Too much is at stake to ignore immigration

Posted: Tuesday, October 26, 2010 4:00 pm

Hub Opinion | 0 comments

There has never been a better time to fix the U.S. immigration system than today, and that’s because so much of the nation’s economy rests on the shoulders of undocumented workers.

The shock waves would be enormous without the undocumented laborers who work in so many areas. According to some estimates, these people fill as much as 5 percent of the jobs in the U.S. economy.

Imagine the calamity if, for example, a major share of the employees at packing plants suddenly were deported. How long could the communities in which they live maintain themselves?

Ongoing operations at the packinghouses would certainly be threatened, but what about landlords and retailers who would lose their tenants and customers with a mass deportation?

If such a situation were to occur in south-central Nebraska, it would be difficult to rapidly find replacement workers. Curtailed operations at the packing plants would hurt schools, churches and communities in general, along with the farmers and ranchers who supply the animals for the facilities.

The scenario we described could happen.

How does the United States fix its immigration problem?

First, we should provide a path to citizenship without requiring undocumented workers to leave as punishment for entering illegally. Deporting hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers harms the workers and their families, and it is impractical because it also harms the communities where the people work and live.

Next step in fixing the problem is for the federal government to enforce its immigration laws. That means securing U.S. borders, but it also means setting quotas so our nation admits people with the knowledge and skills our economy needs.

Because our broken system promotes illegal immigration, it produces a flood of people who may or may not be suited to the jobs here. We should develop a system so people with the knowledge and skills needed in the United States have an easier path than they do today. As it is, many skilled professionals discover that the legal path to U.S. citizenship is so expensive and time-consuming, they give up.

It is time to amend our laws so immigrants can follow a reasonable path to citizenship, just as earlier generations of Americans did.

The United States still is the land of promise. We still have hundreds of thousands of jobs for people who have little or no opportunity in their homelands to support their families and better their lives. Given the choice, they would much rather be here legally.

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