The Immigration Reform Dilemma
Joe Gandelman
It's the issue that people talk about...but little actually happens. Rick Heller looks at it and adds this:
We are a nation of immigrants, but that does not mean immigration policy should be made emotionally. Aside from political refugees, who we should shelter in all situations, the level of immigrants we welcome should be calibrated to the need in our economy for new immigrants. Otherwise, current workers will be displaced.
I don't know what the proper level of immigration is. Perhaps immigration of youthful workers will allow us to get over the Social Security hump of paying for baby boomer retirements. In any case, I don't like the President's proposal for guest workers who come here for a short period and then return to their native country. I don't believe the return part will happen.
Indeed, in the 80s as San Diego Union staff reporter I was assigned the immigration reform beat. Ronald Reagan took a serious stab at it with an amnesty that was clearly labeled as such. In the end, the problem was this: the amnesty was granted but the promise of a crackdown on businesses that knowingly hired "undocumented workers," as some preferred to call them, never really materialized.
What you had was an amnesty that seemed to resolve part of the problem but minus a couple of highly touted and carefully targeted cases, very little enforcement. And in the end it did very little to stem illegal migration to the United States.
Any reform would have to tackle the issue of how many immigrants would be given amnesty, or allowed guest worker status — and how to enforce the rule. So far, the administration has refused to use the world amnesty and as Heller notes the end result of its proposal would likely be guest worker status given to people who would never return to their homeland while the U.S. government looked the other way to satisfy businesses who needed them as workers.
If you cut all the political niceties away, get rid of all the partisan rhetoric aimed at providing a fig leaf to make each party look good the reality is this:
Neither party wants to do what would need to be done to truly halt illegal immigration.
Both parties want Hispanic votes.
Both parties want to address the issue because they know many Americans want something done about it...but not in a way that loses them votes or contributions from interest groups (businesses and/or Hispanic groups).
Likely outcome: little if anything will really be done unless there is a massive attack on the U.S. homeland and it is proven that the terrorists got in via Mexico. And Heller is correct: a Guest Worker program right now seems ineffective. It seems a way for the administration to say "hey, we've done something on immigration reform and respected our friends from Mexico" which would buy time to harvest some political hay ...but when the guest worker documents expire few of those workers would go back and the government would not try to find them and send them back.
Politics trumps serious issue resolution...which raises the question: is this an issue Americans honestly want to address or is the status quo beneficial to the U.S.? Haven't many Americans grown to respect migrants from Mexico in their dealings with them and in a new version of political correctness talk about the need to do something but actually don't mind looking the other way?
According to all of the latest polls immigration reform is a top priority that the Citizens want addressed. "Latest Poll Finds 76% Want Tougher Immigration Controls"
Just this Tuesday the house attached the "REAL ID Act" to the war spending bill which they passed by voice vote on Thursday. The Senate will address the bill after the Easter recess. The "REAL ID Act" forces states to verify drivers licenses are given only to legal residents and citizens, closes loopholes in asylum law and finished the Otay-Mesa border fence which has been held up by friends of illegal aliens and environmental groups who don't seem to care that illegal aliens are trampling the plants they are trying to protect.
OK, you can tell this is one of my big issues. You can read more at my blog, particularly the Immigration Archive which has a lot more information.
So yes, I think things are getting done and I think people care. It's hard to get people to move on this issue because every time someone mentions fixing immigration the proponents of illegal aliens instantly start crying racism and no one wants to be called a racist.
I think the fact there's 1000 volunteers, called the "Minuteman Project", that are going to patrol the Arizona-Mexico border for a whole month in April, on their own dime, is proof enough that people are starting to get fed up with the problem.
But ever organized societies on this planet with sovereignty over a piece of land, has the right and obligation to strictly regulate who comes into their country and whether or not they have the right to stay once they arrive. Otherwise, administration of all the populations is rendered difficult or even impossible, their economies sometimes wrecked, and great social upheaval ensues.
Granted that many of the best-skilled persons in the world come here and add their considerable talents to our academia, our marketplace, our military, our culture and our arts and letters. Nonetheless, we have a societal obligation to choose among those to whom we wish to grant permanent US residency or US citizenship, and those whom we have sufficient reason to reject.
Above all, in order to maintain a well-ordered society, we must not allow anyone to pass our borders without specific authorization. Even if this means shooting dead those who try to cross our border on foot through some southwestern desert and dead of night. And we must be prepared to do just this in an age of terrorist infiltration into otherwise peaceful societies.
But immigration policy, like much else, has no easy rules or remedies that fit every situation in every instance.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Furthermore, I hate that we make employers jump through hoops to prove they haven't hired illegal immigrants. For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth conservatives give us about harassing and overregulating businesses, you'd think they'd be embarassed to be adding the burden of higher paperwork requirements for employers, and stricter regulation of who they are and aren't allowed to hire. So which is it, do they want to be business friendly or don't they?
About the only people I can take seriously on the immigration issue are those who say it's too easy to get across the border if you're a terrorist. If that's the case, I happen to think that Bush's proposal is a good one: make legal immigration or guest worker status easier for Mexicans to achieve, therefore reducing the number of illegals and making policing the borders thereby easier.
It has to be a bit twofold; guest workers to encourage illegals to come above board, but also strict sanctions against employers who hire illegals (if we just put in a guest-worker program then we'll have millions of legal guest workers; and millions of additional illegal workers coming in to undercut the now-legal - and higher paid - guest workers).
The only way we could secure our borders fully is to place large numbers of personnel on the border with orders to shoot to kill people trying to cross. Anything short of this will simply not keep them out, and so letting them in is the only solution; given this, our efforts must be directed towards knowing who is here, why, and where they go.
In other words, their business model *depends upon* the commission of felonies, and not in a minor way, but as a central part of their business.
How is this different from organized crime?
I say, prosecute those who hire illegals under RICO, same as any other organized crime. I think they would soon find other folks to hire.
The other problem is that often we aren't talking about Walmart, where you can march in with a few agents and go after an employer with thousands of workers. In most cases, these are mom-and-pop businesses, often immigrant-run themselves, with a couple dozen workers at most, and which number in the tens of thousands in a city like Los Angeles. Going after these businesses is enormously expensive in terms of manpower and legal expense.
These "mom-and-pops" make up markets where pricing is set, and are typically in business sectors where customers are extremely price-sensitive. So if they choose to "go legit", they will go out of business because they'll be more expensive than the competition that isn't. In some areas, you may succeed by using your legitimacy as a marketing strategy like some eco-friendly food stores, but frankly this only works well in richer, liberal areas.