Hopes were not high for President Obama’s speech on Thursday evening and they remained low in the aftermath. The gist of the speech was if you have lived in the United States for more than five years and have children, you will not be deported. That’s it. This was another order through executive action, a dirty word for Republicans even though every single president has used executive action, except President Harrison who served only a month in office from March 1841 to April 1841, becoming the first president to die in office.

Even though President Obama’s six years in office have not led to any major immigration reform, being a Republican is not any easier. Republicans have made sure to prevent President Obama from passing any meaningful legislation to fix a severely broken immigration system and have been unable to pass anything of their own. However, Hispanic support for the Democrats is decreasing as frustration mounts against the inaction of Congress.

What bothers me the most about the immigration debate and how the Obama administration has handled it is that the biggest problem is not being addressed. The biggest problem with the immigration system is the cost, in both time and money, to immigrate legally to the United States. It is literally impossible to immigrate legally to this country unless you fall into one of three main categories: family based, employment based, or through refugee status. If you simply want to immigrate to the United States and find work anywhere, you’re stuck.

Once you’ve cleared that hurdle and found yourself in a category, now it’s time to pay up, and pay up big. The process for immigrating to the United States costs well over a thousand dollars, money very few immigrants have. Putting together one thousand dollars is especially challenging when you consider that the average wage in Mexico is $151.80 per month, or $5.06 per day. On top of that, the process is so complicated that many hire an attorney to assist them, further adding to the high cost.

The wait for a family based application process varies from six years to twenty years for the application to be even processed (and you thought college applications take a while). The wait for a work visa is close to eight years. Also because the U.S. Government views deportation as an administrative correction, illegal immigrants do not have the right to legal counsel to plead their case. Finally, there are limits to how many of these visas can be issued (called quotas) so you may not get a visa even if you meet all the criteria.

Also on a quick side note, go online and try to pass a citizenship test that all legal immigrants must pass. Let me know how you do. I failed.

This is the real problem. The border can be fixed, built, and extended to prevent migrants from crossing illegally, but that would only address a symptom. Illegal border crossings, parents of U.S. citizens being deported and separated from their families, and human trafficking across the border are all just symptoms of the larger problem that is the legal immigration process. This is the reform we need, not band-aid fixes that are temporary and only address the symptoms of the problem. Tough decisions need to be made and it’s clear those will not happen with the standing president, or this congress.

President Obama’s speech was peppered with accusations and finger pointing instead of concrete ways to fix the way legal immigrants come to this country. Yes, not deporting parents of U.S. citizens sounds nice, warm, and fuzzy but that is not the real problem. The problem is that those parents cannot become legal citizens because it takes too long and too much money to do so. Until that is fixed, nothing is fixed.

The reform we need is the streamlining of the immigration process and a far simpler and cheaper application. The total cost to become a citizen shouldn’t cost more than $100 and wait times should not be more than a year. But, unfortunately, that will be a fantasy for the next couple years, possibly decades. I have little faith that President Obama will fix the real problem, and why shouldn’t I?

Photo Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/an_agent/400339277