HLS in Focus

Andrea Saenz, a 3L and board member of the Harvard Immigration Project, filled us on a recent event at which Jeanne Butterfield, Executive Director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, spoke on the topic of immigration and national security.

“How does a HLS student interested in immigration find out exactly what’s going on in Washington? Like in so many other issue areas, by going straight to the source. Recently, Professor Debbie Anker’s immigration policy seminar hosted Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Her visit was also sponsored by the Harvard Immigration Project, a student organization dedicated to immigration and asylum law. We invited Butterfield for her extensive experience working with the White House and Congress on immigration reform over the past few years, and she had plenty to say on the subject of immigration and security.

“There are several layers of national security that intersect with immigration, Butterfield explained, including visa security, the entry and inspection process, and monitoring immigrants while in the country. We definitely need good enforcement, she said, but ‘the political desire to ’secure the borders’ and the idea that we can do so before looking at our broken system is the heart of the contradiction Congress faces.’ She noted that she was part of a White House briefing in early September 2001, when President Bush was enthusiastic about immigration reform…before the terrorist attacks of 9/11 changed the focus to security alone.

“She also urged students to think not only in terms of national security and terrorism, but in terms of the economic security of America and its relationship with the low-paying work that millions of undocumented immigrants to. ‘To talk just about enforcement without talking about the economic factors that come into play is misleading,’ she said. Butterfield pointed out that spending on border enforcement quintupled between 1994 and 2004, but the number of undocumented people in the country doubled during that time. ‘We will be throwing money at the border until we’re old and gray and we still won’t be solving the problem,’ she said.

“Butterfield then took student questions on everything from whether a President McCain would be good for immigrants to the demise of last summer’s immigration bill to where to get good fact sheets to counteract misconceptions about immigrants (try the Immigration Policy Center, she recommended.)

“Only minutes after the class ended, someone with a very different take than Jeanne Butterfield was also speaking at the law school: Assistant Secretary Julie Myers, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Armed with one point of view, a large group of us headed off to hear the other for ourselves – as always, straight from the source.”