MODERN TIMES
by Art Hobson
ahobson@uark.edu
NWA Times 29 April
2006
AMERICA'S
DYSFUNCTIONAL IMMIGRATION DEBATE
During a wonderful six-month stay in Sweden in 1985, I learned a little about the Swedish immigration policy instituted by their great socialist Prime Minister Olaf Palme. That policy welcomed immigrants, and provided the assistance they needed to become successful citizens.
As an example of this enlightened policy, a friend of mine was a psychological worker in a special school for recent immigrants. Her assignment was to provide assistance, for many hours every day over several months, to just three children from Africa who had psychological disabilities in coping with their new surroundings. Palme understood that a successful policy must be carried out with detailed attention to every immigrant's needs.
In order to integrate every immigrant, Palme knew that the number of immigrants would have to be severely limited, especially for immigration from regions that were culturally very different from Sweden. So Sweden welcomed and cherished every immigrant, while severely restricting their numbers.
U.S. immigration policy is paralyzed and dysfunctional because we have a hard time holding in our minds both sides of Palme's policies. First, we must cherish and care properly for every immigrant. Second, we must severely limit legal immigration and end illegal immigration. But half of America welcomes immigrants and favors high immigration levels, while the other half frowns on immigrants and favors restricted immigration. It's difficult to form a political constituency on immigration because a humane and rational policy would cut across these lines by welcoming immigrants while restricting immigration.
Immigration has increased and immigrants' living conditions have deteriorated in recent years--exactly the opposite of what needs to happen. The number of illegal residents is an unprecedented 11 million, while annual legal and illegal immigration stands at an all-time high of 1.7 million per year. Immigrants and their U.S.-born children are now responsible for two-thirds of America's enormous population growth rate of 1.1 percent per year, far higher than any other industrialized nation. At the same time, a study by the Center for Immigration Studies finds that, compared to the previous three decades, immigrants today are less likely to become citizens or own a home, and more likely to be poor or poorly educated. This is a prescription for disaster.
Slogans and ideologies, generally a barrier to rational thought, are driving the immigration debate. "America is an immigrant nation," for example, is a notion that's equally valid for every nation on Earth except a few in Africa where Homo sapiens originated 160,000 years ago. People have always migrated. The question is not whether America had high immigration in the past (it was mostly considerably lower than it is today), it's whether it should remain high in the future. In most of the ways that count, America is already the world's most overpopulated nation, producing far more than its share of pollution while consuming far more than its share of resources. We should be ashamed of our population growth rate.
The notion that "immigrants do jobs that Americans won't do" is especially foolish. This slogan, often uttered by employers, leaves out an important qualifier: "at the low wages that I'm paying." Americans will do any legal work, they will even go down into coal mines, if you're willing to pay them a decent wage. This slogan is an affront to American workers and is actually an admission that high immigration reduces the wages of working class Americans. Guest worker programs are simply a sop to business owners, who seem to feel that free market economics is fine so long as it doesn't apply to their own employment practices--practices that are currently subsidized by legal and illegal immigration.
High immigration has a big impact locally. Springdale, for example, has been growing at a recklessly de-stabilizing 7 percent per year for the past five years. At that rate, Springdale's 62,000 population will balloon to 124,000 in ten years. When the American-born children of immigrants are included, 90 percent of the past five-year increase comes from immigrants. We see the effect of regional population growth in pollution of regional streams, in calls to dam Lee Creek for Fort Smith's drinking water, in crowded schools, congested roads, Fayetteville's expensive new water treatment plant, and myriad other ways.
Present national and regional immigration rates are unsustainable. We must reduce illegal immigration to as close to zero as possible and reduce legal immigration by at least 50 percent. Immigration bills currently before Congress err in different ways. Although illegal immigration must be stopped, it's inhumane and senseless to make felons out of illegal immigrants, and it's a mistake to focus primarily on building fences at the border. The illegal immigrant problem ultimately stems from employers of illegal immigrants. We'll never solve the immigration problem without a foolproof identification system for legal immigrants, and a foolproof law that sends employers of illegal aliens to jail.
Legalizing a limited number of illegal immigrants (in other words, amnesty) can eventually be part of the solution, but only after we've verifiably stopped illegal immigration. Offering amnesty before that time will only make the problem worse by luring more illegal immigrants into the country. We should not try to deport illegal immigrants. Many will choose to leave as soon as they cannot be employed here, solving most of this problem by attrition. Guest worker programs are a bad idea; they are a sop to employers and harmful to American workers.
We've got to free ourselves from the emotions that entangle our thinking, and begin to deal with immigration rationally and humanely.