Last month, Nevada senatorial candidate Sharron Angle (R) released an attack ad on her opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Besides being racially offensive, the ad was also patently false. The ad erroneously alleged that that Reid is the “best friend an illegal alien ever had” because he supposedly voted to give undocumented immigrants tax breaks and Social Security benefits as the rest of Nevadans languish in a deep recession.

In her debate last night against Reid, Angle was given the opportunity to either clarify her claims or apologize for her deceptive ad. However, Angle did neither. Instead, she merely repeated the allegations in her ad without providing any further evidence to indicate they are true:

MODERATOR: In a television ad you quoted that Senator Reid, “voted to give special tax breaks to illegal aliens and to give illegals social security benefits.” Most reputable factcheckers have said that’s patently false, especially the line about Social Security benefits. The ad was even criticized by the chair of the Republican Hispanic caucus. Would you like to denounce the ad as deceptive or give voters documented evidence about its accuracy?

ANGLE: Not at all. I’m glad to give voters the opportunity to see that Harry Reid has voted to give Social Security to illegal aliens. Not only did he vote to give it to them after they have become citizens but even before they were citizens he voted to give them the benefits of our Social Security. [...]

Watch it:

Angle then awkwardly pivoted and started talking about the nation’s Social Security system and how it’s not “being addressed.” Somehow the conversation shifted from a discussion about Reid’s immigration votes to his own social security retirement account. Reid later pointed out that Angle didn’t answer the question and maintained “everything she has said in the ad is false.” Angle responded, “I think the question has everything to do with Social Security and what’s gone wrong in our system.”

Politifact shed some light on the claims back when Angle’s ad came out. Reid’s votes affected the policy for former undocumented immigrants who were later made legal. Before a change in the law in 2007, Reid voted twice in support of allowing legal immigrants who had worked in the U.S. without papers before fixing their status to get credit for money they had paid into the Social Security system years before, when they were undocumented. Politifact notes that the vote was not about “giving benefits,” but rather on “chang[ing] the calculation process” of credits earned toward Social Security.

Angle also doesn’t mention in her ad that Reid later voted in favor of an amendment in 2007 to essentially prevent former undocumented immigrants from earning credit for Social Security payments after obtaining legal status. The amendment became law. Furthermore, undocumented immigrants who never obtain legal status are not even eligible to earn credits or collect Social Security benefits at any point in their lives.

Yesterday, President Obama hosted a town-hall for young voters that aired on MTV, BET and CMT. During the discussion, a young woman brought up the immigration issue in an unexpected way. Anna, a Colombian immigrant, explained to President Obama that she has been waiting for her green card which would allow her to live and work in the U.S. permanently for three years. Anna broke into tears when she told the President that she fears that she may not receive her green card in time to visit her 92 year-old grandmother one last time:

ANNA: Hi Mr. President, my name is Anna and I wanted to share with you my greatest fear. I moved here when I was 14 in 2003 and I followed every legal step. I come from Colombia and I’m waiting for my green card and I have been waiting for it for about three years. My grandma turned 92 and I’m afraid that my green card will not get here in time for me to see her one last time.

OBAMA: Well first of all, say hi to your grandma for me.

ANNA: On the phone, yeah.

OBAMA: And second of all, one of the things we’re trying to do to deal with the immigration issue is to accelerate the process for legal immigration. This is something we don’t talk a lot, a lot of the focus is on illegal immigration.

We’re a nation of immigrants, so the question is how do we make legal immigration faster, less bureaucratic, cut the red tape. So I’ll be interested in finding out after maybe this session from you what your experience has been with the office because what we’re trying to do is reduce the backlog so that those people like yourself who are doing things the right way and the legal way that you don’t get so tangled up in a bunch of bureaucracy that you end up being discouraged.

Watch it:

Anna’s situation is not unique. In 2005, the Washington Post wrote, “hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers trying to stay in the United States find their journey halted somewhere along a maze of boxes, filing cabinets and cubicles of government contractors.” The American Immigration Lawyers Association estimates that there are 3.5 million people on the the visa queue waiting for the proportionally small handful of visas the U.S. makes available.

For green card applicants in the U.S., leaving the country before they receive their visa is not a good idea. Those who want to leave the country can apply for advanced parole, which simply establishes that Customs and Border Protection may decide to parole in the person when he or she attempts to re-enter the U.S. at a port of entry. However, admission is by no means guaranteed. In other words, by going to Colombia, Anna could risk both her current and future immigration status.

As Obama explains, one of the goals of his administration has been to reduce the green card backlog. Last year, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service launched a new web site aimed to cut down on the long lines, waiting times, and paperwork that has been contributing to the backlog.

However, there are two types of backlogs: processing backlogs, and backlogs caused by higher demand for immigration than the quotas set by the law allow. The Obama administration can do something about processing backlogs, however it’s up to Congress to reform the immigration system.Currently, the visa system is currently outdated by over twenty years and does not meet the needs or demands of a 21st century globalized economy — let alone immigrant families.