(This is one of a weekly series of posts entitled “A Centrist’s Platform”. The complete collection of Centrist’s Platform posts is available on a single page, or via a special RSS feed.)
One of the hot topics this election cycle is immigration. In this regard, the otherwise unique 2008 race is much like a recurring political debate throughout American history — the call for cheap immigrant labor versus xenophobia.
Some of my thoughts on immigration are very conventional. It’s silly to have laws regulating who can or cannot enter the country if you aren’t going to enforce them. I am very OK with the idea of tightening border security, including probably erecting a meaningful fence or wall, and I am very OK with requiring employers to confirm immigrant/citizenship status (allowing, of course, for some reasonable mechanism to deal with glitches that will inevitably occur).
However, I do run counter to conventional wisdom on immigration in a couple of regards.
First, we apparently have 12ish million undocumented immigrants in this country. Any resolution to the immigration issue needs to address the irregular status of these folks. Various ideas I’ve seen floated involve calls for “no amnesty”, hefty fines, deportation, and/or being sent to “the back of the line”.
I’m not sure that I’ve yet heard anyone seriously propose a realistic idea.
Mass deportation is unrealistic. Can you imagine the expense and controls that would have to be implemented to deport 12 million people? It’s not going to happen!
Similarly, proposals that require paying fines to regularize status or leaving the country and “going to the back of the line” also seem doomed for noncompliance.
However, I also agree that outright “amnesty” is undesirable as well, as it only sows disregard for laws that the nation is attempting to begin to give meaning to. I’ve seen discussion in the past suggesting that past immigration amnesties have had the side-effect of fueling illegal immigration as folks attempt to make it “under the wire”…or queue up for the next grant of amnesty.
I suspect that a realistic solution would have to involve asking current undocumented immigrants to apply for regularization (with risk of being turned down), effectively joining the same queue as prospective immigrants. Yes, it wouldn’t be “fair” to let folks who have flaunted our laws to get off without penalty…but let’s face it folks, life isn’t fair.
That touches upon one other issue I have with our current immigration policy. We seem to have some ridiculously low quotas for immigration. Slots for H1B visas seem to be filled virtually as quickly as they’re opened. And someone has to be employing many of the 12 million undocumented immigrants, suggesting that there’s a demand for labor that’s unmet by more regular means.
Any tightening of border security and crackdown on immigration law needs to be accompanied by a rationalization of what that immigration law is. If we have jobs that we cannot fill from our domestic workforce, let’s let folks come in from outside to help fill them. If we’re concerned about such folks from proving to be a drain on social services…well, we have enough bright minds in this country to work through or around that possibility. And, I wouldn’t even object to bringing relief to unemployed folks into the mix. If we have employers looking for immigrant labor, perhaps they could be seamlessly be connected with folks who are already here legally and might be looking for work, in addition to looking for talent internationally.
Wouldn’t it be nice if politicians and bureaucrats could take a bit to work through a realistic solution, rather than engaging in all the election year, immigrant-bashing grandstanding that’s going on?