RealCurrents

I’ve been putting off writing about immigration because it is such a difficult subject to really nail down. There are so many mixed emotions, conflicting interests, and pertinent historical precedents that it’s hard for even one person to agree with themself. I think Mark Belling’s comment on the Rush Limbaugh show Wednesday, that we can’t get agreement on immigration because we can’t find even two people who totally agree, is right on the money. This is very much an issue in flux, but it may no longer be an issue that can be deferred.

Of course, immigration is only one of many issues that U.S. voters have just wanted to keep sweeping under the rug. This rug is getting awfully lumpy nowadays, and these ugly problems are going to be emerging one-by-one (if we’re fortunate enough not to have to deal with them en masse) in the coming years. Any American can list half a dozen of these, e.g. the trade deficit, national debt, consumer debt, Social Security (i.e. even more national debt), Medicare (ditto), corporate pension plans, a disadvantageous tax and benefits structure for global competition, rapidly rising health care costs, and, oh yeah, a couple of looming possibilities - proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and of various natural diseases such as bird flu.

To George W. Bush’s (and his staff’s) credit, they have been on the immigration issue for some time, but seemingly with little support from anyone, whether fellow Republicans or even Mexican President Vicente Fox. Fox’s anticipated good relationship with Bush seems, instead, to have proved to be largely dysfunctional. Unlike Social Security reform, which Bush was astute to push soon after the election but unfortunately with a scheme largely at odds with the public, on immigration I think he’s probably more in tune than other politicians realize.

Maybe the best way to solve this political, diplomatic and economic dilemma is by a process of elimination, because the reality is that most of the ideas Congress has offered will almost surely fail in practice. Are we really going to lock up church members who help illegal aliens or deport parents while leaving probably millions of “orphans” here in the U.S.? Are we going to deport millions of children who are American citizens? Are we going to destroy our agriculture industry, one area where - I hope - we still enjoy a trade surplus?

These “solutions” are just not going to happen. Are we really going to have another Trail of Tears down to Matamoros or Tijuana? Any politically workable solution is going to have to deal with the historical reality, not just the rhetoric of a bunch of folks who want the cheap housing and living costs of the Sun Belt while pretending the issue just suddenly got out of hand, and deserves some sort of abrupt knee-jerk response.

The hard fact is that when you let a situation go on for decades unchecked, you don’t have some of the options you would have if you dealt with it promptly. Whole generations have grown up in citizenship limbo, and to pretend you can just slice this gordian knot with one sharp legislative blow is nuts. We need to figure out where we want to go, and then figure out how to deal with the situation we’ve already got.

What you can’t stop, you regulate and tax, and this is really the only workable solution. If you raise the costs, you reduce the demand. Maybe someone can come up with a better solution, but it seems to me that in order to regulate the inevitable cross-border flows, a sizable guest-worker program will be needed. Incentives will have to be in place that cause most potential immigrants to be willing to go with the program, and disincentives such as more secure borders and harsher penalties for future violators will be needed to reduce the flows to a workable level. I don’t know what this level is, but it’s going to be more people than a lot of folks will like. Deal with it; in the long run we can probably reduce the pressure on our borders if we can encourage Latin American countries to reform politically (really key) and economically.

The guest worker program will need to be multi-tiered. Workers will have to meet higher requirements to move to the higher levels (allowing longer residency periods and possibly bringing in family members), and of course the highest level will be attaining citizenship, for some portion of the workers. All the workers’ earnings need to be taxed, and tax violations should be grounds for deportation. Health care, education and other issues will have to be worked out, but since they are guest workers, they shouldn’t be on welfare.

While a large guest-worker program may be hard for a lot of Americans to accept, there will also need to be measures taken that will be unpopular with many illegals and with many Hispanic Americans. We must do away with bilingual ballots and require that all citizens learn English as a qualification for citizenship. Bilingual education will remain, I’m sure, at least to teach guest workers’ children in public schools, which will obviously have to be compensated to some degree since guest workers may not own much taxable property. Nevertheless, instruction in Spanish should be only a stopgap, and all students should be required to take English, and have a limit on how many years of bilingual education they can receive before transitioning to regular classes.

Unlike other immigrant ethnic groups, English seems to be a real sticking point for a lot of Hispanics. I really don’t feel any sympathy here. My wife immigrated to this country from Taiwan, and she had to go to kindergarten not knowing any English. Now her vocabulary is probably better than mine. Everyone understands that it’s harder for the older folks to learn the language, but to insist that the next generation can just stay out of the loop of discourse is quite irresponsible. The United States is a republic, a representative democracy, which requires that its citizens be able to communicate with one another. To dispense with this would pose a threat to the whole fabric of our society.

I know that emotions are charged over immigration, with accusations of racism, ingratitude, double standards and the like being wildly thrown about. I hope folks will calm down and actually talk to one another. Hispanics have a lot to be upset about but they certainly should have seen this coming by now. I tend to sympathize with the students getting out and protesting (peacefully), but they need to realize they are sending an incredibly incoherent message, waving Mexican flags while demanding the rights of United States citizens.

Laws have to be enforced, or else they need to be changed. Millions of Hispanics have chosen to violate our laws, and they have no business being upset that we may now choose to change the law and then enforce it. On the other hand, I hope that as we prepare this spring to begin celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown Colony, that Americans pushing for immigration reform will remember that nearly all of us had ancestors who were once immigrants, and reflect on the somber fact that a measure of humility is, indeed, in order.