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--By George Mason |
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It’s Not Amnesty The Bush administration has lusted heartily after the Hispanic vote. To that end, they have made noises to the three million plus Mexicans living illegally in the United States that some form of amnesty might be in the works. Such a move, they said, would strengthen ties to Mexico, extend workforce protections and benefits and relieve stress along the border. There is just one problem. A current CIS/Zogby poll says that 55 percent of U.S. citizens – including 51 percent of Hispanics – believe that granting amnesty is a "very bad" idea. Outside the Hispanic vote, other voters would be less likely to vote for Bush if he advances amnesty by a margin of 3-1. Those who have become U.S. citizens by following the rules are not that impressed with those who don’t follow the rules. Some 33 percent of Hispanics even said that they would be less inclined to vote for Bush if he continues to pursue amnesty. The survey, taken at the end of August, found no difference between Republicans and Democrats on the issue. Bush supporters had a comeback. "Amnesty" is a negative word, they said. What people would really like is "legal status for people who are working in the U.S., upholding the law and behaving themselves." With the visit this week of Mexican President Vicente Fox, the Administration has taken the domestic issue of immigration policy and made it the subject of negotiations with a sovereign neighbor. A huge blob of our politicians proudly march on under a banner that says "If we don’t call it amnesty, it won’t be." What the President Fox administration wants, says columnist Allan Wall, is perfectly clear and straightforward. They want continued high immigration of their citizens to the United States under legal and safe conditions. They want their citizens salaries paid by American business at American wage levels and social benefits paid by American taxpayers. They want an open border where their workers can travel freely back and forth without becoming citizens of the United States. They want these policies to continue until Mexico achieves economic parity with the United States. In short, they want to eat their sopopilla and have it, too. The question for Congress and the administration is how to define "legal status" and not have it be seen as amnesty. Of course, you can’t. However, being politicians, they will try. Bush and Fox expect to see a fast-tracked program evolve that would allow employed, law-abiding citizens who just happen to be illegal Mexican aliens to get temporary, renewable work permits that would permit them to travel safely back and forth between Mexico and the United States. The permits would lead, over a six to ten year period, to access to permanent status - green cards, visas, full citizenship and voting rights. Oh yes, they would also have full labor rights - the right to organize or join unions. The reasons for such a program can be summed up rather quickly. The first is "they are already here by the millions, we have to do something for them." The qualifier is "who is they? " The total illegal alien population is not made up of just people from Mexico. Granting legal status to some 4.5 million Mexicans won’t set well with an equal number of illegal workers from other places. "All or none," that’s the political dilemma. The second reason often used is the claim that the illegal worker is a hard worker who pays taxes. The problem is that this is another half-truth. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has just released a report that calculates that the lifetime net cost to the U.S. taxpayer for the average adult Mexican immigrant is $55,200. That’s nearly $30 billion at current projected rates of immigration. There are strict and largely unchangeable demographic reasons for this net taxpayer loss. Almost two out of three adult Mexican immigrants have not completed high school. Mexican immigrants account for 22 percent of all high school dropouts in the labor force. Because of low education levels, Mexican workers earn significantly less than native American workers. Their tax payments are low but their use of welfare is high. Although they are but 4.2 percent of the nation’s total population, they study says, Mexican immigrants and their U.S.-born children under 18 account for 10.2 percent of all persons in poverty and 12.5 percent of those who do not have health insurance. Among Mexican families who have lived in the United States for more than 20 years and are legal residents, more than half live at or near poverty and one-third are uninsured. The lower educational attainment persists across the generations with high school drop rates two and one half times greater that among native Americans. "We need aliens to do work Americans won’t do." That’s another major argument. Again, a part of the sentence is left off. It should read – "we need illegal workers to do work Americans won’t do at the wages we pay and the conditions we want them to work under." The current system is not a glory of the unfettered market. It is a vast government subsidy scheme, according to columnist Allan Wall. American citizens profit from cheap labor while the American taxpayer foots the bill. Considering remittances, Mexico would rather export its labor rather than go to the expense of creating jobs at home. A prosperous Mexico is surely in the best interests of both nations, Wall states, but how can the Mexican economy mature if its principal asset remains cheap labor? The plan being advanced in Washington seems to want to accommodate additional millions of Mexican immigrants who do not plan to assimilate now or ever. Working in the United States, for them, is not about changing citizenship. It’s about making money to take or send back home. A President Fox Cabinet Officer, Juan Hernandez, in a speech in El Paso two weeks ago said " the Mexican population is 100 million in Mexico and 23 million in the United States." What a strange world indeed, Wall declares, when President Bush is negotiating U.S. immigration policy with another nation claiming jurisdiction over and allegiance from American citizens. The final issue, according to Steven Camarota, Director of Research for CIS, is that one cannot reasonably make an economic argument for a policy of importing unskilled labor. Their presence reduces wages for the 10 million uneducated workers who are already the lowest paid and whose real wages, in an Information Age, are in actual decline. George Borjas, a professor at Harvard, says that the accelerated flow of humans across the U.S. border is caused by income disparity. "The income gap between Mexico and the United States," he states, "is the largest income gap between any two continuous countries in the world. The 2000 Census shows that we are a nation of 30 million immigrants – nine of which are illegal – and that cohort is growing six times faster than the native population." Mexican immigrants are in direct competition for the jobs of American’s most vulnerable working poor – the uneducated trying to get beyond welfare. The Mexican proposal, at bottom, is a poverty-importation scheme, Camarota concludes. Cheap labor, he says, comes with a high cost. |
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