Coming to America

I have been specifically asked by a long-time reader for my opinions on the bipartisan compromise immigration reform bill that came out of the Senate this week. Usually “bipsartisan” implies that acceptable compromises have already been made, and there is no need for further debate. That is clearly not the case in this instance. In fact, it might be more accurate to say the only person who seems to like this agreement is the President, who has gone to some lengths to defend it. Even the Right Wing News doesn’t like it.

I think that before we examine the bill itself, it is a good idea to look at the issues it is supposed to address. Although surely others before me have gone into this in far more detail than I can, most things dealing with these issues are reduced to trite, semi-true soundbites like “Businesses need cheap labor” or “Illegal immigrants wouldn’t be here if things weren’t worse in their home countries.” Almost all of the items you will find in a quick search are clearly biased one way or the other. While I won’t claim to be “fair and balanced,” I will at least try to get beyond fear-mongering and oversimplifications.

From the standpoint of employers: There are two kinds of employers, really: those who follow the law and hire only people who can legally work in this country, and those who don’t. Those who follow the law are at a competitive disadvantage, because they are paying more money for labor. Whether they are getting a better quality work for their money likely depends on the industry. In the unskilled categories that most people claim illegal immigrants are working, it seems unlikely. As for those who don’t follow the law, there seems to be very lax enforcement. That means low risk of getting caught, and relatively low penalties should it happen. This bill supposedly contains harsher penalties for those who hire illegal immigrants, but since enforcement under the Bush Administration has been scaled back 95%, this sounds like a hollow promise at best. I’ve said it before and it is worth repeating in context, when employers hire illegal immigrants, they are probably breaking other laws as well. Illegal immigrants earn an average hourly wage of $5.45 and average individual income of $8982. These figures suggest strongly that many illegal immigrants are in fact working irregularly at below minimum wage rates. I will leave to your imagination whether they are in safe working environments.

But what about employers of skilled workers: You know what? The H-1B program makes me mad, and this bill supposedly makes it bigger. In principle, this program is supposed to help American companies hire foriegn talent that they just can’t get from American citizens. For example, an American college hiring a luminary foriegn author as a guest professor for a few semesters, or an American computer company hiring a genius away from Sony to help create a new processor architecture. In reality, many of these people end up little more than “indentured servants” with almost no path to American citizenship. Some companies use this program as a way to train outsourced workers before sending them home. And most damning in my opinion is the fact that so many high-tech companies are whining about how they need these workers in an environment where there are 400,000 fewer high-tech jobs than there were in 2000. Those workers need jobs, but they unfortunately have kids and mortgages, so they need a decent wage; the truth once again is that the immigrant is cheap labor.

From the standpoint of current illegal workers: Well, somebody had to like this thing. Or maybe not. This article is so important I will quote several paragraphs:

To become full legal residents, under a compromise Senate leaders announced Thursday… illegal immigrants would have to pay a total of $5,000 in fines, more than 14 times the typical weekly earnings on the streets here, return to their home countries at least once, and wait as long as eight years. During the wait, they would have limited possibilities to bring other family members….

The compromise Senate bill proposes an initiative to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. It also portends a major shift in the priorities and values of American immigration for the future. It would gradually change a system based primarily on family ties, in place since 1965, into one that favors high-skilled and highly educated workers who want to become permanent residents.

In the future, low-skilled workers like the men waiting for work here would largely be channeled to a vast new temporary program, where they would be allowed to work in the United States for three stints of two years each, broken up by one-year stays in their homeland….

Illegal workers already here would gain a provisional legal status, known as a Z visa, fairly quickly. But to become permanent residents they would have to pay the big fines and get in an eight-year line behind others who have already applied legally for green cards, as permanent resident visas are known….

A first step is to eliminate, within eight years, the backlog of 4 million people who have applied to come legally to the United States, allotting 440,000 visas a year for that purpose….

So, to sumarize, illegal immigrants would have to pay fines that in many cases grossly outstrip their earnings potential, make a dangerous trip back home (where they face limited prospects and potential political/religious/ethnic persecution) to do it, get a special visa that is only good for 2 years while they wait for an 8 year backlog to go away, and they still can’t bring their families. More to the point, trying to make 12 million people legal 440,000 at a time is like drinking an extra large soda with a teaspoon.

And the sad joke of the Z Visa is that the sort of employer who currently hires cheap, easily exploited illegal immigrant laborers almost certainly will continue to do so. Holders of Z Visas will have priced themselves out of the market by demanding things like a decent wage and maybe even health insurance.

Why are these people here, anyways: Well, they are here because it’s better than where they came from. This of course meansNAFTA is a failure, and CAFTA is doomed to fail as well. But South Of The Border is not the sole source of illegal immigrants. Those Wal-Mart cleaning contractors a few years ago were European. Let’s not forget Chinese organized crime trafficking humans, some of whom thought they were getting honest if not quite legal jobs in restaurants and seamstress shops but instead end up sex slaves. Over the years, America has quite adequately demonstrated that not much can be done to improve conditions in another sovereign nation. We have also unfortunately demonstrated that quite a lot can be done to degrade conditions in another sovereign nation. This brings us neatly to…

Is there a racist thing going on here: Yes. Do you really think that apartment managers in Farmers Branch will check the citizenship of every applicant, or just the ones who look Hispanic or Arabic? Think real carefully before you answer that one. As a society we seem to take issue with “brown” immigrants much more than white ones. For that matter, which immigrants are more likely to have “work skills” and “ability to speak English” that are worth points towards a visa under the new system? The Canadian and European ones. Don’t get me wrong, English is our lingua franca, and those who cannot speak it are at a competitive disadvantage for “good paying jobs.” Moreover, having work skills will help you get a “good paying job.” But we should not overlook the fact that the majority of the “illegal immigrant problem” we are trying to address involves many “brown” people with poor English skills and often low job skills.

What about families and communities: Well, families are screwed. “Family values” is a term that apparently only applies when so-called Conservatives want it to apply. One of many tragedies of the illegal immigration problem is that because they exist outside of the law, they feel they cannot count on protection from the law. This makes them less likely to report crime in their communities or their workplace, even if they are the victim. Having 12 million people who feel they can’t report a crime is lousy for all our communities.

Aren’t some of these people criminals: It would be horribly naive to overlook the fact that some of these people make their living through illegal activies including but not limited to theft rings, smuggling of humans and goods, prostitution/pimping, and drug dealing. Some of these criminals came to this country for that purpose; others became criminals out of necessity or opportunity in this country. Not surprisingly, few of these people will be applying for a Z Visa. Many people cite figures on crimes by illegal immigrants, or the number of them in jail. It is worth noting that because being here illegally is, well, illegal, these figures are likely to be padded.

From the standpoint of American workers: Some people think there’s very little impact, and even if we deported them all, the industries that depend upon them would automate. Even this rosy view gives a nod to the fact that “Economists speculate that for the average high-school dropout, that would mean about a $25 a week raise if there were no job competition from immigrants.” Some researchers feel African-Americans are disproportionately impacted. I don’t see how having 12 million workers earning an average of $5.45 per hour can possibly not be impacting wages and employment rates for American citizens.

From the standpoint of Americans in general: We are of course a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of human beings that eat food. Many illegal immigrants work in agriculture, and there are wildly varying opinions on how much they might impact food prices. But has anybody wondered whether it’s a good idea to have our food picked and processed by illegal immigrants and the sort of company that thinks it’s a good idea to work outside the law? Anybody read “Fast Food Nation“? “Bushwacked“?

From the standpoint of the Government: There are two big problems they want to solve. First, most illegal immigrants don’t pay income tax. Obviously, they would like to fix things such that these people have enough legal standing to pay taxes. And — assuming the Z Visa program works as promised instead of how I think it will — they’ve suceeded! The other problem — and please forgive the sensationalist tone of this article — is public services used by illegal immigrants including hospitals, schools, welfare, prisons. I’m almost surprised this author doesn’t blame illegal immigrants for undue wear and tear on our roads. Whether this problem is solved by the bill in question depends on what percentage of the 12 million illegal immigrants in this country seek and obtain legal status.
When all is said and done, this bill does little to address the root causes of illegal immigration, and really only pays lip service to normalizing status. Whether it will change job prospects for illegal immigrants depends on the Administration and Congress turning its back on the corporate benefactors that want “cheap labor” and completely change direction on enforcement; if they wanted to do that, they could just enforce current laws. It does create a whole new wing of Visa bureaucracy, one ripe for abuse before it begins. No immigration reform measure is going to make everyone happy; it is too difficult to balance the needs of all the parties. This one is perhaps already doomed by its flaws.

In closing: “The Homeland Security Department is breaking the law by not telling the public exactly how personal information is used to screen international travelers, including Americans, congressional investigators [at the Government Accountability Office] said Wednesday”; The Motley Fool reprints what at first glance looks like common sense we can all use, only to ruin it with a plug for their newsletter; could it be that Hillary is just as owned by special interests as the old-school politicians she hopes to replace; one author thinks we need to stop focusing on the problems of the DOJ as if it is nothing more than politically motivated firings and keep our eye on the fact that it was an attempt to steal both past and future elections; it’s easy to get an accurate accounting of American military personel killed in Iraq, but the picture looks more bleak when you include “contractors”; the sorry state of health insurance for children — who you will recall do not have employers who can be forced to insure them — has resulted in multiple documented cases of murder by bureaucracy; news from the old hometown, Boeing figures out mass production; and finally for the Japanophiles, online resources have sparked a new interest in Kimonos. It is worth noting that while the word “kimono” means nothing more than “a thing you wear,” kimonos themselves have evolved into a complicated form of fashion most likely worn for special occasions and festivals. Some retailers are trying to change that.