Are brothers and sisters no longer part of your family when you grow up? Do parents stop yearning for their children to be close by when they become adults? Perhaps some of us have those fleeting moments when we wish certain relatives weren’t around – but not permanently.

Here is the question put the way Congress seems headed this week: Do these people simply fail to bring value to our lives?

In an effort to forge a “compromise” immigration bill before Memorial Day, backroom deal-making has taken a worrisome turn-for many Asian-Americans, in particular. Now, one of the choices being hashed out in this week’s bipartisan Senate meetings is to eliminate certain family categories in favor of skilled workers.

“It’s disappointing that the Senate and the White House are trading off family reunification for employment-based visas,” said Stephanie Kao, who was mobilizing a national call-in for the Organization of Chinese Americans. “Many of us have been waiting 10-12 years legally to come to the U.S., waiting in line.”

OCA is one of many groups and individuals who had hoped this spring would yield real, comprehensive immigration reform, not more two-dimensional debate over border walls with incendiary terms like “amnesty.”

The reward for waiting?

For Asian-Americans, Latinos and others, backlogs for family reunification – the ability of siblings or adult children to obtain a visa – has been overlooked in the heat and fire of last year’s immigration debate. Backlogs of 15 to 20 years are not unusual and many had hoped that they would be cleared out under comprehensive immigration reform.

Now, under the pressure of getting some kind of legislation, we have horse-trading of a different variety.

“There are many people being pressured from within and : without to get something done,” said Bill Ong Hing, a law professor at the University of California-Davis.

It’s not fair to those who have been waiting, and it doesn’t even make logical sense, said Hing, who testified on Capitol Hill last week against eliminating sibling and adult child categories. The evidence is that adult children and siblings immediately go into the U.S. work force, rapidly becoming productive, he said. And besides that, families are our safety net. Families, he said, make us whole.

“There’s no reason to look at this as a zero-sum game – that expanding the employment side of visas means you have to give up family visas,” Hing said. “What does one have to do with the other?”

Nothing.

Our current immigration “system” is a conundrum affected by our trade policies (like NAFTA) and other governments’ policies and failures, as well. Most of us want Congress to hunker down and improve this situation, not worsen it.

Valuing family is supposed to be good. But in an era in which saying one thing and doing another gets rewarded, some cast family as bad, raising the specter of an unending “chain migration” across our borders. “Even a fraction of that is a problem,” U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey told the House Judiciary Committee last week. Gingrey is sponsoring the Nuclear Family Priority Act to eliminate those “extended family” visas.

Oh, those pesky uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters, and grown-up children. They take up valuable space.

To see how this would work, try this: Tell your little sister tonight, “I’m giving you up when you grow up. I’m telling the government you’re a drag on this great nation.”

Then we’ll admire your shiner. The Senate call-in number is (800) 417-7666.