Blaming Immigrants Won’t Solve Economic Woes

Immigration is a burning issue once again, with answers to perceived problems coming thick and fast from public officials--notably the governor of California. But emotions outrun reason, and most people aren’t even asking the right questions.

Gov. Pete Wilson sent an open letter to President Clinton last week demanding that the federal government control U.S. borders because California is suffering the burden of illegal immigration.

Wilson also proposed tamper-proof identity cards for immigrants, denial of health care, education and even citizenship to children of illegal immigrants, and that Mexican soldiers join the U.S. Border Patrol in forcing people back from the border at gunpoint.

Much of what he said, unfortunately, was demagoguery--changing laws on citizenship requires a Constitutional amendment, so lawyer Wilson’s call was political rhetoric.

But not everything Wilson said was grandstanding; on some matters, he had a point, although like almost everybody involved in the new debate on immigration, his complaints were misdirected.

There are problems and social changes occurring in the U.S. economy, but immigrants, legal and illegal, are not the cause of them. Yet illegal immigration--however great or small its actual numbers--is a problem simply because it breaks the law.

So we should solve our problems, not avoid them by making scapegoats of immigrants.

To begin with, estimates vary incredibly about how big a “problem” illegal immigration is. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates that 300,000 people enter the country illegally each year, but don’t remain here. Illegal aliens go back and forth between Mexico and the United States, says the INS.

The Clinton White House recently estimated that 3 million people live here illegally, from many nations--China, Mexico, Ireland, Nigeria, India--and in many parts of the country. That’s less than half the widespread estimates, used by immigration critics, that more than 6 million illegals live in America.

Legal immigration has risen in recent years thanks to a change in federal law, but at 1.5 million immigrants a year, the rate is only half that of the 1900-1910 historic peak. In California, however, immigration is at peak rates, which helps account for this state’s anxious reactions.

The charge is that immigrants cost more in social services than they contribute in economic benefit. But that’s more an argument about taxation than immigration. A study by Los Angeles County found that immigrants pay billions annually to the federal and state governments but little to the county, which provides hospital care and social services.

The county’s point, and one reason for Wilson’s outburst last week, is that the federal government should pay more. “The federal government gets a free ride,” says Georges Vernez, an immigration expert at Rand Corp. the research firm. Which is true, but that’s not the immigrants’ fault.

The fact is, immigration answers needs in American society. If you don’t believe that, ask yourself why immigrants keep coming to a slow U.S. economy--and particularly to recession-bound California.

The answer is they come for work. Skilled people the world over have an open invitation. American hospitals are still recruiting nurses from the Philippines, England and Ireland; draftsmen are brought from Europe, software programmers from India.

Unskilled people too find work. Consider the growing number of elder care facilities in the United States, particularly those for elderly people disabled by Alzheimer’s and other afflictions. They are staffed heavily by recent immigrants who owe their unglamorous jobs to social changes in American life.

“We do not live in extended families, three generations in one house, as people in poorer countries do,” explains Professor Leo Chavez of UC Irvine. We may be close as families but geographically separate, and so there is a growing need for elder care facilities and staff to work in them.

Couldn’t low-skilled people from America’s inner cities do such jobs? Sure they could, so why doesn’t U.S. society train and educate people in its inner cities and make sure they get such jobs? The answer is America’s inner-city problem is a complex one of social neglect. But making scapegoats of immigrants won’t solve it.

Make no mistake, “America should control its borders, because lawlessness is always a problem,” says Julian Simon, of the University of Maryland, a leading authority on immigration.

Trouble is, most suggestions for controlling the border are unacceptable. Guns won’t do it--can you imagine the public outcry the first time U.S. or Mexican troops shoot down defenseless migrants?

We could try an identity card, but surely our laws would demand that everyone carry such a card. And a country that has a hard time imposing minimal gun control won’t soon have a national ID card.

One way to gain border control and economic benefit would be to set up a system of flexible legal immigration that could bring people in when needed for a variety of jobs. Immigration experts say this might be along the lines of the bracero program that brought agricultural laborers from Mexico from wartime 1942 to 1964. The bracero program had faults and was criticized as a cheap-labor scheme, but a new system would have the advantage of being legal and less exploitative.

Another solution, for our southern border, would be to work through the North American Free Trade Agreement to improve Mexico’s economy and ease at least the economic pressures driving Mexico’s people north.

The ultimate point, though, is we’ll get nowhere blaming our problems on immigrants, who have always come to this country just because it offers more opportunity for individual development than any other nation on earth.

“Only in America,” President Clinton said last week as he nominated Army Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, who came from Poland as a child, to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Shalikashvili will succeed Colin Powell, the son of immigrants from Jamaica. Only in America--still true, and hopefully always true.