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At La Raza conference, panel addresses immigration reform
By BRIAN SCHEID
Bucks County Courier Times

PHILADELPHIA -The growing U.S. movement against illegal immigration - including a local group - has been spurred by frustration and discomfort over this country's flawed immigration policies, a panel of immigration officials said Tuesday.

"The immigration system doesn't work," said Cecilia Munoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza's Office of Research, Advocacy and Legislation. "The system is broken and it needs to be fixed."

Munoz hosted a panel discussion on immigration reform Tuesday morning during La Raza's annual conference at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia.

An estimated 11 million illegal immigrants work in this country and about 100,000 of them are in Pennsylvania, according to Regan Cooper. She's a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizen Coalition, an advocacy group for immigrants in this state.

Over the weekend, members of the Warminster-based Pennsylvanians Against Illegal Immigration and the county chapter of the Minuteman Project protested outside La Raza's conference. John Ryan, a Quakertown resident who recently launched the Pennsylvania Minutemen, said the purpose of the protest was to call attention to the U.S. government's lack of effort to quell illegal immigration.

However, the groups' desire to keep illegal immigrants out of America and deport illegal workers could cripple the U.S. economy, according to Angelo Amador, director of immigration policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
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Amador said about one in every four "essential workers" are illegal immigrants. These are people working in jobs that don't require high school or college degrees, such as construction workers, maids, maintenance people, dishwashers or janitors.

"The bottom line is we need immigrants to fill these jobs," Amador said.

Part of the problem is that Americans are becoming more educated than ever and fewer are willing to take low-paying jobs with no educational requirements, he said.

Tamar Jacoby, a researcher with a conservative think-tank called The Manhattan Institute, said more than half of American men dropped out of high school in the 1960s to take unskilled labor jobs. That number is now less than 10 percent.

"We need these workers, but we don't have a legal channel for them to come here, so people are here illegally," she said. "We have a nudge-nudge, wink-wink immigration law that doesn't really get enforced and that's what bugs people."

Panel members said a recent federal bill introduced by Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., that would give current and future illegal immigrants an easier path to American citizenship was a good start to reforming immigration policies.

Brian Scheid can be reached at 215-949-4165 or bscheid@phillyBurbs.com

July 20, 2005 5:25 AM