The Immigration Reform Dilemma
Joe Gandelman
deanesmay.com
It's the issue that people talk about...but little actually happens. Rick Heller looks at it and adds this:
centristcoalition.com
"We are a nation of immigrants, but that does not mean immigration policy should be made emotionally. Aside from political refugees, who we should shelter in all situations, the level of immigrants we welcome should be calibrated to the need in our economy for new immigrants. Otherwise, current workers will be displaced.
I don't know what the proper level of immigration is. Perhaps immigration of youthful workers will allow us to get over the Social Security hump of paying for baby boomer retirements. In any case, I don't like the President's proposal for guest workers who come here for a short period and then return to their native country. I don't believe the return part will happen."
Indeed, in the 80s as San Diego Union staff reporter I was assigned the immigration reform beat. Ronald Reagan took a serious stab at it with an amnesty that was clearly labeled as such. In the end, the problem was this: the amnesty was granted but the promise of a crackdown on businesses that knowingly hired "undocumented workers," as some preferred to call them, never really materialized.
What you had was an amnesty that seemed to resolve part of the problem but minus a couple of highly touted and carefully targeted cases, very little enforcement. And in the end it did very little to stem illegal migration to the United States.
Any reform would have to tackle the issue of how many immigrants would be given amnesty, or allowed guest worker status — and how to enforce the rule. So far, the administration has refused to use the world amnesty and as Heller notes the end result of its proposal would likely be guest worker status given to people who would never return to their homeland while the U.S. government looked the other way to satisfy businesses who needed them as workers.
If you cut all the political niceties away, get rid of all the partisan rhetoric aimed at providing a fig leaf to make each party look good the reality is this:
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Neither party wants to do what would need to be done to truly halt illegal immigration.
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Both parties want Hispanic votes.
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Both parties want to address the issue because they know many Americans want something done about it...but not in a way that loses them votes or contributions from interest groups (businesses and/or Hispanic groups).
Likely outcome: little if anything will really be done unless there is a massive attack on the U.S. homeland and it is proven that the terrorists got in via Mexico. And Heller is correct: a Guest Worker program right now seems ineffective. It seems a way for the administration to say "hey, we've done something on immigration reform and respected our friends from Mexico" which would buy time to harvest some political hay ...but when the guest worker documents expire few of those workers would go back and the government would not try to find them and send them back.
Politics trumps serious issue resolution...which raises the question: is this an issue Americans honestly want to address or is the status quo beneficial to the U.S.? Haven't many Americans grown to respect migrants from Mexico in their dealings with them and in a new version of political correctness talk about the need to do something but actually don't mind looking the other way? |
