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Dan Walters: California has huge stake in rational immigration policy
By Dan Walters -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, May 29, 2005
Every few weeks, hundreds of people line up outside the Crest Theatre, two blocks from the state Capitol in downtown Sacramento, for ceremonies that will bestow U.S. citizenship. Their celebratory mood and immense variety of nationalities and ethnic groups attest to California's magnetic attraction to those seeking better lives.

As Sacramento welcomes the newest U.S. citizens, 600 miles to the southeast, men and women are dying from thirst and sunstroke in the Arizona desert as they, too, seek better lives.

What's wrong with this picture? Everything. Had we set out to deliberately create an utterly illogical, unworkable and inhumane immigration policy, we could have scarcely done worse than what piecemeal decrees and political posturing have wrought.

We are a nation of immigrants, and in California, that should be bracketed in exclamation marks. Immigrants and children born to immigrant mothers now account for 100 percent of California's population growth (births and deaths are otherwise balanced), making it the most culturally diverse society in human history. It's estimated that a quarter to a third of all immigration to the United States, legal and illegal, comes to California, whose diverse economy needs low-skill, low-wage labor, as well as highly skilled, highly paid professional and technical workers. California has, therefore, an acute stake in a rational immigration policy.

The human flow into Arizona and the backlash from self-named Minutemen and others have their roots in California's last political dust-up over the issue in 1994, when then-Gov. Pete Wilson backed a successful ballot measure aimed at denying public services to illegal immigrants. Although Proposition 187 was later set aside by the courts, its strong vote scared politicians all the way up to Bill Clinton's White House, who worried that California voters were igniting a political movement on immigration that would sweep the country just as the Proposition 13 tax revolt helped propel Ronald Reagan into the White House.

Clinton, who faced re-election in 1996 and needed California's votes, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and other politicians wanted to insulate themselves from allegations that they were soft on illegal immigration. Accordingly, the Clinton administration tightened up the Mexico-California border with new fences, electronic devices and other bits of hardware and with more Border Patrol officers.

As the formal and informal border crossings closest to San Diego tightened, the flow of immigrants drifted eastward, first into the California desert and later into Arizona, seeking the paths of least resistance to meet the demand for labor in California and other states.

Therein lies the crux of the problem. The American economy has jobs that the immigrants want to fill, but the natural supply-demand equation runs afoul of an official policy that denies economic and human reality - much as Prohibition made liquor illegal and fostered the rise of organized crime.

Meanwhile, anti-immigration radio talk jocks and politicians posture, and self-appointed pro-immigrant advocates contend, with equal detachment from reality, that illegal immigrants should have the same status as those who follow the law.

Common sense, good economics and simple humanity would support a system of legal cross-border labor migration that would undercut human smugglers, make it easier to go after drug couriers and potential terrorists, increase tax revenues, dignify workers who are now exploited, and provide a path to citizenship for those who desire it.

European countries and Canada have long-standing guest worker programs. We welcome Chinese basketball players, Canadian actors, Indian engineers and other temporary workers in highly paid jobs, but for some reason, we shun those seeking equally vital, but less prestigious, work.

President Bush says he wants a guest worker program, and more thoughtful members of Congress advocate it. But nativists and those who exploit the turmoil for broadcast ratings points or political gain - on both the right and left - don't want to resolve the immigration dilemma any more than Al Capone wanted Prohibition to end. That's a very good reason for it to happen.

About the writer:

* Reach Dan Walters at (916) 321-1195 or dwalters@sacbee.com. Back columns: www.sacbee.com/walters