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Immigration reform can only do so much



UNION-TRIBUNE
May 28, 2006

By approving comprehensive immigration reform, the Senate is looking into the future. Meanwhile, the enforcement-only posse in the House is obsessing over the past – specifically 1986.

That's when Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, or IRCA, one of the most significant pieces of immigration legislation in U.S. history and one of the most roundly criticized.

The bill, which was signed into law by President Reagan, was significant because it set out to achieve three major objectives: grant legal status to at least 1 million illegal immigrants (the actual number swelled to nearly 3 million); impose sanctions on the employers of illegal immigrants; and secure the border through increased enforcement.

In the current debate, anti-amnesty Republicans have been bad-mouthing the law. They say they don't want to repeat old mistakes.

I've been wondering how the father of the legislation felt about all this. So I dialed the sage of Cody, Wyo., former Sen. Alan Simpson.

Simpson isn't just the chief sponsor of the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which morphed into IRCA. He is also a friend and was one of my graduate school professors.

He's also delightfully quotable, like when he said that this debate is all about “emotion, fear, guilt and racism.” Or when he said that a lot of the public concern over immigration starts when you “see people in the back yard who are roasting a pig and making a lot of noise and (you) don't understand what language they're talking.” Or when he said to be wary of guest workers because “there's never been a temporary person in the United States; they all want to stay and they do.” Or on his opposition to sending the National Guard to the border because “you're going to have a redneck in there every once in a while who is going to cause real pain.”

I asked him about the Republicans – members of his own party – who are saying that his law was a boo-boo and that it failed because it granted amnesty and never secured the border.

“These people,” he said. “If anybody knew what the hell was going on, there'd be more reason (in this debate). The only reason it failed is because we didn't have a more secure identifier.”

By that, Simpson means something that is in the mix this time – a secure, tamper-proof identification card that lets employers be sure that the people they hire are here legally, and allows authorities to come down hard on those employers who continue to hire illegal workers.

Without that card, you lose half the game. And when you put the word “knowingly” into the law (to violate IRCA, an employer must “knowingly” hire an illegal immigrant), you've lost the other half.

On this point, my professor and I disagree. He insists he had to put in that “knowingly” qualifier to give employers a fair shake and to get the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (it didn't work).

I say it was an invitation for employers to play dumb, and that for 20 years, many of them have continued to hire illegal immigrants and then played it off like Sgt. Schultz in “Hogan's Heroes”: “I know nothing.”

But on the big question – whether it was a mistake to grant amnesty to all those people – Simpson offers no apologies.

“I don't have any qualms about 3 million people from 93 countries coming forward,” he said. “I like that. And I still see those people out in the street, and it pleases me greatly.”

So what do we do about the 11 million to 12 million here currently?

“You have to do something to give them a legal status,” he said. “They might have to put up five grand or two grand or 150 bucks, but they've got to do something to come into one of the best countries on Earth.”

I think Simpson concedes too much to his critics. It's not fair to say that IRCA failed. It's true that the law didn't stop illegal immigration. But no law is going to do that.

America had illegal immigration 20 years ago, and it has it now, and it'll have it 20 years from now. It will be with us as long as employers hire illegal immigrants because they work cheaper and harder than natives.

That's not about the law of man. It's about the law of nature.



Navarrette can be reached via e-mail at ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com.