Thread: Job magnet attracts the illegals

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Job magnet attracts the illegals
By Dan Moffett

Palm Beach Post Columnist

Sunday, July 23, 2006

I'm constantly on the lookout for insightful opinions about U.S. immigration policy, which means I'm left with this constant feeling that I'm trying to find the beer cooler at a Baptist picnic.

Occasionally, however, I do stumble onto something.

I credit T.J. Bonner for restoring my faith in serendipity. Mr. Bonner is president of the National Border Patrol Council, a labor union that represents about 10,500 U.S. Border Patrol agents. He has close to 30 years' experience guarding the borders.

Mr. Bonner was talking to The Associated Press about building fences and stationing National Guardsmen along the U.S.-Mexico border, and he offered this assessment: "As long as illegal immigrants can readily obtain employment in the United States, neither barriers nor increased staffing will discourage millions of impoverished people from crossing our borders annually."

You will read and hear many comments on immigration during the months ahead, but none will be more accurate or important than Mr. Bonner's. He points to the part of the immigration debate Americans do not like to consider: the demand for cheap labor to run the U.S. economy. Mr. Bonner is a demand-sider when it comes to immigration economics.

So, election-year politicking has Congress talking about putting 850 miles of fencing along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico. And President Bush already has sent thousands of National Guard troops there. But Mr. Bonner, who has considerable expertise in the matter, says it won't work. He told a Senate committee this year that the nation has to "turn off the employment magnet" to stop the illegal crossings. If it doesn't? "You could put several million border patrol agents along those borders and it wouldn't be enough."

If Mr. Bonner were president, he would crack down on employers. He would make it impossible for people to work here unless they have the legal right to work here. He would create a legal system to bring in foreign workers. He also would crack down on identity fraud and use advanced technology - a biometric system - to screen people who are entering the country.

"You have people who are making on average in Mexico $4 a day and they can come north and earn 20 to 50 times that much doing unskilled work," Mr. Bonner told Congress. "Of course they're going to come. We can't blame them for coming across. You and I would do the same thing if we were in their shoes. But, until the magnet is turned off, we can throw all the resources we want to at that problem and it will not prevent impoverished, hungry people from coming."

Mr. Bonner said he once caught and released the same group of people four times during an eight-hour shift. That's how determined migrants are to get here. He said the days of the "mom-and-pop" smuggling operations are over. Human smugglers are members of organized crime cartels and charge up to $3,000 per person - 10 times more than even a year or two ago - to lead migrants across the border. Someone from China might pay $50,000, Mr. Bonner said. It has become big business, and vigilante groups such as the Minutemen are helping to drive up the price of human cargo but achieving little else.

"You may think, well, where do they get that money?" Mr. Bonner said. "They sell themselves into indentured servitude, seven to 10 years, generally, that they work for nothing. This is human slavery."

Shutting off the employment magnet would put smugglers and slave-traders out of work. Shutting off the magnet would remove the incentive for migrants to risk life and limb to get here. It would send Minutemen and National Guardsmen back to their patios.

Rather than spend $2 billion to put more fencing on the border, Congress could spend money on workplace enforcement, penalize disreputable employers and create the guest-worker program President Bush wants that would give immigrants a legal path to come here. The government has the wherewithal to shut off the magnet. Whether it has the political will is the harder question.

Mr. Bonner has been looking this problem in the face for three decades. When he talks, the nation should listen.

Problem is some don't find jobs and they end up on welfare and using social services. If they do find work, they import jobless family members. It's not just the jobs, it's also very much about the perks and freebees. The illegal alien safety net.

Dixie