'Poor immigrants'

By James P. Pinkerton
Sunday, June 3, 2007


"Those who are looking to find fault with this bill will always be able to find something." That was President Bush at his May 24 news conference defending his proposed immigration reform legislation. He didn't quite say to critics "Bring 'em on" but was close enough to get this critic going.
Of course, the president immediately went on to laud the "comprehensive" virtues of his bill, urging its congressional enactment. But if we examine the legislation, we indeed will see plenty of faults -- such that "comprehensive" becomes a catalog of costly flaws.

As the business joke goes, "We lose money on each sale -- but that's OK, because we make it up on volume!"

Specifically, Uncle Sam is losing money, on balance, with new immigrants. It's one thing to import high-spending European playboys or Hong Kong billionaires but it's another to bring in poor Third Worlders.



Harvard economist George Borjas has been arguing for decades that hungry immigrants undercut the wages of lower-income Americans. That's sort of an obvious point: Markets work. But only recently has Borjas' careful scholarship been accepted by the broader political culture.
Greg Anrig of the liberal-leaning The Century Foundation, for example, recently blasted the "moral bankruptcy" of the "guest workers" program, deriding it as "a modern form of serfdom." Of course it's a modern form of serfdom -- serfs are cheap.

As Borjas asks in his own blog, "Why would employers spend so much lobbying for guest workers if the program didn't benefit them?"

But even those Americans who like the idea of low-wage labor -- as a way of keeping prices down, not to mention busting unions -- should think again. Because the reality of today, as opposed to the Ellis Island era, is that new Americans collect lots of social benefits. One way or another, they get welfare and Social Security and their kids go to public schools.

Some might argue, of course, for the withholding of such services to noncitizens. But that's not only not nice, it's not smart. We don't want tubercular people coughing up their lungs on city streets.

All of which means that "inexpensive" immigrants turn out to be expensive after all. Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation estimates that the total net social cost of amnesty -- oops, "earned citizenship" -- for 12 million illegals would be $2.5 trillion over 30 years.

These numbers are subject to change, of course, as details of the 347-page bill come into focus. The Boston Globe notes that the bill waives the back taxes of those receiving amnesty. The budget numbers would dip further into red ink with a national health insurance plan.

Dollar totals aside, the greater problem with the president's immigration bill is his attitude. As his news conference made clear, Bush has signed on to the sentimental pro-immigrant narrative, in which "honest" and "hardworking" folks are forced by cruel circumstance to come to America.

And if they have to commit a crime to get here? If they join a criminal "coyote" conspiracy to cross the border? Well, Bush obviously thinks that the end -- "feed their families" -- justifies the means. So in the most literal sense, "bring 'em on" -- to the USA.

Bush bids to be remembered not as the president who brought democratization to Iraq but rather as the president who brought Brazil-ification to the United States.

That is, who brought a demographic transformation of America that increased inequality and multiculturalism -- the proven formulas for debilitating class and ethnic warfare.

In Brazil, politics have oscillated between right-wing authoritarianism, in which the rich clamp down on the unruly poor, and left-wing populism and socialism, in which the poor wreak revenge.

Most Americans don't want that, of course -- not even Bush. But in his desperation for a "legacy" beyond Iraq, he can find no fault in anything the Democrats will agree to.

James P. Pinkerton is a columnist for Newsday

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