How Best to Reduce Illegal Immigration : Strong but effective measures are needed, not windbag rhetoric
The title of The Times’ recent series on immigration in the 1990s, “the Great Divide,” was sadly apt. Few issues on the national agenda, and certainly few in California, are more divisive than how we deal with the continuing flow of foreigners to this country, whether they enter legally or illegally.
The series vividly illustrated that immigration problems are so complex, there won’t be any quick or easy fixes. And it focused not just on problems posed by immigration, but the benefits it brings. By keeping this balanced, realistic presentation in mind, well-intentioned people can resist the appeals of demagogues who exploit a “hot button” issue and perhaps even reach consensus on immigration policies for this “nation of immigrants” in the 21st Century.
If one steps back from the overblown rhetoric of ardent activists on both sides of the immigration debate--whether the restrictionists who see the nation being overrun by alien hordes or the naive souls who see borders as irrelevant--it is possible to gauge the outlines of a consensus on immigration. It would include these steps, all of which The Times has previously endorsed:
* A tamper-resistant identity card for U.S. workers, so employers can more easily abide by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.
* More federal aid for the states and local governments that absorb most new immigrants, like California and Los Angeles.
* Better control of the country’s borders.
* Economic development in nations that send illegal immigrants to this country, so ambitious people stay home instead of seeking economic opportunities here.
* Rules on legal immigrants and refugees that are more carefully drawn so they cannot be abused or evaded as are present laws.
Granted, the consensus begins to break down on specifics. For example, we think Social Security cards, if made computer-readable, would serve quite well as worker-identity cards. Even at an estimated production and distribution cost of $2.5 billion, enhanced Social Security cards would be cheaper than a new document produced from scratch. Also, since all legal workers already have Social Security cards, a computerized version might diminish the objections of civil libertarians concerned that a new worker identity document would become, in effect, a national identity card.
Some would improve border control by increasing the size and budget of the U.S. Border Patrol, an arm of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. But just throwing more money at the INS, as the reform law did in 1986, has not been successful. A better approach, unfortunately resisted by the federal bureaucracy, would be to reorganize all U.S. border agencies--not just the Border Patrol but the Customs Service, Coast Guard and others--into a new border-management agency. Once the INS is relieved of its law-enforcement burden, it could focus on helping immigrants assimilate--and help America understand and cope with the powerful long-term demographic trends that have so obviously become such a major, underlying force in American life.
The big short-term challenge is getting Congress to pay more for immigrants’ education and health care. That won’t be easy, given the federal deficit, but the state’s 54-person congressional delegation could be a big help if it 1) hung together on this one issue on which there is statewide consensus instead of 2) wasting time and energy arguing over divisive proposals of dubious legality, like denying citizenship to illegal immigrants’ children.
As for dealing with illegal immigration at the source, Congress did itself proud by approving the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA will eventually slow the movement of illegal migrants from Mexico, who may represent 60% of the illegal U.S. population, by helping the Mexican economy prosper. But the fact that even a sensible step like NAFTA was so controversial proves how tough it can be to achieve immigration-control measures.
Because the illegal immigration issue is controversial doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be discussed. The key is to do so calmly, with a real-world sense of what can and cannot be accomplished, how long it will take and how much it will cost. For, in the end, complex forces like human migration respond less to the laws passed by legislatures than to the immutable laws of economics and the unpredictable vagaries of human nature.
