More on Immigration: Illegals Are Invisible to Government, Guest Workers Won’t Be
John Drzal raised some good points in his comments on my last post. He doesn’t think a guest worker program will do much to reduce inflows, and apparently favors hefty fines to those who employ illegals.
Regarding immigration reform, there are at least a couple of key factors here. First, we have to reset the legal clock, so to speak. It’s pointless to try to take severe action against illegals and their U.S.-born children after decades. A fine would be in order, as some have suggested, though I think it would be unwise to make it too severe. In any case, by starting a full-blown regulated guest worker program as part of an overhauled immigration law, the U.S. effectively resets the clock, and conveys clearly that future violations will not be ignored as in the past.
The second factor is this whole nonsense of severe penalties to employers, etc. First of all, a lot of these employers are individuals, mom and pop restaurants, small contractors, etc. To hit them with huge fines while slapping companies like Wal-Mart on the wrist is just plain wrong.
It’s a general sign that government has failed when it resorts to harsh penalties. A lot of the drug laws fall in this category. Celebrities can smoke joints in the White House, joke on TV about using drugs, etc., usually with impunity. It’s the poor kids without a good lawyer who get locked up.
Certainly, there’s a lot of improvement needed in treatment of farm workers, etc., but government can only really get involved in this once these folks are no longer invisible. I do think regulation and taxation, combined with better future enforcement, can drastically reduce the flows. Nothing will be perfect, but hey, there are a LOT of other folks here illegally besides Hispanics!
Regulation and taxation are among government’s core competencies. The employment laws were already made a lot tighter some years ago, with little to no apparent impact. A hundred laws with severe penalties will do no good if they aren’t enforced. We’ve got a better chance of seeing laws actually enforced if they are more limited, with most of the work being done by regulations instead.
The problem with popular opinion among non-Hispanic Americans is this notion that we need to suddenly act harshly because “All these folks are violating the law!” Rather than being reactionary, we really need to come up with a strategy for dealing with this, or else we’re going to get even more illegal immigration, unless our economy tanks or the dollar declines a lot.
As far as Hispanic communities taking in those who might come in outside of a guest worker program, this will be a problem, no doubt. But when these immigrants have some legal status, they will then have something to lose. I’m certainly not going to argue that it will work perfectly, it won’t. But we need to get these folks on the radar screen, and I think the first step is to create a tiered pathway to citizenship. Then the ones who remain invisible can justly be suspected of being undesirable elements rather than just folks trying to feed their family.
As I noted last time, the program is going to have to be large, but at least these people will be paying taxes. They’re not going to go away in the short run, and trying to get businesses to do the government’s job isn’t going to work, either. The reality is that we all benefit a great deal from immigrant labor, whether in lower food costs (the entire country) or lower costs in many areas such as housing, services, etc. (much of the country). I really don’t think we’re prepared to wreck our economy (which it probably would) just to kick these folks out, and I think in this respect Americans need a bit of a reality check, and immigrants deserve a little credit.
Reading back over this, I realize I should have written, “regulation and taxation, combined with better future enforcement, can reduce recent years’ apparently dramatic rate of increase in the flows.” I don’t think dramatic reductions in the (currently illegal) labor force are at all realistic.
The guest worker program needs to be very large, tens of millions, much larger than most lawmakers would admit. If it isn’t large enough, it simply isn’t going to work. As I wrote, we need to get all these folks accounted for.
A program that is too small to pull them all under the umbrella will simply “succeed” in proving that a guest worker program won’t work, because there will be too great an incentive to stay outside of the regulated program, because of the risk there won’t be room for everyone.
Comment by Gordon — December 18, 2006 @ 5:07 am
Here’s an interesting article by Eric Holt-Gimenez, repeated on Cindy Rodriguez’ blog, about the agricultural causes behind the runup in illegal inflows.
His article suggests that the biggest dislocations caused by NAFTA/CAFTA haven’t been in the U.S., but rather among the small-acreage farmers in Mexico and Central America, where food can now be imported cheaper than it can be grown, causing massive debt and unemployment.
Ralph Winter of the U.S. Center for World Mission, who was a missionary for ten years in Guatemala, recently went back after many years (due to political/military tensions) and also reported dramatic unemployment problems among the farmers in that country.
Basically, the entire society, despite substantial church growth (which would normally be a stabilizing factor) is being torn apart by families that are split up, with fathers working illegally in the U.S. due to the lack of jobs in Guatemala.
We need to get away from the stereotype of illegals as all a bunch of low-lifes. Many, if not most, are decent people trying to support their families, who deserve a break.
Comment by Gordon — December 18, 2006 @ 6:02 am