Congressional changes in immigration policy could have a profound impact on workers, students and the University, protesters and professors said this week.

Over the last two weeks, House and Senate members have deliberated over various proposals that would either relax or strengthen immigration rules. A tentative compromise in the Senate that would have provided a path to citizenship for up to 12 million unraveled last Friday. Immigration — long a third wheel in American politics — appears to be on the agenda for Congress when it returns from Easter recess.

Earlier this week, hundreds of thousands demonstrated across the country to pressure lawmakers to pass a comprehensive immigration bill. An estimated 30 students fenced off White Plaza Monday as part of the national wave of protest.

Political Science Prof. Luis Fraga commented on the issue’s implications for the University.

“We are an example of an institution that is embedded in these larger issues of internationalization and especially the migration of people across national boundary lines,” he said. “Our position as a leader in Silicon Valley and in California as the gateway to Asia as well as Latin America puts us right in the middle not just of the study of these issues, but of taking responsibility for understanding how they immediately affect our daily lives.”

According to Fraga, immigration is a complex issue linked with the rising level of globalization.

“There’s a way of understanding the perennial complexity and especially current complexity regarding immigration as yet another example of how interdependent our world economy has become and how critical not only the mobility of capital, but the mobility of labor is in this continuing evolution of interdependency across traditional national boundary lines,” he said.

“We greatly depend upon the labor of Mexican workers and workers from other Central American countries to provide important services to us, whether it’s in our kitchens, in the cleaning of our offices or our dormitories, in landscape work, or in some of the more technical fields, like the highest levels of engineering and physics, where we depend on highly skilled graduate students and post-docs from the developing world to have the knowledge base for us to be able to do the work we do,” he added.

Bruce Wooley, chair of the Electrical Engineering Department, estimated that more than 60 percent of graduate students in electrical engineering are foreign-born, a proportion that has grown from about 50 percent a decade ago.

Regarding admission, Wooley said, “We’ve always really been blind to issues of nationality. We’ve just been fortunate that we’ve been able to attract the best students in the world, wherever they’re from.

“I think if the [negative] perception [of immigrants] begins to impact our ability to attract the best people, then that is a serious problem for this department, for the University, and for the country,” he added.

Freshman Anish Mitra agreed.

“If the House’s immigration reforms are passed, it will create a hostile environment for all foreigners in the United States, legal or illegal,” he said. “Foreign students may be less likely to come to Stanford if they feel like they’re not wanted.”

“I think we will suffer greatly in the long term if we close doors to these people,” Wooley said. “The leading universities have been working on this issue in Washington to try and keep the doors open.”

Protesters at Monday’s rally emphasized the human aspect of the immigration debate.

“This is an issue that affects a lot of people’s lives here,” said junior Linda Lee, who organized the demonstration Monday. “Students might have family members or friends who are undocumented or just immigrants themselves. A lot of students are making connections with that.”

The protest was intended “to educate the Stanford community about how this issue affects them,” said organizer Frankie Preciado, a junior.

Lee added that “the visibility [of the issue] isn’t very high on campus. I think that there’s a lot of education that needs to be done. That’s something that we’re working on.”

She said she was concerned about provisions in some of the measures being considered by Congress, such as restrictions on aid to illegal immigrants.

“It would criminalize not only anyone who is here without papers, but anyone who is going to help undocumented immigrants,” she said. “That’s really where it’s going to hit Stanford students because we won’t be able to do the kind of work that we want to do.”

Stanford has historically been a leader in outreach to other international academic institutions. The University has stressed the importance of international study in a time of globalization, most recently demonstrated with the announcement of last year’s International Initiative.

“Stanford can immediately be affected by this issue — not just as a source of study, but in our own lives,” Fraga said.