About Those Huddled Masses
At the beginning of 2004, President Bush proposed a set of reforms to U.S. immigration policy that would have, among other things, allowed a number of workers currently inside the country illegally to attain a guest worker status for up to ten years. The proposal never really took off, as it was antithetical to the hard-line position on immigration taken by much of the President’s Republican base and other issues quickly caught the public’s attention. It’s a shame that we never had a really serious discussion of immigration policy, because it seems fairly certain that the current system isn’t working too well. The question is, how do we fix it?
The answer can not help but be complex, because immigration regulations implicate, or are implicated by, a host of other policies, from free trade to the minimum wage to tax policy and beyond. To say we’re going to talk about immigration is really to choose a particular vantage point from which to discuss this whole network of policies. Like any vantage point, it will emphasize some elements over others, but them’s the breaks.
Before getting into the details of policy, it might help to focus on the different philosophical approaches one takes to immigration. Is it something to be promoted, tolerated, or even discouraged? What expectations do we have for those that come to the country? What expectations should they have of us? Generally speaking, I tend to adopt something of a “more the merrier� approach in principle. Given the nation’s history, and the image that we like to promote to the world, I think it’s important that we continue to welcome new people – and the new perspectives and talents they bring with them – to the country. And I’m generally uncomfortable with the notion that Americans – most of whom are here as a result of immigration – would decide to lock the door behind them and say, “We got here, you’re out of luck.� At the same time, I think it’s reasonable that we have some expectation that immigrants will assimilate and become a part of the civic life of the country, even if that requires giving up some cherished traditions or practices.
Having said all that, I know it’s important that I try to function in the actual world, rather than hold fast to idealized platitudes. If, for example, we don’t have the educational system required to adequately integrate new immigrants and their children into society, we risk creating isolated pockets within society. This becomes especially problematic if employment is scarce. Undereducated immigrants put more pressure at the lower ends of the wage scale; this makes the least secure workers that much less able to press for better wages or working conditions. If language or other cultural barriers keep these new workers from utilizing their intellect and skills to the best of their ability, the contribution that they make to the economy will be much less than it could be, potentially creating a drain on the resources used to provide a social safety net. So part of addressing the immigration issue is putting our own house in order so we’re best able to handle guests. It also requires that we continue to welcome tourists, students and researchers from other countries onto our shores, to ensure that we get the benefit of new perspectives and that some of our beliefs and way of life are carried back across the world.
Preliminaries out of the way, what about the central issue? As things so often do, it breaks down into questions of supply and demand – the supply of immigrants, and the demand for their labor. The supply, quite frankly, doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon. Countries with stagnant economies don’t produce many potential immigrants; conditions may be bad, but human beings’ natural risk-aversion and built up traditions tend to keep many from chucking the devil they know in favor of the one they don’t. However, as various countries with geographical and social/political connections to the U.S. try to spur economic development, they displace many people – industrialization consolidates tasks, takes over land, and introduces increased automation. These displaced workers are going to look somewhere for income, and as their native countries prove unable to support them, they are going to attempt to migrate to countries further along the development cycle who have already gone through this transformation.
Developed, wealthier countries tend to want to spend their wealth on goods and services, so they import goods and commodities. In the process, they create a tiered employment structure, where certain menial and service jobs become unattractive to a large segment of the native labor force. To a large segment of the displaced workers from the developing countries, these jobs are attractive enough to attempt to move. This is actually a pretty good argument from self-interest for helping countries like Mexico as they modernize; the sooner they can close the gap with the U.S., the sooner the U.S. gets another strong market for its goods and services while it simultaneously becomes less attractive to potential immigrants. After all, when was the last time you heard about the crisis of illegal Canadian immigrants?
The demand side is a potentially thornier issue. The American economy right now depends on the labor of illegal immigrants and temporary guest workers who are paid an absolute pittance for hard labor in fields like agriculture. Exempt from minimum wage laws and often avoiding oversight and regulation, businesses can pay wages that barely qualify as subsistence in the U.S. To the desperate, it’s better than nothing, which is why so many people try and get into the country – legally or illegally – to take these jobs. Once in the country, the employer has even more leverage over the employee than usual – not only does the employer control his job, but his very presence in the U.S. So the worker has even less recourse in the face of unsafe or unfair working conditions. This vicious cycle continues in the name of keeping labor costs and prices down for the consumer goods that we buy every day.
So what’s the solution? We should probably focus on the supply side in this situation, using foreign aid and whatever other means possible to help stabilize the countries that send us the most immigrant workers. On the demand side, we should remove the exemptions from minimum wage laws that encourage companies to try and bring in extremely cheap labor, and modify the legal guest worker programs that allow those workers to be exploited. (Jorge Durand and Douglas S. Massey propose a number of alterations that seem sensible to me in an essay for The American Prospect.) This will either reduce the number of legal immigrants, or at least increase their purchasing power and ability to contribute to the economy.
We should also be pragmatic and realize that we are not going to be able to completely eradicate illegal immigration. There are simply too many potential gaps in the borders and few, if any, American voters are going to accept the kind of tax bills that would be necessary to try and plug them all. And even if they were, I’m not sure such an effort would succeed. Therefore we should put steps in place to get these immigrants fully integrated into society by enacting some kind of earned legalization system. Yes, this has the effect of seeming to “reward� people who broke the law by coming here. This is not a totally-unheard-of phenomenon, though; state or local governments, for example, will sometimes declare amnesty from prosecution for people who settle outstanding tax bills within a certain period of time. The logic is pretty straightforward – society gains more from the people paying their debts than it does by refusing to bend. A limited program of earned legalization while we enact other reforms achieves the same purpose, cutting down on abuses while more fully integrating people who are already here into our society, and thus increasing the benefit we might derive from their presence. These will not be easy measures to take, and they will cause some pain and disruption in our own economy. But if we really want to address the problem, we need to get to its roots.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.