Border enforcement is at least a start
Robert Robb
Arizona Republic columnist
Dec. 2, 2005 12:00 AM
In his immigration speech in Tucson earlier this week, President Bush was perceived to be giving a political nod to the enforcement crowd. That alarmed guest-worker advocates while doing little to mollify the enforcement forces, illustrating the arduous politics of immigration reform.
I'm not an enforcement-only or enforcement-first guy. But politically, it's looking increasingly as if that's the only place to begin.
That's not optimal. While the argument that immigrant labor has an adverse effect on the wages of some native workers has considerable foundation, the overall economic benefits of immigrant labor and the need for more of it than is currently permitted legally are also clearly established.
There shouldn't be any reason why a credible enforcement regimen couldn't be adopted simultaneously with immigration revisions that allow more immigrant workers than are currently legally permitted but fewer than are currently coming illegally.
Nevertheless, beginning with enforcement is better than doing nothing and leaving the status quo in place. Moreover, the argument that enforcement without increased legal immigration won't work is specious.
Critics claim that enforcement-only has been tried and failed, pointing to the rising number of illegal immigrants despite substantial increases in border enforcement personnel and expenditures.
Even this is only partially accurate. Arizona's problem has been made worse precisely because increased border enforcement in California and Texas has at least partially worked.
The key to enforcement, however, is at the workplace, and no credible argument can be made that workplace enforcement has been even partially tried.
There are three essential elements to workplace enforcement: an ability for employers to instantaneously verify Social Security numbers and immigration status; effective federal government oversight of employer compliance with a requirement to do so; and effective sanctions for not complying.
The federal government has a system through which employers can instantaneously verify employment eligibility, which the president touted in his speech. But participation is voluntary, and few employers use it.
The efficacy of border enforcement may be debatable. But the efficacy of workplace enforcement shouldn't be. If, as guest-worker advocates claim, jobs are the primary lure for illegal immigration, eliminating the lure should largely eliminate the flow of illegal immigration.
The question is at what cost. Although the enforcement crowd doubts it, the best evidence is that cutting off illegal immigration without increasing legal opportunities would cause serious economic dislocations.
Yet that is not a reason not to begin with enforcement, if politically that is the only place immigration reform can begin.
It will take a while for an enforcement regimen to be ramped up. In the meantime, industries dependent on immigrant labor will be lobbying vigorously for expanded legal immigration opportunities.
If enforcement goes into effect without expanded legal immigration, any economic dislocations will become readily apparent. At that point, Congress will be debating economic reality rather than theory.
There's another reason why it might be best to proceed with enforcement first: There's not now a guest-worker proposal on the table that will work.
All the guest-worker programs currently being proposed take President Bush's injunction about matching willing workers with willing employers too literally. All require advertising for specific jobs and only being able to employ a guest worker if there are no native workers willing to take that specific job. That simply doesn't fit the reality of the unskilled labor market in this country.
The demand for unskilled labor is variable and the unskilled labor force is mobile. The fill-specific-jobs approach is too cumbersome and slow, and likely to be too costly, for many employers. An adjustable quota system that tries to balance the demand for immigrant labor with minimizing the adverse effect on the wages of native workers would better accommodate workplace realities.
The United States needs, primarily for security reasons, to be able to control its borders. Politically, perhaps a credible enforcement regimen needs to be in place before there can be a sensible discussion of the most beneficial role immigrant labor can play in our nation's economy.
If so, it's better to begin immigration reform with enforcement than not to begin it at all.
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