Published Apr 2, 2006
Since all the kids these days are taking a position on immigration, I guess I’d better throw in my two cents. Goodness knows, I’m sure to have either an exciting, progressive position or a fantastically racist. Or, more likely, both, since I’m both a raving liberal and a white American. If I were in charge, I would fix it all by:
Well, not by starting some dodgy guest-worker program, that’s for sure. America needs a lot of seasonal temporary labor, that’s for sure, but we shouldn’t get it at the same high price at which Europe has acquired their low-cost workers over the last 40 years. The guest worker programs from across the pond have brought in workers but intentionally not integrated them with the society of their host country. The result is millions of essentially stateless individuals, people who have spent their entire working lives in, say, Germany, who speak the language, who have families and children in their host country, but who have no path to citizenship or prospects should they return to their countries of origin. (Often, these immigrants are inconveniently Muslim, as well.)
Politicians in our country seem to be proposing a similar system, with much of the argument taking place over whether or not we “reward” those who enter the country illegally by somehow putting those immigrants on the road to citizenship. America’s competitive advantage has long been our ability to lure the brightest, hardest-working people away from other countries and integrate them into our society. In today’s context, with increasing competition from India and China, we can hardly afford to toss aside such an advantage. Any solution to our problems needs to focus not on bringing in temporary, low-cost work, but on building a better American melting pot.
As an aside, it’s important to remember that, in a free market, a lot of the low-paying jobs that require migrant labor would themselves migrate to other, lower-cost countries. Around the world, emerging economies are held back because the activites at which they could be most economically competitive, activities such as farming and garment fabrication, are instead carried out by subsidized American companies. When we provide these subsidies, either through active government funding or lax immigration enforcement, we take jobs away from countries in Africa and Latin America, and encourage the tide of immigration to our shores. A more, dare I say, Republican economic policy would help other countries develop and limit immigration.
But nothing well ever end immigration, because the US will always offer jobs — and probably even offer good jobs in the parts of the clothing industry and farming at which we can be competitive without corporate welfare. So how do we handle this immigration? I guess I’m not qualified to run for king of the world, because I really don’t know. What I do know is that we need to encourage the best and brightest to come over here, because that’s how we’ll all thrive in the end. We don’t need to worry about locking immigrants out of social services, because so few come to the US for food stamps or free public education (if people really immigrated for government cheese, you’d see a lot more Mexicans in welfare states like Sweden; instead, you tend to find the Mexicans outside Home Depot, looking for a job). We do need to worry about whether or not the children of immigrants have the opportunities that will make them successful members of society, or if they’re underserved and pushed aside and, thus, forced into marginal social niches with marginal opportunities and high incentives to opt out of the workforce or into criminal behavior. We do need to worry about ensuring that immigrants get fair wages and safe working conditions and the opportunities that will make them homeowning, taxpaying members of society. We do need to worry about immigrants taking away Americans’ jobs, but the best solution to that is to give Americans the opportunity and education to keep ahead of the curve, not lock people out so that Americans can stay behind the curve. We do need to worry about control the borders but that means finding a balance between military-style enforcement and sound economic incentives, not simply cracking down on everyone who’s brown. We do need to worry about people staying in America after they immigrate for a temporary job, not because we want them to go home but because we want to know why hard-working people have suddenly stopped wanting to move to America. And do we really want to have a system that involves giving everyone a national ID card and the police the right to stop you and check that ID card at any time?
I’m excited that there have been marches around the country, demanding immigrant rights. I’m excited that there’s a discussion in Congress, and on the TV yell talk shows. Heck, I’m even excited that our tremendously distinguished President has gotten this issue onto our collective plates. But let’s not just make some quick dollars-focused decision that makes the big raspberry-growing conglomerates happy because they get the labor they need at the price that they want; let’s make a decision that helps America be the country that we want it to be for the next 100 years. I know that’s super-dramatic, but we have just such an opportunity, let’s not Homeland Security it up.
The only issue that concerns me, in terms of killing off farm subsidies, is the fact that currently, importing farm products is cheaper than it should be, because fuel doesn’t cost as much as it should if we were internalizing its externalities.
In terms of enforcement, it seems fairly obvious that if we’re going to crack down, we should be cracking down first on any employers who have the wherewithal to check into the background of their employees, but intentionally turn a blind eye because they like evading taxes and driving down the cost of low-end labor (thus hurting our working-class citizens).
Oh, I meant to add, on the first paragraph, that if we kill our farm industry and pave over that farm land, it’ll be very expensive, once oil production peaks and imports become impractical, to start tearing up the pavement and remediating the land.
What concerns me even more is your self-contradictory title. Wait… logic loop… must… destroy… myself.
You’re right about the fuel costs externality, but the fact is that we export so much food and so many low-end commodity consumer goods that other companies make that even if we continue to make or grow these products for internal consumption, we could quit it with the exporting and leave that to the Nigerias and Bangladeshes and Burkina Fasos of the world, who could really use it. That won’t even recover paving, although I don’t understand what you have against paving land and using it for things like four-square and tetherball.
And you’re right that enforcing against employers is the obvious solution. It’ll be easier, that’s for sure, and have the convenient side effect of being self-funding if we set the fines at the right levels. And, if we really enforce those laws, then we can all move to Mexico City and start a temporary labor importation company that provides guaranteed-legal labor. We’ll be the Manpower Inc. of the citrus inidustry. Who’s in?
Oh, and the end of the second para should read “no path to citizenship should they stay in the country in which they’re working or prospects should they return to their countries of origin.” I was going to correct it in the body but the error is sufficiently meaning-changing that I thought I should call it out here.
>>you’d see a lot more Mexicans in welfare states like Sweden<<
Er, Uh, Um…Mexicans are not being driven over the Swiss border by coyotes. Way harder to sneak into sweden from mexico, I’d think.
That said… if anyone is coming here illegally, and if anyone is staying here illegally (such as because of an expired visa) how do you suddenly make them LEGAL?
I heard on NPR (which I will probably misquote) that the current ‘solution’ was that anyone who’s been here for 5 years would be granted citizenship, and anyone here 2-5 years would be able to apply for it, but if you were here 2 yrs or less you’d be deported.
what the ƒµ¢k kind of logic is that?!
That’s, remarkably enough, exactly how it’s worked in the past. And it’s really the worst way to do it, except for all the others.
JoAnna, it’s not that those here for five years get instant citizenship. What they get is: IF they show up with proof they’ve been here longer than five years, then they get documents so they won’t get deported if somebody picks them up; they can then get citizenship, if, over the course of the next six years, they learn English (and pass a test to prove it), pay back taxes for the years they’ve been here plus a $2k fine, and keep a totally clean criminal record (i.e. not even a misdemeanor).
I still have concerns (see kausfiles.com), but it’s not the kind of blanket amnesty we had in ‘86.