I confess that I don't fully understand protest politics.
There appears to be something in the psyche of the left that finds
gratification in the act of protesting. The immigrants and their
advocates
who amassed in Phoenix and other cities about immigration reform
clearly
felt good about what they had done.
Presumably, however, there was also a desire to affect an external
audience, to cause others to think or feel differently about the
issue. In
this regard, the protests were probably ineffective, if not
counterproductive.
Effective protests usually bring attention to some moral point:
ending
segregation, stopping a war.
The moral right to leave a country is generally recognized. And
there are
those who believe that anyone living in oppression or deprivation
has a
moral right to set up residence in the United States or anywhere
else they
want.
That, however, is a decidedly minority point of view. Most recognize
that
countries have a sovereign right to set immigration policy, to
determine
who to let in and in what quantities.
Simply put, Americans are not likely to accept the proposition that
they
have no moral right to limit immigration or enforce the immigration
laws
that exist.
Now, there are issues of humaneness involved in immigration reform.
The
United States has not effectively or seriously enforced its
immigration
laws. There are those who have taken advantage of this to establish
well-settled lives here. Deporting them doesn't seem fair.
This becomes particularly poignant when it threatens the breakup of
families, or the deportation of children who grew up here and really
don't
know their country of origin.
There is also something good about offering people, particularly
those
struggling with poverty in their country of origin, a chance for a
better
life. That's always been part of the American experience.
There are, however, other issues of fairness and equity involved in
the
immigration reform debate — fairness to native workers facing
competition
from immigrant labor, and fairness to local taxpayers shouldering an
increasing burden for education and social welfare costs associated
with
absorbing a large number of relatively unskilled and uneducated
immigrants.
The immigration reform measure sponsored by Sens. John McCain and
Ted
Kennedy, largely adopted by the Senate Judiciary Committee on
Monday, gives
short shrift to the fairness concerns of native workers and local
taxpayers. Arizona Congressmen Jeff Flake and Jim Kolbe are also
sponsors
of this approach.
McCain-Kennedy not only gives legal status to existing illegal
immigrants,
it provides legal acceptance of the current volume of new illegal
workers
that arrive annually, some 400,000.
There are responsible economists who have produced studies on both
sides of
the question of whether illegal immigrants have a positive or
negative
effect on the wages of native workers. The dispute hinges on the
substitutability of immigrant and native labor, and whether the
national or
local labor market is the appropriate point of reference.
The best guidance, however, probably is to be found in broad wage
trends.
And these are indisputable: inflation-adjusted wages for U.S.
workers with
less than a high school education have been declining and wages for
those
with just a high school diploma have been stagnant.
There are reasons other than immigration for this. Economic
transformations
are providing higher returns to education.
Nevertheless, a declining or stagnant price for unskilled labor does
not
suggest a shortage requiring 400,000 new unskilled workers a year.
Moreover, McCain-Kennedy allows employers to set the price at which
the
lack of a willing American worker is to be demonstrated, in essence
giving
employers of unskilled labor monophony power.
Making legal what is currently occurring illegally, which is what
McCain-Kennedy basically does, will also exacerbate the economic
burdens on
communities for the education and social welfare costs associated
with a
fast-growing unskilled labor class.
McCain-Kennedy is more a capitulation to the tide of illegal
immigration
than a true effort to set and enforce an immigration policy that is
in the
national interest.
A sense of fairness indicates that the law should accept those who
have
established lives here in the interstices of U.S. enforcement of its
immigration laws. What happens on an ongoing basis, however, should
be
based on the national interest.
The U.S. economy undoubtedly needs more than the 10,000 unskilled
immigrant
laborers that current law permits annually. The best evidence,
however, is
that the 400,000 or so who are coming here illegally each year are
having
an adverse effect on the wages of native workers and excessively
burdening
local taxpayers.
There is a number somewhere in-between that balances the
considerations of
fairness and equity. That golden mean, however, isn't to be found in
the
politics of protest, or the emotion-laden rhetoric on either side of
the
debate.
