Immigration Nation

Tamar Jacoby

From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2006

Summary:  The United States is far less divided on immigration than the current debate would suggest. An overwhelming majority of Americans want a combination of tougher enforcement and earned citizenship for the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country. Washington's challenge is to translate this consensus into sound legislation that will start to repair the nation's broken immigration system.

Tamar Jacoby is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the editor of Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means to Be American.

Second, some legislators, particularly House Republicans, insist that any new slots be strictly temporary: workers would be admitted, perhaps without family, for a period of two or three or six years and would then go home, with no possibility of appeal or adjustment. The Senate legislation, in contrast, although nominally a temporary-worker program, would allow workers to stay permanently if, at the end of their temporary stints, they went through a second round of processing to adjust their status. The Senate approach is the sounder of the two, although perhaps the misleading label "temporary" should be reconsidered. Some migrants want to work in the United States for a short time, earning cash for their families, and then return home. Others know from the start that they want to settle permanently. Still others start out as short-timers and change their minds along the way. The bottom line: in this case, too, no policy can hope to work if it is not realistic. A successful program must accommodate the ways real people behave, not ignore human nature. That means a policy that creates incentives for migrants to return home when their temporary-worker visas expire -- and also incentives for them to become citizens if they decide to settle in the United States.

A third issue sure to come up -- one of the most misunderstood in the immigration debate -- is the balance between high-skilled and low-skilled workers. In fact, there is no reason to choose between the two categories: both are needed. Remember the theory of complementarity: depending on the circumstances, more busboys may do as much as more engineers to make the economy more productive. Today, the United States is short on both, and this means that more of both would make American workers better off. As is, perhaps 25 percent of the annual intake is moderately or highly skilled and the rest are unskilled, and conventional wisdom holds that Congress should recalibrate this balance. But there need be no tradeoff between the two groups -- each should be considered independently -- and no arbitrary limits in either case. What is important is that the quota for each category be consistent with the flow generated by supply and demand.

Fourth, some of the most charged disagreements of the past year were about enforcement issues: whether or not to build a fence, whether to make felons of unauthorized workers or of those who provide them with humanitarian assistance. But in fact, of the three essential elements of comprehensive reform, enforcement is the least controversial, at least among policymakers serious about fixing the system. It is well known what works best on the border: little can be done that is not done already, although it could be augmented by more technology. And it is well known what is needed in the workplace: a national, mandatory, electronic employment-verification system that informs employers in a timely way whether the job applicants standing before them are authorized to work in the United States or not. Such a system need not be Orwellian: the basic elements are biometric identity cards and a computer database. And the process should operate much like ordinary credit card verification but be backed up by significantly stepped-up sanctions against employers who fail to use the system or who abuse it.

The only real question about enforcement is how exactly to introduce it. Many conservatives do not believe the Bush administration is serious about retaking control, either on the border or in the workplace, and as a result they want the enforcement provisions of any bill to be implemented before the temporary-worker program or the legalization drive. This is not an ideal solution -- comprehensive reform will succeed only if all three arms coexist and complement one another. But if it is politically necessary -- and carefully designed -- an enforcement "trigger" could be incorporated into a workable reform package. As for workplace enforcement, the challenge there is to get a workable system up and running in a timely way, rather than rushing to implement something that does not work.

The fifth issue on the table, sure to be the most bitterly argued of all, is whether the illegal immigrants already here should be allowed to become citizens. House hard-liners will insist not. "It is bad enough," they will say, "that we are letting these lawbreakers remain in the United States. We must draw the line somewhere -- we must not reward them with citizenship." The problem with this approach, principled as it may seem, is that it would create a permanent caste of second-class workers, people trusted to cook Americans' food and tend their children but not to call themselves Americans or participate in politics. They would live in permanent limbo, at risk of deportation if they lost their jobs, afraid of bargaining with employers, and unlikely to make the all-important emotional leap that is essential for assimilation. Surely, this is not the answer for a proud democracy such as the United States. Indeed, it is hard to imagine anything worse, for the immigrants or for American values.

What then should be required of those who wish to become citizens? Reasonable people can disagree about conditions and criteria. Some, taking their cue from the Senate bill, will argue that it is enough to ask applicants to come forward and register with the government, pay a fine and all back taxes, then continue to work and take English classes while they wait in line behind other would-be immigrants. Other reformers will maintain that this is not stringent enough -- that those already in the United States should be required to return to their home countries and reenter legally. But surely, once policymakers agree that it is unthinkable to deport these workers or allow them to remain here in legal limbo, it should be possible to agree on a compromise -- one that signals the nation's seriousness about enforcing its laws but does not preclude long-term residents from earning citizenship.

At the current impasse, it may be hard to imagine that such a moment will ever come. But immigration is not, and should not be thought of as, an unsolvable issue. If the influx is good for the economy -- and plainly it is -- it only makes sense to find a way to manage it more effectively.

Of all the naysayers' concerns, the most serious have to do with assimilation: fears that today's newcomers cannot or will not become Americans. Certainly, a lot more should be done to encourage and assist immigrants to assimilate. But it does not help to pretend that they are not arriving or to fantasize that tough enforcement can undo the laws of supply and demand. On the contrary, such denial and the vast illegal world of second-class noncitizens it creates are among the biggest barriers to assimilation today. That is all the more reason for Americans to open their eyes and face up to the facts of the immigrant influx.