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Immigration issues fuel debate at forum
By Dwayne Pickels
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, October 6, 2005

Whether they landed at Ellis Island or ran across the Rio Grande, immigrants are an issue that has stymied American political thinkers since the days of the Founding Fathers.

Four such thinkers took turns tackling that issue Wednesday at a Civitas Forum at St. Vincent College titled, "Reconsidering Immigration and Citizenship in the 21st Century."

"It's a topic made pressing by its centrality to the great conflicts in which we currently find ourselves embroiled," said Bradley C.S. Watson, the college's Philip M. McKenna professor in American and Western political thought, who hosted the forum.

"The Pittsburgh metropolitan area has one of the lowest numbers of immigrants of metropolitan areas around the country," said speaker Stephen A. Camarota. "But immigration affects so many things, and there are so many aspects to it."

Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., reported that the number of immigrants to the United States jumped from 9.6 million in 1970 to more than 35 million this year.

Many immigrants also live in poverty and lack high school diplomas, he said.

"Bringing in lots of people with little to no education has enormous fiscal implications," Camarota said.

There are also an estimated 10 million to 12 million illegal aliens in the United States, he said, noting that 60 percent to 70 percent of them come from Mexico. Some 850,000 new illegal aliens enter the country each year.

But, "despite the widespread perception, America is not being flooded with immigrants," said speaker Daniel T. Griswold, associate director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies.

"The number of foreign-born people who settle here each year, legally and illegally, is about 1 million to 1.2 million," Griswold said. "In the context of a U.S. population that has reached 292 million, the current immigration rate is about four immigrants per 1,000 U.S. residents per year."

Griswold was respectfully at odds with Camarota on several issues.

"I believe that immigrants and native-born Americans alike can find work in a dynamic and flexible $11 trillion economy," he said. "Immigrant workers willingly fill important niches in the labor market. They gravitate to occupations where the supply of workers falls short of demand ... immigrants do not compete directly with the vast majority of American workers."

But Camarota contended that "it's absurd on its face to say that immigrants do jobs that Americans don't want to do. That argument is silly. It's absurd."

He cited statistics that showed nearly 1 million illegal immigrants work construction jobs, compared to nearly 6 million native-born people who work the same jobs.

Nonetheless, Camarota admitted, while they often stay away from many social services, "illegal immigrants are using about $10 billion a year more in services than they are paying in taxes."

"We've tried enforcing the law, and it has failed," Griswold said, calling for "comprehensive immigration reform. We need to change a broken system so that it works."

Speaker Noah Pickus, associate professor of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, offered a more philosophical solution.

"We shouldn't get caught up in the debate over whether immigrants are assimilating. They are," Pickus said, citing a need to examine deeper questions. "Who are we? Who do we want to be? Who do we want immigrants to be?"

Pickus said that "a kind of conversion needs to take place. It's not just a matter of being here and obeying the laws. Becoming a citizen means something more."

Current immigration policies show "wild swings" to extremes, he said. "Either we police our borders completely or we offer amnesty to everyone ... we get ourselves into a straitjacket when we say it's an either-or proposition."

Pickus added, "we have a policy in which we don't invest much in immigrants and we don't demand much from them. We neglect them, and it hurts them and it hurts us."

In addition to college students, the well-attended forum also hosted high school students from Greater Latrobe, Hempfield Area, Laurel Valley and Ligonier Valley and Somerset, as well as Geibel Catholic High School in Connellsville, Fayette County.