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Blog Entry 3 of 3 CD6 Politics
A blog about politics and related issues in the 6th Congressional District.

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Illegal Immigration? Broken Immigration?
Contributed by: Patrick Anderson   on 5/18/2006

In the past few months, I have visited websites, listened to forums, and read newspaper coverage about the immigration debate. I've also read books and articles about the history of immigration in the United States. While I am not an expert on immigration, I have formed my own opinion on the subject.

For the record, I support comprehensive immigration reform that includes several key aspects. First, we must secure our borders. This doesn't necessarily mean a wall or fence, but it must be done. In addition, we need some type of guest worker program that protects U.S. citizens and immigrants from unfair labor practices, while at the same time meeting the needs of our economy. Finally, we need to offer a just path to legal status to the millions of immigrants that are currently here.

How did I come to this conclusion? There were many factors that have led me to believe the way I do. I have considered the history of our country, the fears expressed by many Americans, and the economic facts. In addition, I also considered the fact that we are talking about humans, not numbers.


What part of "Broken Immigration System" don't you understand?

Perhaps the most common argument against granting legal status to those currently in the U.S. is that they broke the law to come here. Repeatedly, I read comments that say, "What part of illegal don't you understand?" No one is disputing the fact that laws were broken by people that are here now. But there is some logic to granting them legal status.

First, granting them legal status does not mean they are automatically forgiven. All of the proposals being considered require substantial fines to be paid in addition to background checks. If I get a speeding ticket and pay a fine, that is not amnesty. If an immigrant broke the law to enter our country and pays a fine as defined by law, that is not amnesty either.

It would also be a complicated and inhumane nightmare to deport 11 million people. Our farmers would be devastated by losing up to 50% of their workforce. Other industries would be affected as well that employ high numbers of immigrants. Families would be ripped apart when non-citizen parents are deported and their citizen children are not.

Does it really make sense to deport people that have worked here for years. These are the people that have already proved their worth to the businesses that employ them. If they weren't doing their jobs well, they would be fired already.

There is also the argument of, "Why didn't they come here legally?" In my opinion, it is because our system is broken. We encouraged them to come by making it known we would do nothing about it. When we catch someone trying to cross illegally, we send them back to let them try a more difficult route. The employers do a half hearted check of work documents because they know that the government doesn't care. If they did, instead of fining only 3 companies in 2004, it would have been a lot higher.

And if our immigration system wasn't broken, it wouldn't take 5, 10, 15 years for people to immigrate here. We like to complain about waiting in line for 30 minutes to get a driver's license, but the wait to enter out country is many years long. We have to ask ourselves why is the quota set at 135,000 for high tech worker visas but only 5,000 for low skilled worker visas. If a computer programmer loses his job to an immigrant, there are a lot less open jobs for him than if a low skilled worker loses his job.


Jobs stolen; details at 11

Of course, these arguments bring up more questions about whether immigrants "steal" American jobs or lower wages. Yes, to some degree they do. In most studies, the impact of immigrants on labor show that Americans without high school degrees are suffering. Those same studies also show that the rest of us are benefiting from a source of labor that helps build up cities, harvest our food, etc.

The impact that immigrants do have on the wages and jobs of Americans without a high school education can be solved in two ways. First, as a nation we should ensure that ALL American citizens have a high school education and the opportunity to continue past that. Second, if we have a decent guest worker program we can make sure that employers can't pit undocumented workers against American citizens for the same job. These workers will have the same legal status in the eyes of the employer.

This last part was proved back in 1986 when President Reagan approved a similar immigration reform law. The average income of immigrants rose by 14% since employers could no longer use their undocumented status as an excuse to pay them less. I believe the same thing will hold true if a true guest worker program is passed.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not saying that all jobs that immigrants do are ones that Americans won't do. Many are jobs that Americans won't do at the wages that employers are paying. This is why a guest worker program that boosts immigrants' status and pay would help Americans. Another thing that would help Americans is raising the minimum wage since it hasn't been raised since 1996. This is in stark contrast to the average pay of a CEO that had a 25% salary increase just last year.

One thing I think they could add to the guest worker program proposals is some type of safeguard in case the United States enters a recession. Right now, some economists estimate we are creating 700,000 openings for low skilled workers per year. If for some reason we enter a recession and that number drops dramatically, we should be able to reduce the guest worker program to meet our needs. Of course, the law of supply and demand will mostly accomplish that anyway. As Rep. Tom Tancredo says, if you take away the jobs, the immigrants won't come.


Speak American?

Another area of related arguments is strictly about culture. These are mainly fears expressed by people when confronted with a more diverse culture and a different language. I respect the fact that people are afraid. It is human nature to be afraid of the unknown. But as Winston Churchill said, "There is nothing to fear, but fear itself."

Perhaps the biggest area of contention is the argument that immigrants don't learn our language. Everyone seems to have a personal story of how their relatives learned English quickly, but today's immigrants aren't even trying. This is a false notion. First, history records show that during each wave of immigration that our country has experienced, Americans have always complained about the slowness of immigrants to learn English. Ben Franklin complained back in the 1700s about the German immigrants refusal to learn English. But guess what, eventually they did. In the early part of the 20 th century, people complained about the 1700 foreign language newspapers published in the U.S.

Today's group of immigrants are learning English just as fast as any previous immigrants. Look at an English as a Second Language course in your city and you will see it is full. The desire to learn English is reflected in one study in which 95% of current immigrants said that the best thing they can do to get a job is learn more English. You can also look at surveys that show that by the third generation nearly 80% of immigrants speak English primarily in the home (22% speak English and Spanish, while none speak only Spanish).

It isn't only the English thing that bothers people. After the first round of immigration rights rallies people were upset that the immigrants were waving flags of the homeland instead of American flags. I found it amusing since only a couple weeks prior to that, no one took issue with people waving Irish flags on St. Patrick's Day. To the immigrants, it was the same thing. They finally got a voice and they wanted to express their heritage. We are the ones that portray America as this great melting pot and that we love our immigrant history. Yet, when they displayed their flags we took it as an insult.


In the later rallies, the immigrants decided to wave American flags instead. If you look at the photos of rallies on May 1st, you will see that American flags probably outnumber any other flag by at least 10 to 1. Was this some sort of mass conspiracy? No. Immigrants heard that waving their own flag was considered an insult and took it upon themselves to change their actions.

This just goes to show that immigrants do want to assimilate into our society. I almost find that amazing. Even though they are met in the streets by people yelling for them to go home and hear politicians claiming they are all criminals, they still have a desire to assimilate. No, they aren't going to drop all of their traditions, but no group in American history has every completely lost all their native traditions. That is what makes America what it is today.

It also bothers me when immigrants are portrayed as a group that comes here to take advantage of the services that we offer. I'm sure there are a few that do, but most come here to work. Just look at the unemployment rate among undocumented workers. It is usually less than 3%. If an undocumented worker loses his job, he does not go to the unemployment line. Instead, he goes and gets another job-whether through a day labor site or with another employer-they find a job. And if there are no local jobs, you have to admit, they are willing to move to where there is a job.


Taxes and Services

Many people also want you to believe that even with all the contributions they make by coming here to work, that immigrants are a drain on our social services systems. This may be partly true, but there are many false assumptions being made as well.

The biggest myth is about immigrants not paying taxes. It is obvious that they do pay sales tax, property tax (through their landlord), etc. The one that comes into debate is the issue of income tax. Last year, the Social Security Administration (SSA) estimated that around 75% of immigrants are paying income tax and social security. As a result, the SSA took in $8 billion dollars that can never be claimed by the workers that paid them. If the SSA is taking in that kind of money, you can only imagine the windfall that the IRS is taking in.

It is still an item of concern that 25% are being paid off the books. Of course, this would be completely resolved by having a guest worker program. In that case, employers would not have an excuse for not documenting and taxing their employees' income.

I have also recently read about the huge number of dollars being spent to provide education and health services to immigrants. After reviewing the fact that they do pay taxes, it is hard to understand why there are complaints made about the services that immigrants are using. Those same arguments could be made against any American living below the poverty level without health insurance. I believe that if we want to solve that problem, we need to solve it for all workers struggling to make ends meet. I guess some people want you to believe that immigrants wake up in the morning and get sick just to take money from the system.

Another irritating argument is about how crime is exploding due to immigrants. There are some that will say this is due to the fact that "they are corrupt because it is just in them." But if you really look at the numbers, you will see that immigrants are no more likely to be a criminal than any other group with similar demographics. This means comparing immigrants with other young, poverty level groups. We would like to think that crime can be attributed to one's cultural background. This is plainly wrong. If we concentrate on the real causes of crime, we may be able to reduce crime across all levels, not just immigrants.


Doing the RIGHT thing

Many people will agree with some of these arguments but still insist on an enforcement only policy. This kind of thinking is flawed. Between 1995 and 2005 the Border Patrol doubled its manning, yet we still have an increasing immigration problem. The only thing we have to show for making it more difficult to cross the border is over 4,000 dead immigrants. Enforcement only would mean the mass deportation of hard working people, disruption of businesses that lose employees, increase in the number of business owners and managers that are put out of business or sent to prison, and millions of torn families.

All in all, what we must remember is that we will be judged by our grandchildren on how we resolve our current immigration crisis. I am hopeful that we will be able to avoid the repeated mistakes that have been made throughout our history in dealing with immigration. By doing so, we will have a humane immigration system that spurs our economy to grow ever upward like we all want.



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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Patrick Anderson

Centennial , CO

Patrick Anderson has posted 3 blog entries and 0 comments since joining on 3/22/2006. Patrick Anderson 's average blog rating is 5.
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