoiled I really am.

One of the great things about this trip, and this kind of trip, is that I am actually talking to real Guatemaltecos every day. I have spent the last three days conversing with my teacher, Pablo, and while studying the difference between the preterite and the imperfect and memorizing irregular verb forms, I’m also learning a lot about him. Pablo is 28, a graduate of the University of San Carlos, Guatemala’s most prestigious university. He graduated in law, and is studying for the equivalent of the bar exam here. His family comes from a village near the Mexican border, where they have some land and a home, and they also have a home in what sounds like a pretty exclusive area in Xela. His brother is studying to be a doctor. In short, he is comfortably middle class, upper middle class even. And yet, the only foreign country he has been to is Mexico; he’s never been on an airplane. When the topic of rent came up, he guessed that I paid somewhere around $500/month; I told him I paid considerably more, and left it at that. These are just a couple of examples, but I am embarrassed to let him know just how much more I have than him—all simply because I had the foresight to be born to the right people in the right place.

Quetzaltenango

It’s amazing how accustomed I’ve become to being connected to friends, family, news, acquaintances, noise, etc., all the time. In the course of a day, I rarely let a waking hour pass without checking my email, checking facebook, checking the news, texting a friend or two… In recent years, even when I’ve traveled to such places as Uganda or remote eastern Senegal, I have stayed in fancy hotels with internet connections, and spent my evenings catching up with the world.

And now here I sit in a home in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, not knowing quite what to do with myself sans wifi. My iPhone is at my side, so I know if anyone needs to reach me they can. I could even send texts or log onto the 3G network and get at my email, but with no income at the moment, I’m taking the fiscally responsible course and restraining myself. So this little update will be uploaded sometime tomorrow, I imagine, when I find a café with an internet connection.

I can’t quite say that I’m enjoying being cut off, but I think it’s good for me. I’m reading a lot (currently the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I’m enjoying more than I expected). I’m taking the time to write down my thoughts. It’s good to slow down and quiet one’s mind from time to time. Maybe I’ll even meditate.

For most of the day, my mind was anything but quiet. Being immersed in a foreign language is hard work. After spending the weekend in Antigua (Guatemala Lite), I arrived in Quetzaltenango/Xela Sunday night in time for dinner. My shuttle from Antigua brought me directly to my host family, Maria and Eduardo, a nice couple a little older than my parents (though they seem much older). There are no children in the house, but they have a big dog, Bucanero, and many birds, including a parrot, Francisco. Eduardo is friendly enough, but Maria does most of the talking. Lucky for me, she is used to foreigners, so she speaks very slowly. I almost always understand what she says, at least by the second time. If they speak any English, they haven’t let on—it’s all Spanish all the time.

Monday morning, Maria walked me to my first day at school, about 5 minutes away. The school, La Democracia, is in a house in a residential neighborhood. Students come and go each week, and each student has a teacher to herself or himself from 8:00am to 1:00pm. This week, there are only four students, so the house is not too busy. They expect more students next week.

My teacher, Pablo, is great. He is studying to take the exams to become a lawyer (kinda like the bar exam, I guess), so we have that in common. He promised to teach me words related to the law. When I told him I was an immigration lawyer, he told me about his mother and brother’s ordeals in getting visas to visit the U.S.—similar to the story I heard from Maria. Guatemaltecos, even educated middle class people, view getting a visa as basically a lottery. The immigration officers at the embassy have so much discretion that nobody can guess what their reasoning is for granting some applications and denying others. And everyone here knows all about los illegales in the U.S. and the Arizona law.

In the afternoon, I found my way to the Complejo Deportivo, where there is a nice 25-meter swimming pool. Unfortunately, it is open to the public only Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, and conflicts with my class time. I haven’t decided yet whether to try to rearrange my class schedule to allow me to swim a little while I’m here.

I’m not sure what to make of Xela. It certainly doesn’t have the charm of Antigua. The center of the city has some pretty buildings, and the central square is lovely, but most of the streets are not aesthetically pleasing. The surrounding area is beautiful, though, and you can almost always see the green mountains tower over the city in almost every direction. Stay tuned as I explore more over the next 10 days.

Guatemala Day 1

The first thing I saw of Guatemala upon my arrival yesterday was Guatemala City's La Aurora International Airport. Recently renovated and freshly cleaned of the coating of volcanic ash it received just over a week ago, La Aurora is shiny, modern, and clean. It is a much nicer airport than La Guardia, where I had left a few hours earlier. Of course, "nicer than La Guardia" is not exactly high praise; I suppose it says more about New York than about Guatemala to observe that the capital of such a poor country is served by a prettier airport than the capital of the world.

I didn't see much of Guatemala City, but what I saw did not seem like a developing country. The road from the airport toward Antigua, my destination for the weekend, seems to run through the wealthiest neighborhoods, passing mile after mile of new car dealers, shopping malls, and fast food joints (I lost count of how many McDonald's I passed). One reminder that I was in the developing world was the buses: Among all the fancy cars in the bumper-to-bumper traffic were standard-issue hand-me-down buses, some of them painted in bright mosaics, some faded red, overflowing with passengers and spewing exhaust fumes, just like the buses in Bangkok, Manila, and countless other cities across the developing world.

The other reminder was the traffic. According to everything I read before my arrival, the trip from La Aurora to Antigua should have taken between 45 minutes and an hour. After 45 minutes, I was still within walking distance of the airport, and it took almost two more hours to reach my destination.

It was almost 10pm by the time I got settled at the Hotel Casa Cristina, so I put off my exploration of Antigua until this morning. I found a beautiful little town with cobblestone streets lined with quaint old buildings renovated and painted bright colors, all surrounded by stunning green mountains. It feels almost as if I've arrived in Disney's LatinLand.

This afternoon, I found my way to the market, off on the edge of town, which is always fun.

Tomorrow I'm off to Quetzaltenango (aka Xela), where I'm scheduled to spend two weeks studying Spanish and living with a local family. I'm a little anxious about living with strangers for two weeks, so I keep reminding myself that I did the same thing in Paris 23 years ago. If I could handle it at 18, I can handle it now, right?

Welcome

Last week, I saw the film Welcome, by French director Philippe Lioret. It tells the story of a young Kurdish refugee trying desperately to get to London, where his girlfriend has moved with her family. Having made it from Kurdistan, Bilal (played by Firat Ayverdi) finds himself in Calais with hundreds of others trying to get across the English Channel to the UK, where policies toward refugees are more generous than in continental Europe. The best way he can think of to make the final leg of his journey is to swim—just as soon as he learns how!

For me, the most interesting aspect of the film was the attitude of the French state, and many of the local people, toward these displaced people. The migrants in Calais are not deported, but neither are they allowed to become a part of French society (not that they want to—they’re in Calais because it’s as close to the UK as they can get). They live in camps; they are not permitted to work; they are not even allowed into local stores. What’s more, even providing assistance to them has been criminalized, so Bilal’s swimming instructor (Vincent Lindon) puts himself at risk when he helps Bilal, and the NGOs who provide food to the migrants risk being arrested.

Of course, racism and xenophobia in France is not exactly news. But it’s a good reminder that anti-immigrant hysteria is not confined to this country. And also a cautionary tale of what life looks like in a place where laws like Arizona’s SB1070 are already in effect.

The Juvenile Docket

“Isaac” is seventeen years old, but looks more like thirteen or fourteen, slightly built and quiet. Until last October, he lived in a small town in Honduras with his aging Aunt. He left school a few years ago to go to work, but every time payday came around, he was afraid for his life. That was when a gang of eight to twelve boys and young men would wait by the bridge he had to cross on his way home and attack him to steal his money or whatever he had been able to buy before reaching them. Sometimes he could outrun them, finding his way to the relative safety of his home. Other times, he was not so lucky. He estimates that he was badly beaten at least eight times—punched in the face, kicked, even attacked with a machete. His aunt would treat his wounds, but he never went to a hospital or even saw a doctor because he couldn’t afford the cost. The gang threatened to kill him unless he joined them, but he refused.

Finally, last fall, Isaac fled. Somehow, he made it through Mexico and into Texas. He was driven across the border and then left to find his way on foot. After walking for two days, he was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who kept him in detention for eighteen days. They eventually released him to his mother, who has lived in the U.S. most of Isaac’s life (his father died when he was too young to remember). He now lives with his mother and siblings on Long Island, and attends ninth grade at a public high school.

This week Isaac was one of dozens of kids in immigration court for the “juvenile docket,” a special day for minors in removal proceedings. The rules are a little more relaxed in order to make the court system a little less intimidating for young people but the goal is the same: the government has determined that these kids should be sent back where they came from. “Aliens” facing deportation have the right to legal representation, but because it is considered a civil matter, the state is not required to pay for a lawyer. Instead, Isaac and others in similar situations depend mostly on local immigration lawyers who show up for the juvenile docket to take cases pro bono. This week, like most juvenile docket days, there were far more children than lawyers looking for cases.

The judge who presided over the docket was clearly concerned first and foremost for the children’s well-being. He asked each one who came before him for evidence that they were in school, and told them how important it is for them to remain in school and do well. He was very lenient in granting postponements to allow the kids time to find lawyers—and thereby postpone deportation for months at a time. (Many of today’s cases had their next appearance scheduled for December.) But for these children and their volunteer lawyers it’s mostly a question of finding ways to delay the inevitable. However sympathetic the judge may be, he is constrained by the law as it is written, and by the fact that the government has chosen to pursue these children.

Isaac might be eligible for asylum based on his legitimate fear of being killed by gangs if he returns to Honduras. But that would require proving that he is being targeted for one of the reasons enumerated in our asylum laws—in the end, whether he is allowed to stay in the U.S. with his mother and siblings will probably depend on the judgment of an asylum officer or judge. I heard from one of the lawyers about another teenager in court that day, an eighteen-year-old girl from Korea whose father sent for her, promising permanent residence through his marriage to a U.S. citizen. When his fiancée left him because of his alcoholism and abuse, he returned to Korea, leaving his daughter with no legal status here. She is a star student, and hopes to go to an Ivy League college—but can only do so if she finds a way to be here legally. The best advice the lawyer could offer was that she marry her boyfriend.

Sitting in the courtroom, I watched child after child appear before the judge, while a few sympathetic lawyers tried to do what little they could to help them stay in this country. I couldn’t help but wonder: Why? Whatever your opinion about immigration, and whatever you think about the millions of undocumented immigrants here, why is the government making it a priority to expel these “illegal” children? Surely, there are more pressing issues for our law-enforcement agents to focus their attention on. Meanwhile, the best hope for Isaac and the other children in the system is that their lawyers will be able to delay their cases longer than Congress delays immigration reform, and that whatever compromise eventually passes will provide some kind of relief for them.

What is Happening in Thailand?

I have been watching the news from Thailand with sadness and confusion. Once again, there are protests in the streets, calling for the government to resign. The current government came to power as the result of a coup, followed by a dubious election. But most of the protestors support the object of that coup, Thaksin Shinawatra, who is notoriously corrupt and has no respect for human rights or the rule of law. There is no good side in this story.

What saddens me is that not long ago, Thailand was a success story, both economically and politically. Democratic transitions can take a very long time, and Thailand’s was certainly incremental, but by the end of the 1990s, it seemed safe to categorize Thailand as a consolidated democracy.

Thailand was an absolute monarchy until 1932, when a military coup forced the king to relinquish much of his power. Over the next sixty years, the country held regular elections, and often looked like a democracy—until the democratically elected governments got too corrupt, or threatened the power of the military. When that happened, the military would stage a coup d’état, something they did every few years, usually with little violence or popular opposition. There was no question that the generals held the real power.

This led to a strange kind of stability, which, along with pretty good economic policies, helped Thailand to develop rapidly. The benefits of development were distributed unevenly though: Absolute poverty was reduced, but the gap between rural farmers and urban middle and upper classes grew. By the 1980s, the middle class (overwhelmingly in Bangkok) had grown, more Thais were educated, and there was increasing pressure for a more accountable government. In 1991, the military overthrew an elected prime minister because his administration was viewed as unacceptably corrupt, but promised to hold elections ASAP. In fact, they did hold an election in early 1992, but somehow the general who had led the coup won, which didn’t sit well with the people. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in protest, which was violently quashed by the military, who killed hundreds. Finally, the king stepped in to negotiate a compromise—a caretaker prime minister was put in place for a few months and new elections were held in September 1992. This time, a real civilian government took power, and began work on drafting a new constitution (another favorite pastime of Thai lawmakers).

Throughout the rest of the 1990s, Thai democracy flourished. Crooks were voted in and crooks were voted out. A massive economic crisis caused in large part by a real estate bubble in Thailand spread across the whole region. Thailand’s neighbors, particularly Burma and Cambodia, became increasingly authoritarian. But the Thai military let the civilian democratic process run its course. Finally, elections and peaceful transfers of power became the norm. By then end of the 1990s, when I was in graduate school studying democratization, Thailand was a poster child for a successful democratic transition in a region still ruled mostly by one-party states (the one other exception being the Philippines). It really looked like 1991 was the last of a long series of coups.

Then in 2001, Thaksin Shinawatra was elected prime minister. One of the richest people in the country, he ran a populist campaign and won the hearts of the rural poor. He helped spread development beyond Bangkok and a few other regional centers. He introduced a national health system that made health care affordable and accessible to almost everyone. He cracked down on the drug trade. But the anti-drug campaign, while popular among many Thais, consisted mostly of extrajudicial executions of hundreds of people accused of drug trafficking. Due process was for other countries, not for Thaksin’s Thailand. At the same time, Thaksin’s companies owned many of the newspapers and TV and radio stations in the country, and if the news outlets he didn’t own criticized the government, they risked being shut down. Free speech was for other countries, not for Thaksin’s Thailand. But it was Thaksin and his family’s corruption that finally brought him down. His relatives and cronies made untold millions from insider deals with the government.

By 2006, people were in the streets again—mainly the middle class, much like in 1991. But this time they were protesting against an elected leader. And then, after 15 years without a coup (a long time by Thai standards), the military once again decided that they knew better than the people, and took over the government while Thaksin was out of the country. He was convicted of various corruption charges, and has been unable to return to Thailand for fear of being arrested.

Elections were held again in December 2007, with Thaksin supporters managing to take power in a coalition with smaller parties. In 2008, there were more protests, and eventually the prime minister was forced to resign and his party disbanded because of conflict of interest charges. The Democrat party (which had been in power on and off through the 1990s) formed the government. So now Thaksin supporters are back in the streets, and it looks as if the government will be forced out yet again.

Why this mini-lesson in the convoluted recent political history of a country on the other side of the world (aside from my personal interest because I used to live there)? I think the tendency, when one hears about street protests, and coups, and unstable governments in developing countries is to write them off as inevitable. Those “Third World” countries just can’t learn to govern themselves. But what makes this case so troubling to me is that Thailand really seemed to have become a stable democracy. Even when people were unhappy with the government, they dealt with it in the next election, or through parliamentary processes and courts, not through military intervention or popular intimidation. But then for the last three or four years, they’re back where they were fifteen years earlier. Once again, the right to govern is based on raw might, not by elections and legal systems, and that saddens me.

I don’t know whom to blame. I blame the military leaders for going back to their old tricks of taking out the government when they don’t like it. I blame the middle class protestors who called on the military to oust Thaksin. I blame Thaksin for taking a new democracy and quickly dismantling accountability and the rule of law, and for being so corrupt that a coup seemed like a better option. I blame the rest of the world for letting it all happen.

Here's the latest from the New York Times.

Here is Human Right Watch's most recent statement.

Randall Chamberlain, Lobbyist

I’ve never been a big fan of Washington, DC. On my first visit there, the government buildings, especially the Capitol, turned me off. The big imposing structures, designed to awe and even intimidate, rather than to welcome the populace into the workings of government, seemed to me the antithesis of “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Since moving to New York 14 years ago, I’ve been to Washington many times for many different reasons, and my opinion didn’t change much. As an adopted New Yorker, I am required to regard our neighbor to the south with a degree of disdain: The District of Columbia does not have the diversity, the vibrancy, or the grit of New York; it barely even qualifies as a city.

So I was surprised to find how much I appreciated Washington on a recent visit. Perhaps part of the change in my opinion came from the reason I was there: I traveled to Washington to take part in the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s (AILA) National Day of Action. Several hundred immigration lawyers converged upon the capital to meet with congressional staffers (and a few members of congress themselves) to press for passage of comprehensive immigration reform. That’s right, I was a lobbyist for a day! (More about that below.) Previously, I had gone to Washington to attend conferences, to meet with colleagues, to visit friends, and even to go to a couple of swim meets. But this was my first time there directly related to the town’s raison d’être, the democratic process.

I’ve had a bit of a change of heart about the city, starting with the architecture. The Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the buildings surrounding them and housing the various other functions are all clearly designed to convey the message that “This Is An Important Place.” While I wish they had found a way to communicate that message without also expressing exclusivity, it is true that governing a huge country is important; I have begun to appreciate that the buildings themselves help to preserve the gravity and specialness of what goes on inside them.

Walking around Washington, I even came to appreciate the city—at least as an appropriate place for the seat of government, if not as a place I’d like to live. Washington in many ways mirrors the rest of the country quite well. It is a pretty big city, but like most American cities has many more people in the suburbs than in the urban core. The city itself has beautiful mainly white residential neighborhoods, but more than half of the population is African-American. It sits right on the border between the North and the South (although Maryland is below the Mason-Dixon Line, it did not join the Confederacy, and I’ve never met a Marylander who considered herself a Southerner). So while New Yorkers (particularly the eight million of us who live in the five boroughs) walk around in a physical and social environment quite different from the rest of the country, Washingtonians’ day-to-day lives look a lot like those of much of the country, which I guess is a good thing for the people making decisions about those lives.

Like the United States as a whole, Washington is also full of immigrants. As of the last census, 11.9% of people living in the United States and 12.9% of Washingtonians were born in a foreign country. (Check out this publication from the Census Bureau for all kinds of nifty facts on the “foreign-born population.”) And that brings us back to why I was in our nation’s capital. Along with a few hundred other lawyers, I spent the day meeting with congressional staffers to encourage them to pass comprehensive immigration reform this year.

The immigration system in the United States is broken. More than 10 million immigrants are undocumented. (The number is impossible to measure accurately, but estimates range from 10 to 20 million. The figure I heard most often was 11 million. See this paper by the Immigration Policy Center for estimates of where they live by congressional district.) Many immigrants seeking permanent residence based on a job offer are forced to wait up to seven years—even after everything is approved!—before getting a green card. Up until last year, all of the H-1B visas available for temporary skilled workers were used up on the first day they were available. (In 2009 and 2010, because of the economy, there were far fewer applicants.) For family-based immigration, the wait to bring a relative to join you ranges from four years for a spouse or child of a permanent resident (spouses and children of citizens can get a green card immediately) to 22 years if you want to bring a brother or sister from the Philippines. And immigration for same-sex partners? Try Canada. (More on LGBT immigration soon; if you can’t wait for my take on it, check out Immigration Equality.)

Nobody believes this is a good situation, but there is a lot of disagreement over what to do about it. The biggest controversy is over what to do about undocumented immigrants. Many advocate simply deporting them all. Aside from being heartless, and completely impractical, it would have devastating economic consequences: most undocumented immigrants are working, many in jobs that nobody else wants to do. And then there’s the question of letting in more skilled workers: most of the people who would like to come to this country on an H-1B or other work visa would do jobs that we don’t have enough qualified domestic workers to fill. In most cases, they have to prove this to get a visa. And yet, we have arbitrary limits on the number of visas available each year, unrelated to the actual demand for foreign labor.

The argument against immigration reform tends to boil down to this: If we allow more foreigners into the country, they will take jobs away from Americans. But the truth is the opposite. More immigration tends to expand the economy because legal workers earn more, pay more in taxes, and spend more. And the experience of the last couple of years has shown that when there are fewer jobs available here, there are fewer immigrants—either legal or illegal.

President Obama has committed to making immigration reform a priority, but there have been a few other things on the legislative agenda. My day in Washington happened to coincide with the final House vote on health care reform, which was interesting timing for me, but wasn’t great for the lobbying effort. Virtually everyone we spoke to in Washington was so shell-shocked from the battle over health care reform that they did not expect the House and Senate leadership to take on another controversial issue before mid-term elections this fall.

Yesterday, however, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised to take up immigration reform when Congress returns to work this week. Chuck Schumer, our senior senator here in New York, and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina are working on a bill to be introduced in the Senate. So far, no other Republican senator has shown interest in the issue, but immigration does not necessarily cut across party lines in the same way as other issues. Some “pro-business” Republicans see the economic benefits of a more rational immigration process, while organized labor leaders, who overwhelmingly support Democrats, tend to want to keep foreign workers out. It should be interesting.