RealCurrents

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.

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.

I was disappointed to read of Wal-Mart’s reversal as it announced it would carry the Plan B “emergency contraception”, aka morning after pill. At least Wal-Mart has confirmed it will continue its conscientious objection program so its pharmacists won’t be required to dispense the drug.

I guess the sun is setting on Sam Walton’s long-held philosophy driving Wal-Mart, that “wherever we’ve been, we’ve always tried to instill in our folks the idea that we at Wal-Mart have our own way of doing things.” [Made in America, p. 66] According to Wal-Mart Vice President of Pharmacy Ron Chomiuk, “We expect more states to require us to sell emergency contraceptives in the months ahead … Because of this, and the fact that this is an FDA-approved product, we feel it is difficult to justify being the country’s only major pharmacy chain not selling it.”

The key word in this latter quote is “only”. Like it or not, being the “only” one is what leaders do, and for a long time Wal-Mart seemed comfortable with this, but their inability in recent years to rise above some of their own problems was already a hint they’ve lost a vision for this. It’s hard to fault companies for abiding by the laws where they operate (Massachusetts and Illinois have required pharmacies to stock Plan B), but it’s annoying when they decide to just knuckle under everywhere else as a foregone conclusion. Plan B is less problematic than RU-486, but is it really so much to hope that at least one company would take a pro-life stand to the fullest extent possible?

Despite this setback, another case points to how there are, nevertheless, many “low-hanging fruit” type opportunities where the pro-life movement could make an impact. It should be easy to find agreement concerning the case of six year old Vietnamese orphan Tuan Van Cao, who needs a visa for emergency surgery in this country. Unfortunately, his condition is urgent, and again bureaucracy has worked its wonders, denying him a visa, even though the costs of his surgery are already covered.

Apparently, his humanitarian parole waiver application was rejected (after two months) by the Parole and Humanitarian Assistance Branch, an office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is itself now a part of that renowned example of your government in action, the Department of Homeland Security. Those trying to help him were told to pursue adoption, a process that could take a year or more.

According to Pam Cope, who reportedly got involved with Vietnamese orphans through the organization Ventures for Children International, “Tuan’s case is black and white. He needs emergency medical treatment and we can give him free medical treatment here in the United States” The pro-life movement needs to do a better job of identifying opportunities like these where children can be protected and there is likely to be little political opposition.

Changes made to immigration law back in 1997 have made Tuan’s predicament fairly common. Reportedly over 5,000 applications for a humanitarian waiver have been rejected in the 2000-2005 period; only about 20% are approved. Obviously, the law needs to be tweaked so that medically urgent cases are assured of receiving expedited approval, unless there is some compelling reason not to.

In the big picture, this visa problem points to how the pro-life movement needs to broaden the scope of its activity. There are many pro-life issues beyond abortion that impact how society treats children and, just as importantly, how society views and values children.

It is encouraging to see that progress may finally be possible in some of the worst areas of the abortion debate, such as partial-birth abortion, acknowledgement of post-abortion syndrome, and RICO abuses. At the same time, by identifying and becoming an advocate in broader areas where some progress may be relatively easily attainable, the pro-life movement could gain credibility and offer a more compelling argument for the value of life, and of the need for us to make the welfare of children and others who are weak a higher priority.

Among these areas of opportunity are more balanced divorce laws that better protect single mothers and children, extensive liberalization of adoption laws and tax credits, and reform of the foster child system. While the underlying philosophy behind the pro-life position is not well understood, it seems, the driving vision of the pro-life position, of compassion and care for even the weakest in society, will be easier to share with more tangible results.