http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/n ... 266390.htm

Posted on Sun, Nov. 27, 2005

It's time to put a stop to illegal immigration
Congress must muster the will to take tough but necessary actions
ED WILLIAMS


More than two decades ago, a friend invited my wife, Marylyn, and me and a few others to her family's tobacco farm to tour the place and see a tobacco auction.

The day of the auction, her father and I -- the two earliest risers in the group -- were drinking coffee at the kitchen table and talking about the tobacco business.

He described the work that goes into making a crop. I asked where he found laborers to do it.

Illegal aliens, he replied.

I stared at him for a minute. He didn't smile.

Look, I said, I'm a journalist. What if you tell me you're hiring illegal aliens and the Observer sends a bunch of reporters up here to look into it?

Go ahead, he said. If we didn't hire illegal aliens, there wouldn't be a tobacco crop. You think the government's going to shut down the tobacco industry?

I thought he might be kidding a city boy, but over time I kept an eye on our stories about illegal immigrants in seasonal farm work. I concluded he was pulling my leg only a little bit.

For decades the United States has all but ignored a flood of illegal immigration. The reason is simple: Illegal immigrants work hard and cheap and don't complain for fear of being sent home.

One result is occasional outrages such as a fatal collision on I-485 here a few days ago. A Mexican was charged with driving drunk on the wrong side of the road going 100 mph. Records show he had been caught in this country and sent back to Mexico 17 times since 1996.

The result of our porous borders? The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 11 million illegal immigrants are in the United States today, up from 8.4 million in 2000 -- a 30 percent increase in just five years.

Not all these illegal entrants come seeking work. In 2000, the CIA estimated that 50,000 women and children a year from Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America were smuggled into the United States to serve as prostitutes, servants or captive laborers.

Otis Graham Jr., an eminent historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, now living in retirement in Chapel Hill, explores the problem in a splendid overview titled "Unguarded Gates: A History of America's Immigration Crisis" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).

He points out that virtually unrestricted immigration may meet with approval from elites and employers eager for cheap, compliant labor, but not from citizens who compete with them for jobs or better wages. He thinks public opinion is mounting against illegal immigration.

I see evidence of that shift in the interest of U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, a Charlotte Republican. I disagree with some of her immigration proposals, but in my three decades as an editor here I've seen few politicians better attuned to the public mood.

America is a nation of immigrants. They contribute immeasurably to our culture and well-being. I'm married to the daughter of an immigrant. It is not anti-immigrant bias that prompts my concern, but practical considerations such as these:

1. If our borders are open to foreigners sneaking in to work, they're also open to foreign terrorists with trouble in mind.

2. Illegal immigrants mock our laws and discourage foreigners seeking to come here legally.

3. Illegal immigrants are vulnerable to abuse by bosses and crooks because they fear if they seek the protection our laws provide they'll expose their status and risk deportation.

4. The fatal wreck I cited shows one way illegal immigrants burden our society: They don't get drivers licenses and therefore aren't required to pass driving tests or buy insurance. In some areas they strain legal, social and medical services.

5. Their presence casts a shadow on the millions of immigrants who are here legally.

To clean up this mess, Congress must take three steps:

• Create a guest worker program similar to the one President Bush has proposed. America isn't going to send 11 million people home. Identifying them and legalizing and limiting their stay in this country will enable authorities from that point on to determine who is here illegally.

• Once a workable ID system is in place, require employers to hire only workers here legally. Impose tough sanctions on those who hire illegal immigrants.

• Spend what's necessary to secure our borders. It won't be cheap, and it won't work perfectly, but it's necessary to make our immigration laws something other than an international joke.

Ed

Williams