Thread: Immigration reform starts with confidence in law

http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials ... 368191.asp

Immigration reform starts with confidence in law
Posted: Nov. 5, 2005

Again, lawmakers are debating identification, this time because your driver's license may lose its wings. The debate, however, is about something bigger.

A bill halfway through the Legislature would keep the state from giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants and would tie licenses' expirations to that of visas. Federal law bars licenses from the 10 states that don't yet do this from being used to board a plane as of 2008.

Those against this say illegal immigrants will drive anyhow, unlicensed and untested - though that presumes people who flunk the test stay off the road now.

Those favoring the idea cite federal law and note that a visa expiration on his license would have flagged Mohammed Atta before he took out the World Trade Center. Most of all, they're just galled that we're talking about legal ID for gate-crashers.

The Wisconsin bill makes us ask: Is ID a good checkpoint to catch people who shouldn't be here? The answer depends on how bad you think it is that there are lots of people here illegally, driving or not.

No one seems to think it's good. Christine Neumann-Ortiz, head of the immigrants'-rights group Voces de la Frontera, opposes restricting licenses. She also feels the University of Wisconsin should offer in-state rates to illegal immigrants. She favors reform that critics call amnesty. She's taking young actors to Wisconsin schools with a play that promotes her cause.

But even she says immigration is broken, with millions forced into undocumented exploitation because there aren't enough legal ways for Mexicans to immigrate.

To widely acknowledge a problem doesn't cure it. Neumann-Ortiz is an outlier on the left; the center of the discussion, however, is among conservatives: What gets fixed first, how do you fix it and how many people get to stay?

Any answer needs to start with four premises.

First, U.S. immigration exists to benefit the U.S. We owe no one, but for a few humanitarian exceptions, the right to immigrate.

That said, it's plain that immigration serves the country well. People who resist any crackdown on illegal immigration say we'd be left without meatpackers if we don't accept broad illegality. They're wrong: Wink-and-nudge industries would have to pay more or automate or think of some new way of surviving without cheap, easily cowed labor, but they'd adjust to obeying the law.

If you accept that free trade, while tough on uncompetitive companies, benefits us with lower costs for everyone else, the argument holds for the free flow of labor, too. Ed A. Fallone, who teaches immigration law at Marquette University, points out that there are very few avenues for low-skilled would-be immigrants without family connections. That's why so many sneak in, he says - that and American demand for labor.

But we can ask that they become Americans. Those favoring more immigration need to concede that it is not racist either to urge assimilation or to fear the kind of ethnic fragmentation we see in Quebec, the Balkans or elsewhere. Cultural diversity may be invigorating, but the cultural secession of any broad part of American geography should not be welcomed by government or social mores.

Still, immigrants do change cultures. Even if we wanted to empower the state to dictate the language of store signs or pop culture, such meddling hasn't kept American influence out of Quebec or France.

But governments must control borders. If Arizona volunteers in lawn chairs can spot people-smugglers, our government can do better. Maybe it's time to start busting some bosses who depend on illegal labor. Or, for that matter, asking license applicants whether they're here legally. To do otherwise is to surrender control of immigration.

Those who dismiss this as Mexico-bashing disregard credible published reports that the porous southern border has attracted people-smugglers from the Mideast as well.

"If I was trying to sneak into the United States, would I fly into Fort Lauderdale?" asks state Rep. Mark Pettis (R-Hertel), sponsor of the driver's license bill. No, he says: "I think I'd go to Mexico" and take advantage of the overwhelmed border.

The border may be overwhelmed because so many willing workers on one side see so many willing employers on the other yet have no legal way to immigrate. But those of us who see logic in letting in substantially more immigrants will never persuade our fellow Americans if most people see the present widespread disregard for the law - or in the case of driver's licenses, a willful ignoring of it - and conclude that the country can't manage even the levels of immigration it has agreed to now.

If a product or service can no longer be economically produced in the United States it makes more sense to let the production move out. That is better than to move in labor which can only pay for neccessar food, clothing and shelter, education and health by taxpayer subsidy.

I personally think the title of this article should read, in stead of

Immigration reform starts with confidence in law

It should be

Immigration reform starts with confidence in the Lawmakers.

I don't have any confidence in them.