Immigration

Another chapter for the textbook on the law of unintended consequences: An immigration raid on one meatpacking plant leads to a shortage in Kosher meat.    Via the newswires:

"Normally, this, on a Monday, this would be stacked up to here," he said, pointing to a mark on the wall above his head.

But the cardboard boxes of beef in the freezer mostly reached his knee. It’s a scene being repeated in the freezers of kosher butchers and their customers across the nation.

The shortage is the result of the collapse of Agriprocessors Inc., formerly the largest kosher meatpacking company in the nation. In May, nearly 400 workers were arrested in an immigration raid at the company’s Postville, Iowa, slaughterhouse.

Since then, the company has struggled, and the plant has closed. It stopped shipping beef about three weeks ago and chicken in the last week, customers said. Since there are only a handful of processors nationwide who slaughter animals according to Jewish law and under the supervision of rabbis, the shutdown has cut the kosher meat supply to the bone.

I realize that what I’m about to say is not going to be popular during an economic downturn, but doesn’t an incident such as this – where a business is shut down due to the deportation of a large portion of its workforce and its ability to restaff with documented laborers – highlight the message that there is apparent demand for such labor in the country, and that our immigration laws ought to be reformed to reflect that reality.

Of course, another possible interpretation is that there’s a structural inefficiency in our labor market –- potential workers aren’t aware of or live too far away from potential jobs, potential workers aren’t fond of the nature of those potential jobs, and/or the larger market apparently won’t tolerate the costs associated with raising wages to better attract staff – but that line of thought quickly leads down a path towards the sort of economic philosophy that always gives me a headache.

As trumpeted by Drudge:

Barack Obama’s aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago, The Associated Press has learned.

Zeituni Onyango, 56, referred to as "Aunti Zeituni" in Obama’s memoir, was instructed to leave the United States by a U.S. immigration judge who denied her asylum request, a person familiar with the matter told the AP late Friday. This person spoke on condition of anonymity because no one was authorized to discuss Onyango’s case.

Note to Drudge and the GOP: “October surprises” are usually best delivered in October.  If I’m not mistaken, it’s expected that half of this year’s voters will have voted early.

Had this revelation come to light earlier, it could have influenced some voters, and/or invited a constructive debate on immigration policy and the size of our undocumented immigrant population.

Since I do a little bit of Ocean Marine work, this article caught my eye:

Because it has become so hard to dodge the U.S. Coast Guard and reach Florida to qualify for U.S. residency, Cuban migrants in recent years have been heading for Mexico, then overland to Texas. Last year 11,126 used that route, compared to just 1,055 who landed in the Miami area, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Evidence of this new escape route is stacking up at a Mexican Navy yard in Isla Mujeres, where the dock regularly runs out of space for seized Florida boats. During a visit to the small Navy dock last week, The Associated Press counted eight super-fast boats, all with Florida registration numbers.[…]

The smuggling has spawned new trends in Florida: Now that owners in Miami and the Keys are using tracking devices, chains and motion detectors, boat thefts are shifting up the coast, said Ricky Linale, Miami-area agent of King’s Bay Insurance.

And thieves may now be targeting larger boats: Some smugglers now pack a cabin cruiser with people, wait at sea and smuggle a few at a time to Mexico on faster boats, said David Spahl, an organized-crime investigator with the Collier County Sheriff’s office on Florida’s west coast.

I’m still left wondering – is all the fuss and energy inefficiently expended on immigration today really worth it?  Isn’t it time to adopt a more realistic immigration policy?

Seen in the New York Times:

The battle over voting rights will expand this week as lawmakers in Missouri are expected to support a proposed constitutional amendment to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote.[...]

The Missouri secretary of state, Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who opposes the measure, estimated that it could disenfranchise up to 240,000 registered voters who would be unable to prove their citizenship.

Now, I’ve been uncomfortable with the notion of requiring Voter ID.  I can understand the concerns by proponents of the concept, but the fact of the matter is that even in this day and age, some people lack photo ID.  Despite the difficulty in participating in society without identification, it’s not a requirement.

I realize that the Supreme Court supported Voter ID laws in part due to plaintiffs’ failure to produce anyone who really was impacted by the law.   However, I can’t help but think that the folks most likely to be impacted are also the folks least likely to complain about being impacted.

The expansion of such a measure only seems to aggravate the problem to me.   A little over a year ago, my wife and I had the experience of trying to secure new “proof of citizenship” for her, in advance of a cruise, since she had forgotten where her passport and birth certificate were.  The hoops we had to go through to get her a new copy of her birth certificate weren’t insurmountable…but that was only because we had net access at home, the means to easily copy some of the supporting documentation required, and spare cash to pay for the processing fees.

I can easily imagine how nearly-impossible the process might seem to a disadvantaged individual.

I’m reminded of something in the Constitution, the 24th Amendment:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

I know “ID” and “proof of citizenship” don’t translate to “poll tax or any other tax”… but for folks who don’t have the requisite documentation, it would seem that they will be required to shell out a few bucks to obtain that documentation…and that sounds like “other tax” to me.

This only fuels my suspicion that it’s time to move on from the increasingly-illusory belief that an ID is not mandatory in American society.   If you’re going to require identification to exercise one of the fundamental rights of citizenship, you might as well mandate that everyone possess identification documents, and help those without such papers to obtain them.

If we are going to slide down that slope, however, could we at least get some privacy protections to cushion our assimilation?

I’m in the midst of a rather busy/chaotic time at the day job, and so I’ve let my reading pile accumulate to frightening proportions.

One article I should have commented on this past week was a New York Times blurb on testimony Bill Gates gave Congress:

More investment in math and science education and a more liberal policy toward skilled foreign workers are crucial if America is to avoid losing its competitive edge, a founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, told Congress on Wednesday.

The shortage of scientists and engineers is so acute, Mr. Gates said, that “we must do both: reform our education system and our immigration policies.”

“If we don’t, American companies simply will not have the talent to innovate and compete,” he said in testimony to the House Committee on Science and Technology.

I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment.

An environment where our economy is dragging is hardly the time to continue disincenting the development of our own intellectual and future technological skill pool.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post ran a story featuring the views of several folks down on the U.S. - Mexico border who are taking exception to seeing their properties being taken for the border fence being built well inland from the border.

Within the story, there were two reality-checks I think are worth highlighting.

The first:

Their anger at being asked to sacrifice all that, Fred said, is that much greater because they believe the fence would deter neither terrorists nor illegal immigrants—who many here are convinced would simply tunnel under the fence, climb over it with ladders, or avoid it by heading for the sections of the border, including large stretches of South Texas, that will remain un-fenced.

“People in the rest of the U.S. just don’t understand the reality of what’s going on here,” he said. [...]

And the second:

Fred Garcia thinks it would be enough to maintain the beefed-up Border Patrol presence that he has noticed in the region since Sept. 11, 2001.

“Every time I come out here, they’re on me in minutes,” he said.

As if on a cue, a white sport-utility vehicle with the Border Patrol’s distinctive green stripe loomed in the rearview mirror, lights flashing. In the distance, three more SUVs converged, and several men stepped out, wearing uniforms of the National Guard, which has supplemented the Border Patrol over the past year.

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?

The Wall Street Journal is running an article (subscriber link) which touches upon one of the more interesting points to ponder, while discussing Arizona’s attempts to crack down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants—the role that cheap labor might play in the economy.

Under the law, people will be encouraged to contact a county sheriff’s or county attorney’s office to report businesses they suspect of employing an illegal immigrant. After the sheriff investigates, the county attorney can then seek to suspend and ultimately revoke the business license of an employer who knowingly hires an illegal immigrant. The measure would also require all Arizona businesses to use E-Verify, a federal online database, to confirm that new hires have valid Social Security numbers and are eligible for employment.[...]

About 500,000 undocumented immigrants live in Arizona, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, and independent estimates suggest about 350,000 of them are working. Immigrants, both legal and illegal, account for 14% of the work force. The state enjoys one of the fastest-growing economies in the nation, and its unemployment rate last year was just 3.3%.

A University of Arizona study released earlier this year concluded that economic output would drop 8.2% annually if noncitizen foreign-born workers were removed from the labor force. Researchers estimate about two-thirds of the workers in that category are in the state illegally.[...]

Sheridan Bailey, president of steel-beam manufacturer Ironco, said he has fired several Hispanic employees in anticipation of the sanctions law. “This law has the potential of sinking a business,” he said. Mr. Bailey, who has formed a business group to address the issue, said Congress’s inaction has allowed “policies to be generated on the fringe.”

Ironco recently sealed a deal to outsource some production to a Mexican company. “The labor market is tight, and I face fines if I don’t meet my commitments,” said Mr. Bailey.

On a couple of her good days, my wife and I have had a little fun debating immigration. She usually argues that cracking down on illegal immigration, without adjusting legal immigration quotas, will simply mean that employers will have to start paying wages for what the jobs are actually worth, to attract legal employees. My usual comeback is to point out the downstream impacts—increased costs, the drag to the economy…and the outsourcing of work to cheaper locales.

If we’re going to be paying a certain group of folks for making our cheap merchandise, shouldn’t we be doing so in a way that encourages them to pump at least some of that money back into our economy?

I think the idea of Arizona as an “experiment” is interesting. I’m of the opinion that blocking illegal immigration without providing an alternate, appropriately documented means for folks to take jobs in the country could trigger a cascade effect with, at a minimum, some rather unfortunate short-and-midterm chaos until a new equilibrium is found.

Unfortunately, trying to put metrics around a belief such as mine is difficult, due to the under-the-table nature of employing undocumented workers, and some of the fuzziness around attempting to measure economic impacts. But perhaps the, um, “Arizona experiment” will test whether my concerns are well-founded, or if I’m simply being paranoid again.

Periodically, I run into a discussion along the lines of “wouldn’t it be nice if we could have an open border with Canada”, due to our cordial relations and the hassle of border-crossing these days. Homeland Security concerns aggravated by differences on immigration policy are the reasons usually given for why Canadian border liberalization seems unlikely to occur.

For example, consider this post from ABC News’ Blotter:

According to Canadian news accounts, Justice Michael Phelan’s ruling struck down an agreement that once barred thousands of refugees seeking asylum in Canada. The judge said the United States does not protect refugees fleeing political persecution and torture, which international conventions require.

Instead, it adheres to rigid policies which may result in mistreatment, including forcing victims of abuse to return to the countries in which they were mistreated, he said.

As a result, the United States can no longer be considered a safe place for refugees, Phelan ruled. His ruling nullifies an existing U.S.-Canada agreement saying that if a refugee is turned away from one country, he or she cannot seek refuge in the other. The agreement was intended to reduce so-called “asylum shopping,” in which immigrants attempt to obtain refugee status from multiple countries.

While American border paranoia is understandable, it’s a sorry day when other countries openly note that the U.S. may no longer be a good destination for refugees looking for safety and opportunity.

Wednesday night’s GOP YouTube debate began with a heated exchange between Giuliani and Romney over who was the bigger hypocrite. Both claim tough stances on the immigration issue, but Giuliani gets to dance around the question of whether New York City was/is a “sanctuary city”, and Romney has the dubious distinction of a contractor employing undocumented laborers while doing work at the Massachusetts Governor’s Mansion during Romney’s tenure.

After this post at Alternet, I wonder if Tancredo, whose immigration stance is probably the toughest (most xenophobic?) of the GOP field, might also have the best claim on the “hypocrite” label:

When Republican Representative Tom Tancredo isn’t railing against the “scourge” of illegal immigration on the presidential campaign trail, he relaxes in the 1053 square foot basement recreation room of his Littleton, Colorado McMansion. There, he and his family can rack up a game of billiards on their tournament size pool table, play pinball, or enjoy their favorite movies in the terraced seating area of a home theater system.[...]

When Tancredo hired a construction crew to transform his drab basement into a high-tech pleasure den in October 2001, however, he did not express concern that only two of its members spoke English. Nor did he bother to check the workers’ documentation to see if they were legal residents of the United States. Had Tancredo done so, he would have learned that most of the crew consisted of undocumented immigrants, or “criminal aliens” as he likes to call them. Instead, Tancredo paid the crew $60,000 for its labor and waited innocently for the completion of his elaborate entertainment complex.

During the renovation process, two illegal workers hired by Tancredo were alerted to his reputation for immigrant bashing. They went straight to the Denver Post to complain. Tancredo “doesn’t want us here, but he’ll take advantage of our sweat and our labor,” one of the workers complained to the Post on September 19, 2002. “It’s just not right.”

So, is there anyone who is still unclear on the concept of why so many Americans distrust politicians?