Borders & Amnesty
Asking for trouble.

By Thomas E. Wood, president of Americans Against Discrimination and Preferences
February 28, 2002 9:25 a.m.

he 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.