Thread: Illegal aliens need reason to stay home

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Illegal aliens need reason to stay home
Free trade has been disaster for Mexicans


By HILLARY NELSON


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March 05. 2006 8:00AM


It may be that if 9/11 hadn't intervened, President Bush would be remembered not for the war in Iraq but for immigration reform. Bush, as governor of a border state, had long wrestled with the troublesome question of illegal immigration into the United States from Mexico. Immigration reform, notably a guest worker program, was to have been a top priority for his administration.

Unfortunately, the war on terror intervened, and xenophobia has become, in some quarters, a patriotic virtue. Globalization, wage stagnation, the loss of decent manufacturing jobs, outsourcing and the threat of terrorism have made many Americans leery of the people who live outside our borders.

Anti-immigrant sentiment -which has a surprisingly long history in a country largely made up of immigrants to begin with - is once again on the rise. So-called Minutemen patrol the border with Mexico. In New Hampshire a local police chief had his moment in the Fox News sun when he tried to apply trespassing laws to undocumented immigrants passing through his town (a move that was later deemed illegal in court).

Each year about a million people immigrate legally to the United States. It's believed an additional 700,000 enter the United States illegally, up from 200,000 to 300,000 in the 1980s and '90s. About 11 million undocumented immigrants are currently living in the United States, the majority having fled abject poverty in Mexico and Central America. It's estimated that 9 percent of the population born in Mexico is currently living in the United States.

At least part of the blame for the enormous increase in the rate of illegal immigration by Mexicans into the United States can be attributed to the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed into law more than 10 years ago. While free trade was touted as the surest means to improve the lives of poor Mexicans, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says NAFTA has had the opposite effect.

Subsidized American farm products, like corn, have flooded the Mexican markets, destroying the livelihood of many farmers. At the same time, many factory jobs have left the country for China. Poor parents must choose between watching their children starve and working illegally in the United States.
The journey to the United States for an illegal immigrant is full of terrors - rape, robbery, death in the desert or the back of an airless truck. Many illegal immigrants, as documented by Sonia Nazario in her book Enrique's Journey, are children trying to

reunite with their parents. Boys and girls as young as 7 hitch rides on top of trains racing through Mexico, often falling prey to vicious gangs and the corrupt Mexican police, sometimes losing limbs or their lives beneath the wheels of the speeding freights.

The most hard-hearted among us can empathize with the plight of impoverished immigrants and can admire their pluck in trying to make a better life for themselves and their children. At the same time it is true that the influx of illegal immigrants places burdens upon resources like hospitals, social services and schools.

Too, illegal immigrants, lacking proper documentation and fearful of expulsion, are willing to work for low wages in poor conditions. Many American industries, such as agriculture, food service, slaughterhouses, child care, construction and landscaping rely heavily on illegal immigrants or immigrants on special work permits. Owners of such businesses claim that they can't find citizens willing to fill strenuous, often unpleasant jobs.

But the availability of cheaper illegal laborers, who often don't demand overtime or benefits and who will work under the table (allowing the employer to avoid paying employment taxes) means that wages are driven down and jobs are taken away from the poorest U.S. citizens. Those without high school diplomas, African-Americans and, ironically, legal Latino residents stand to lose the most from both illegal immigration and a guest worker program.

Everybody's problem

Illegal immigration is vexing for both conservatives and liberals. Republicans with connections to big business want a cheap immigrant workforce. At the same time, they must appease "America first" conservatives, working-class white people who fear an influx of foreigners.

For pro-union, race-inclusive liberals, a guest worker program is morally complex. On the one hand, they empathize with the poor and exploited immigrants in a very personal way. They want them to have good lives, to be able to feed their children. On the other hand, bringing in large numbers of guest workers may mean that the Wal-Marts in our economy will be able to pay their workers even less than they already do.

And then, what of the tiny dairy farms in New England trying to compete with giant agri-businesses and barely scraping by?

Once manned by large families, these small farms often rely on the cheap labor of illegal immigrants to stay afloat. Is it fair, or even possible, to make allowances for small, family-owned businesses and not for large industries? Will institutionalizing guest worker programs - even for compelling reasons, like saving family farms - create a permanent under-class in America?

Possible reforms

This year, a small group of lawmakers brought a series of anti-immigrant bills before the Legislature. The proposed legislation was largely unconstitutional, and so the bills have, for the most part, been deemed "inexpedient to legislate."

On the national level, the Senate is looking at competing immigration legislation - that of Sen. Arlen Specter and a proposal put forth jointly by John McCain and Ted Kennedy. Both propose a guest worker program, but the McCain-Kennedy bill allows guest workers eventually to become citizens. Fearful of the downward pressure on wages of such large-scale immigration, labor unions are divided on whether to support the bill.

To my mind, the most important part of McCain-Kennedy is that it seeks to cut off illegal immigration at its root - by ensuring that Mexico and Central America undergo an economic transformation, one that makes it possible for their citizens to make a living at home. Free education, micro-loans, the end of government corruption, modifications to NAFTA are all essential to a successful immigration policy.

If the United States allotted a tiny fraction of what it has spent in Iraq on foreign aid to Mexico and Central America, the huge outflow of people from south of the border into the United States could be stemmed, and the Minutemen could all go home.

(Monitor columnist Hillary Nelson lives in Canterbury.)

Originally Posted by Brian503a

To my mind, the most important part of McCain-Kennedy is that it seeks to cut off illegal immigration at its root - by ensuring that Mexico and Central America undergo an economic transformation, one that makes it possible for their citizens to make a living at home. Free education, micro-loans, the end of government corruption, modifications to NAFTA are all essential to a successful immigration policy.

If the United States allotted a tiny fraction of what it has spent in Iraq on foreign aid to Mexico and Central America, the huge outflow of people from south of the border into the United States could be stemmed, and the Minutemen could all go home.

It would be nice if Mexico reformed, but the McKennedy bill only "promotes" these initiatives, it is all talk and no action. There is no economic incentive or hammer to get the rich in Mexico to do anything different. Any additional money we send them will be wasted just like what we already send them right now.