Immigration Redux

The new immigration bill is being greeted by conservatives, and in particular bloggers and pundits, about as enthusiastically as one greets a root canal. We have Minority Leader Boehner calling the bill a piece of sh** and a host of conservative opinion leaders calling it amnesty. Does that mean Republican voters, let alone the overall American population, hate the bill? One recent poll showing support for the bill at a mere 26% would seem to support that hypothesis. Americans must all be heeding the alarm bells by conservatives about the impending "amnesty" we have on our hands! ...not quite.

Many conservative bloggers and conservative Republicans in Congress view anything short of mass-deportation (or as the Heritage Foundation euphemistically labels it, "repatriation") as amnesty. In other words, the immigration bill is horrible because we're not dispatching police to every business and residence in the country in search of 12 million (4% of the entire population of the country) people to load on buses and ship to all corners of the world (though mostly Mexico, supposedly). Actually, recent polling suggests that Americans are far from holding this view.



According to a recent poll, 62% of Americans (including 61% of Republicans) think that illegal immigrants who have lived and worked here for 2+ years should be offered the chance to keep their job and apply for legal status. More specifically, "67% favor allowing illegal immigrants to apply for a four year visa that could be renewed, as long as they pay a fine, have a good work record and pass a criminal background check. 28% oppose this." That includes 66% of Republicans.

As for myself, I'm going to have to place myself firmly on the side opposite the hardliners, whose calls for "enforcing the law" at all costs and mass deportation I find infeasible, wrong-headed, harsh, and without benefit. Does that mean I support illegal immigration? No. Below are my opinions on immigration, both legal and illegal, the concept of "enforcing the law," and some rough guidelines about what should be done about our immigration system.

Immigration Overall-- Good or Bad?

Here are some common complaints about immigrants...



Immigrants steal our jobs, drive down our wages, take advantage of our schools and hospitals, live on our welfare system, undermine our culture, and corrupt our society with increasing crime!

I'll try and respond to these criticisms individually.

Jobs and Wages

Before I recite numbers that are admittedly off the top of my head, I want to point out one important fact. Immigrants have the same impact on jobs/wages as any other person does. To clarify, any increase in the supply of workers will to one degree or another cause wages to decrease. Therefore, yes!, immigration *may* cause some decrease in the wages earned by US workers. However, most studies have found that the effects of immigration on lower-income workers are modest, in the range of 4-8%. To me, this number is hardly a cause for alarm. In addition, to quote leading labor economist David Card, "Overall, evidence that immigrants have harmed the opportunities of less educated natives is scant." Furthermore, as I said before, any increase in immigration is equivalent to an increase in the domestic birth rate or any other increase in the supply of workers. However, I do not see anybody advocating restricting pregnancies or kicking out workers in order to increase US wages.

In addition to all of this, we must not neglect the other half of the equation, namely the impact of immigration on labor demand. Even though the stereotypical immigrant is a poor Mexican in search of a dish-washing job, immigrants on average are actually *more skilled* than the average American. This means they are more likely to be entrepreneurs, inventors, and other drivers of the economic engine which generates the high-paying and rewarding jobs that we covet.

Schools, Hospitals, and the Welfare System

Admittedly I do not have a bunch of figures or factoids at my fingertips, and at least for the moment lack the motivation to go on a treasure hunt for them. That being said, I can to some degree sympathize with the claims that illegal immigrants take unfair advantage of our social services. *If* 1) illegal immigrants have lower skills, income, and education than the average American, 2) do not pay taxes, or pay only a minuscule amount, and 3) use government services at a disproportionate rate relative to the average American (ie they show up to the emergency room without health insurance more often than the average American), then certainly they are straining our public services. Of course, I cannot say whether (1)-(3) holds, but I'm ready to accept that for now.

Even so, there are better ways to deal with the potential adverse impact of illegal immigrants on our public services. The simplest solution: deny them services. Of course we cannot do this completely, as I seriously doubt the public is willing to deny emergency health care to anybody (including illegals), and it wouldn't be in our interest to deny schooling to illegal immigrant children (thereby forcing them into poverty and likely into crime).

In other words, regarding the strain on public services, (1) we can improve the situation somewhat by banning illegal immigrants from using certain services, but (2) we cannot do this completely. Some people might call (1) harsh, but certainly it's less harsh than kicking them out of the country back to their homelands where they likely would be in even worse shape.

Does that mean that I am ignoring the impact that illegal immigration is having on our schools and hospitals? No, it doesn't. It is mostly for this reason (more later) that I do not support unfettered immigration. Nevertheless, the financial strains our public services face are far more structural and have been brought about by far more than illegal immigration. We could kick all 12 million illegal immigrants out of the country and still have ballooning health care costs, shoddy public education, and a looming fiscal crisis (after all, illegal immigrants are not allowed to receive Social Security or Medicare). I could of course go on and on about the ridiculous nature of our entitlement system, but I'll leave that for a later date. For now, I'll just repeat my claim that illegal immigration is small beans as a cause for strain on our public services (especially since it might even be the case that they pay more in net taxes than they receive in services).

Undermining our Culture

I'm sure there is literature somewhere on the assimilation behavior of recent immigrants, but alas, I do not know of it, so I'll just lay out my prejudices. In my opinion, *most* immigrants come to America because jobs are more abundant and wages are higher, and the American dream is much more of a reality than, say, the Hugo Chavez nightmare. That being said, it's hard to ignore the imbeciles waving their Mexican flags in the US and chanting that California belongs to Mexico, that they *DEMAND* amnesty, etc. My response to that is as follows: If you want to stay, learn English, wave the American flag, and next time you make your demands, I propose that we settle the "California is a part of Mexico" debate once and for all...old-school style. We Americans can bring our machine guns and they can bring their tortillas, and we'll duke it out and see who wins, and if they win, we can all have a little celebratory siesta afterwards. Kidding aside, I do find it unfortunate that some people refuse to recognize their new homeland, but there are FAR better ways to deal with that than mass deportation.

Most importantly, English should be the official language in the US. As far as I am concerned, all government documents should have no language but English on them. The one objection I can somewhat agree with is that having documents only in English might discourage tourism, or far more importantly, may discourage some people from entering the country in the first place. After all, we have many (though not enough) foreign graduate students, foreign workers, and people with non-citizen status residing in the US, and we do NOT want to discourage them from coming. If that is indeed a valid concern, then we must minimally require that all government documents at least have English (presumably this is already the case, but if ever a day comes that some local government prints documents only in Spanish...) and we must require English proficiency for foreigners to become actual citizens.

Aside from having English as the official language, I do not see much that we can or should do regarding the assimilation of immigrants. We can refuse to grant the most ridiculous of their requests/demands, and we can make sure that American is an environment that accepts and seeks to integrate new arrivals rather than ostracize or condemn them.

The key principle, at least in my mind, is that America should neither be a tasteless porridge, with only one homogeneous overarching "national culture," nor should it be a hodge-podge of incompatible cultures that self-segregate and fragment the country. What we should want is a citizenry that respects the rule of law, the rights of individuals, the US constitution, while at the same time feels free to have a variety of personal values, traditions, and aspirations.

Increasing Crime

Personally I see no reason to suppose that the average illegal immigrant has more of an inclination to criminality than the average American. Note that I am NOT saying that immigrants do not have an impact on US crime. I wouldn't be surprised (though I am not ready to make the claim) if increased illegal immigration has caused an increase in crime in the US. I just disagree that the increase is because of some inherent criminality in the people entering the country. Rather, I believe it is likely because of higher poverty and a result of being shut-off from the rest of American society. Regardless of whether illegal immigrants are more or less skilled than the average American, it is certainly the case that their opportunities are very restricted because of their illegal status. Since they are illegal, they have to more or less live in the shadows and work on the black market, so it should be no surprise that illegal immigrants may resort to crime. Equally unsurprisingly, the solution is relatively clear.

First, we should deport all illegal immigrants who are criminals, and secondly, if all we are concerned about is crime, we should allow illegal immigrants to obtain jobs and otherwise participate in the American economy on the same level as any American citizen.

"Enforcing the Law"




To me the "enforce the law" mantra is probably the most unhelpful and close-minded aspect of the whole immigration debate. I agree that for our society to function, the population must obey and respect the laws. However, there are two flaws with the way that some conservative pundits are applying this idea. First, they are ignoring the government's partial-fault with the current illegal immigration problem, and secondly, they are ignoring the fact that laws are not fixed-- we can CHANGE them, and therefore we can redefine which laws we are indeed enforcing.

Partial fault

Illegal immigrants come to this country because in American they have a chance to live a much more prosperous and hopeful life. Therefore, no matter what laws we write on the books, we are not going to convince an impoverished or oppressed person in some country not to try and enter the US by any means possible. That doesn't mean we should let them all in, of course, but it does mean that they are not "law breakers" at heart. Furthermore, from their perspective (and, quite frankly, mine), their coming to this country does not hurt us (provided their motive for coming is indeed to make better lives for themselves) the same way as murdering or burglarizing someone does hurt to that person. More importantly, since we have essentially chosen to not enforce immigration law for the past 25 years, we bear some of the fault for the illegal immigration problem. In other words, if somebody came to this country in 1990, has consistently had a job, has been otherwise law abiding, has established a life for himself and his family, and we have done nothing all along, can we honestly go to that person and tell him that he bears the entire fault for being here and that he should therefore be immediately kicked out of the country?

To me, the answer is obvious. He is at fault for breaking the law (though understandably, especially given the lack of a victim), and we too are at fault for doing nothing all along. In my opinion, it therefore makes sense for both the illegal immigrant AND the government to bear some of the "cost" of our mistake. We make the illegal immigrant jump through some hoops to become legal (such as paying a fine and passing an English exam, etc. but NOT having to go back to his country of origin), and we pay the "cost" (really non-cost, but whatever, we'll call it the losing-face cost) of letting him become legal. Some claim that this gives advantage to illegals over legals, and certainly in some respects it does. However, I am willing to say that illegal immigrants should be processed only after legal immigrants, but ONLY as long as we let the illegal immigrants (that is, those who are not criminals, vagrants, etc.) remain here throughout the process. It would be one thing if we had been vigorously enforcing immigration law but that some were just too sneaky and got by us, but it's quite another story when we essentially have a law on the books and do not enforce it.

The Immutable, err, Mutable, Law

Would anybody (except racists) have said after the Civil War that we should "enforce the law" and return former slaves to their masters? Should non-racists in the South have supported the enforcement of Jim Crow laws, even if they disagreed with them, for the sole purpose of "enforcing the law"? Should we enforce anti-sodomy laws just because they're on the books? What about jay-walking? First note that I am NOT equating the enforcement of immigration law with the enforcement of slavery. Slavery is clearly morally repugnant, whereas America has every right to choose who does or does not gain access to the country.

However, the point I am making is this: when we as a society are confronted with the problem of a law that is unenforced, we have to decide if we want to increase our enforcement of it, or if we want to change the law. Certainly whenever we enact laws we must do so with the aim of enforcing them, or else our legal system will fall apart. Even so, we must continually re-evaluate our laws to determine if they are serving the purpose they were intended. If the law then changes, we enforce the new law, not the old. Clearly our immigration laws are not serving the purpose they intended. We are letting in millions of people that we do not know about, and then confining them to the underground. Therefore, I suggest the following thought experiment. If we were to completely rewrite our immigration laws, what would they look like? I'll address that soon enough, but regardless of your answer to that question, our treatment of the current 12 million illegal immigrants should be based on how we redesign our immigration system (even if that redesign is in fact simply maintaining the status quo), not on what current immigration law says now simply because it's "the law." In short, if the law is serving its purpose, enforce it. If it's not, change it, then enforce the new law, not the old.

What Should be Done?

I don't claim to have a fully thought out or comprehensive answer to immigration, but here are my general guidelines.

1) Provide a pathway to legalization-- For those illegal immigrants that are not security threats to the country and are not criminals, we should provide them a pathway to legalization. As I said before, they DID break the law, so they should pay a penalty, and in my opinion a fine of some sort would suffice. Furthermore, if they want to become American citizens, they must prove that they can live up to the necessary responsibilities, which primarily means knowing our language. However, we should NOT force them to go back to their country and wait there. That would mean dislocating them from their families and lives. While some may claim that that would the illegals' own fault, I disagree on two counts. First, it's really both their fault and the government's fault, and secondly, it wouldn't actually serve anybody's interest to force this hardship upon the illegal immigrants. It would benefit nobody, would do nothing but send a, quite frankly, lame signal that "we're tough" and would probably cause many illegal immigrants not to even apply for citizenship out of fear that they would have to leave and never come back.

2) Establish real, meaningful border security-- There are very real and serious threats with our current border situation. The threat isn't that we might have some illegal immigrant come to the country and secretly get a job and establish a life. The threat is that a terrorist or genuine criminal will gain entry to the country and we won't know anything about it.

How should we establish border security? I don't know if building a physical wall is necessary or helpful. It may be, it may not be, so I don't have a strong opinion on that matter. We should, however, definitely have a much tighter security wall (more surveillance, more border patrol, etc.). Furthermore, I would support some sort of identification system for non-citizens. Some call this Big Brother-esque, but quite frankly, since it only would apply to non-citizens, I don't see the problem.

3) Greatly increase legal immigration-- It does us no good to severely limit immigration as we have done. First of all, no matter how much we guard the border, if we severely limit legal immigration, people in desperate situations will still try and get in. It's a pipe-dream to say that we will actually be able to prevent the whole wave of illegal immigrants that want to come here, so we might as well provide a way for them to come in where we know who they are and if they're a threat. That way we can focus our border enforcement efforts on finding the individuals who still will try to get in illegally and are likely to be legitimate threats.

Another compelling reason for increasing legal immigration is that it helps the economy, honestly. Demand for skilled workers is very high and supply is short, and right now we only issue 85,000 temporary visas a year. That is woefully inadequate. However, note that while I am saying immigration helps the economy, I am not saying that immigrants do jobs that Americans refuse to do. That argument is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Americans may refuse to do a certain job at a specific wage, but if we were to kick out all immigrants and allow the wages of, say, fruit pickers to rise, eventually Americans would take the job. Immigrants don't have less dignity than Americans, and even if Americans are snobbish, we're not going to refuse a $40/hour apple-picking job.

So what now?

Who knows. We have a toxic combination of "keep immigrants away, they lower wages" coming from unions+"they're ILLEGAL, so shoot, err, deport them!" coming from conservative pundits, and "we demand AMNESTY!" coming from left-wing groups. I can only hope the debate will change...