Left Out of the Immigration Argument

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Left Out of the Immigration Argument
by James Hall, Senior Associate Editor

January 9, 2004

"Leaning Left"

James Hall Flush from their victory in California, where they just turned back a Democratic-backed program to give illegal immigrants driver's licenses, conservatives are dismayed to find that a proposed White House program will grant legal status to almost 8.5 million illegal immigrants working across America. The Bush program will also permit an unlimited number of additional immigrants to cross the border legally to obtain work. Meanwhile, George W. Bush wants conservative acceptance while he and the Democrats wrangle over just how far the program will go.

In essence, George W. Bush has decided to recreate the guest worker programs of the 1940s and 1950s, which employed foreign workers to ease the employment shortage of the World War II and Korean War economies. Illegal immigrants and other foreigners who can prove they have a job will get a three-year, renewable visa that makes them a legal immigrant in one fell swoop.

A cynic might argue that this is part of Bush's move to the center for the election, an attempt to sway the growing Hispanic vote this year, a vote he only got 35% of in 2000. But remember that the Bush administration backed such a plan in 2000, then pushed for something like it in 2001, only to have it put on the back burner by the 9/11 attack.

In Texas, the local economy has long depended on swarms of illegal immigrants to work for low wages in the agriculture, construction, and service industries, and Bush has never forgotten this. The low-wage, Walmart-style economy he envisions for the rest of America depends on cheap, unskilled, temporary labor to supplant any push for better paying jobs that American workers might want to make.

To be sure, the current immigration system is both toothless and corrupt. Undocumented workers stream across the border to take the cheap, no-benefits jobs offered by employers who look the other way in order to cut costs. Liberals have long turned a blind eye to the practice out of compassion for the immigrants and their families, while free market conservatives have kept quiet because cheap immigrant labor keeps wages and salaries down. Making our borders airtight would strangle this huge underground economy and force employers to pay more for American workers.

Bush, of course, is on the side of big business, and appealing to the Hispanic vote is an additional benefit. But his plan works only so long as conservatives quietly accept it, as they have quietly accepted his federal education initiatives, increased government spending, and Medicare prescription benefit programs.
The president is counting on conservatives to value a second Bush term in office more than they detest an obvious reward for illegal immigration. After all, it worked for Ronald Reagan, who proposed and created an amnesty for illegal immigrants in 1986.

But that was supposed to be the final amnesty, wasn't it? Something was supposed to be done then to fix the illegal immigration problem, and wasn't. It has to be done now. The underground immigrant economy is a danger to homeland security, a burden to states' social services systems, and ultimately unfair both to legal and illegal workers.

The Bush plan isn't the answer. The big winner of Bush's guest worker program will be big business, which will get a guaranteed flow of cheap foreign labor into America even as it sends good jobs out of the country to China and India. The flood of guest workers will become a permanent underclass here, undercutting wages and benefits for American workers, posing a steady burden on American social services and taxpayers. But that's only if conservatives go meekly along with the president's plan and sit on the sidelines while he negotiates with Democrats. ***

James Hall
Orlando, FL USA

Photo of the author courtesy of staff files