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Washington Times recently broke the story that the Bush administration
is pushing Congress to act on granting amnesty to millions of Mexican
workers living and working illegally in the United States. This
move came as a surprise to many — including illegal aliens
themselves and their amnesty and immigration advocates, who after
9/11 had lost hope of winning amnesty.
The political
motivation for the administration's decision is clear enough: winning
a larger share of the Hispanic vote by overcoming the perception,
on the part of many of these voters, that the Republican party is
anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic.
Another motivation
— to expand the labor supply, particularly of low-wage labor,
to the level that the administration and the business community
feel the country needs — is more problematic. While there is
undoubtedly a consensus for continuing immigration at some level
particularly for low-wage workers in agriculture and the service
industries, there is sharp controversy about what the immigration
targets should be. Furthermore, it is not clear why amnesty is needed
to secure the desired or required number of workers. After all,
American businesses already have far more foreign workers (including
illegal ones) than they are going to get through any amnesty proposal.
According to at least one amnesty advocate who was cited by the
Washington Times, the Bush administration is unlikely to
propose an amnesty on the same scale as the 1986 amnesty program.
What Bush is likely to advance instead, she said, is a proposal
to grant green cards to illegal immigrants "who have been in
the country for a long time, are employed, have family connections
here, have passed background checks and have no criminal record."
Because such a program would offer amnesty to only a subset of illegal
immigrants, it could not provide a general solution to the problem
of illegal immigration. It will therefore be difficult to frame
an amnesty proposal simply as a response to the perception of American
business that American needs more workers.
Of course,
having 8 million illegal immigrants in the country (the Census
Bureau's own current estimate) is a huge problem in and of itself.
It does not follow, however, that now is the time to fix it.
The trouble
with attempting to address the issue now is that we are not even
remotely close to achieving secure borders. Given the national anxiety
over 9/11, it is this simple fact that makes the idea premature,
and that is likely to prove the political Achilles heel of the administration's
amnesty proposal — whatever its details turn out to be.
The usual reply
to this concern is that it is only non-Israeli Middle Easterners
in the country illegally who might pose a security risk. But this
is an insufficient reply. Bush's paramount concern is homeland defense
and the security of our borders, which is as it should be. Even
if one assumes there isn't a single Mexican or non-Arab Middle Easterner
who has entered the country illegally with the intention of doing
us harm, the fact remains that all illegal immigrants begin by breaking
our immigration laws, and inevitably break further laws when procuring
the "breeder documents" and other false IDs that enable
them to get green cards and obtain employment. Because any amnesty
program will forgive — and in fact reward — illegal entry,
it's hard to see how it will foster respect for the integrity of
our borders.
Given the importance
assigned by Americans to domestic-security issues in the aftermath
of 9/11, Bush will have to do more than make a strong case for the
economic and legal advantages of "normalizing" the status
of illegal aliens. To sell the proposal to Congress and to the electorate,
he will also have to show that an amnesty won't make protecting
our borders and maintaining internal security even more difficult.
For the foreseeable
future, the number of immigrants wanting to come to the United States
will be significantly larger than the number that Congress and the
American people are likely to want. Consequently, the problem of
illegal immigration will remain as long as the borders are not secure.
One would therefore not expect an amnesty program to provide a solution
to the problem of illegal immigration, since those unable to obtain
legal entry to the U.S. will reasonably conclude from amnesty that
what is illegal now will inevitably be made legal sooner or later.
The problem then becomes simply one of entering the country one
way or the other, and managing to stay here until one's illegal
status is eventually "normalized."
According to
an INS
study [this is a pdf file; requires Adobe Acrobat] of illegal
immigration between 1987 and 1997, this is exactly what happened
after the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986. The INS found
that by 1997, all of the 2.7 million illegal aliens who had been
amnestied had been replaced by new illegals. One such precedent
is bad enough. The impact of a second amnesty conveying the same
message — even in a restricted or partial form — would
likely be even worse.
This objection
couldn't be leveled if the borders were secure. Clearly, however,
we are not going to be able to secure our borders within the time
frame the administration has in mind.
In view of
the enormous
difficulties involved in securing our borders, recent statements
by President Bush and others in the administration really make one
wonder how carefully the decision to move on the immigration issue
has been thought out.
On February
6, President
Bush urged immigrants living illegally in the U.S. to return
home. He also suggested that some foreigners would face scrutiny
as part of the U.S. efforts to tighten border security — particularly
those who are "not supposed to be here for more than a period
of time." White House spokesman Ari Fleischer explained that
Bush was not calling for a roundup of all illegal immigrants. "People
who are willing to lie on their visa applications have been shown
to be potential problems,'' Fleischer said. He added that Bush's
comments were aimed, for instance, at "people who say they're
going to attend a particular university and then don't." What
Fleischer did not explain is why visa absconders, who enter the
country legally and then overstay their welcome, are any less objectionable
in principle — or, for that matter, any less potentially dangerous
— than illegals who do not even observe the courtesy of notifying
immigration authorities that they are entering the country in the
first place.
Bush administration
officials have also argued that granting legal status to illegal
workers could
stem the flow of immigrants, if combined with better law-enforcement
cooperation with Mexico. This is a big if. Given the level of corruption
in Mexico — and the financial incentives involved in defeating
America's immigration laws — no one can have any confidence
in its ability to help defend America's security interests at the
border. Even Tom Ridge has had to publicly acknowledge the
"organizational challenges," as he put it, of achieving
security on our southern border for this reason.
Nor is the
problem of immigration fraud confined to Mexico. We have the same
problem here. One of the more lurid recent stories concerns a
Tennessee license examiner who died on February 10 in an automobile
accident under suspicious circumstances — shortly before she
was scheduled to appear in court on charges that she had sold driver's
licenses to five Middle Eastern men, primarily from New York, who
did not have proper identification. Since then, an FBI agent has
testified that the crash was caused by arson. The matter is currently
under intense investigation.
Other kinds
of immigration fraud are undoubtedly widespread. Recently, the GAO
conducted a study at the request of Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner
Jr. (R., Wis.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep.
George W. Gekas (R., Pa.), chairman of the immigration and claims
subcommittee. The study
found that the INS has no idea of the extent of the problem.
Sensenbrenner and Gekas denounced the agency for its "complete
failure… to take the steps necessary to protect the people
of the United States and the immigration system itself from criminals
manipulating the benefits process."
Legislative
obstacles to any amnesty proposal will not be confined to the GOP.
It was already widely felt before 9/11 — on both sides of the
aisle — that meaningful and effective INS reform must precede
any proposal to "normalize" illegal aliens. This sentiment
has undoubtedly gained strength since. For Democrats, there is the
further problem that their leaders in the Senate and House, in a
game of one-upsmanship, declared before 9/11 that they would support
an amnesty proposal only if it is made available to all racial and
ethnic groups and nationalities. This position now presents a major
problem for Democrats. Any proposal to extend amnesty to illegal
aliens from terrorist-exporting countries in the Middle East will
have little or no chance of getting through Congress, given the
enormous logistical difficulties involved in adequately screening
the estimated 100,000
illegal aliens from the Middle East before "normalizing"
them.
The 8 million
illegal aliens the Census Bureau has estimated are already in the
U.S. are not going anywhere anytime soon: The number is simply too
large. The temptation is therefore to "normalize" them,
or at least a significant subset of them, overnight, or at least
quickly. But this temptation should be resisted. Amnesties will
not solve the problem of illegal immigration in a world in which
there are far more individuals wishing to enter the U.S. than the
U.S. wants, and in which our borders are not secure. If anything,
under these circumstances amnesty programs actually exacerbate the
problem.
First do no
harm. That is how Congress is likely to approach the issue, and
if so, the impetus will be very strong to do nothing — at least
until other pressing security and immigration issues are resolved.
It is the lack
of secure borders that makes any amnesty proposal so politically
risky, since the American electorate is likely to see it as motivated
by a desire to appeal to an important bloc of voters, regardless
of domestic-security concerns. For a president whose unprecedented
popularity is largely a result of how he has addressed security
issues in the wake of Sept. 11, the decision to raise the amnesty
issue now, when the country is not even close to achieving secure
borders, is a surprising one.
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