The outcome of the presidential election will have significant implications for the nation's immigration policy.
Charlotte Alvarez, director of the Twin City-based Immigration Project, said on WILL's The 21st Show that a Trump administration would pause refugee admissions and reinstate a travel ban.
Refugee applicants seek admission to the U.S. while living outside the country. Asylum seekers cross the border one way or another and then ask for help. Alvarez said the two paths influence each other.
"Reducing refugee admissions and cutting off acceptance of humanitarian protections is likely to result in more disruption at the border rather than less," said Alvarez.
Immigrant advocates said the Trump policy proposal "Agenda 47" would remove citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, although that would face court challenges under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
Alvarez said even the current system creates dependencies that neither Democrats nor Republicans want.
"Once someone applies for asylum, they can't even request work authorization for 150 days. So, a family might need additional resources because of how our system creates barriers," said Alvarez.
Much public discourse on immigration focuses on border security, but Alvarez said there also must be changes in how the government treats people who already are in the country.
For instance, she said Trump administration income test proposals would cut off a path to citizenship for some people in the U.S. who are married to citizens.
"That means that people married to a U.S. citizen couldn't get through that process because they didn't make enough money. People who had no criminal record, had been married for years to a U.S. citizen but couldn't prove they had over a certain income limit and therefore couldn't go through that process and had to face potential separation from their families," said Alvarez.
Alvarez thinks immigration is an "inherent good," particularly for small Illinois towns that may be revived as native-born people flow out and immigrants flow in. She said immigrants have lower rates of crime and higher rates of entrepreneurship than native-born citizens.
"If we resource them in the beginning, they are going to be a bedrock for us," said Alvarez.
Alvarez said immigrants are going to be the business owners of the small communities where they settle, and the stories of immigrant success and generational progress that once came from Italian, Polish or German American families in past generations, may be Venezuelan, Honduran, and Haitian American families in the next.
It is amazing, she said, for communities to have people arriving with grit, drive, and determination.
