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San Diego's stake in the debate over immigration aired

By Diane Lindquist
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
June 15, 2006

San Diego's location on the border and its large pool of undocumented workers give it a major stake in the current immigration debate, political, academic and business leaders from both sides of the border said yesterday.

Unauthorized workers make up as much as a tenth of San Diego's work force, said San Diego State University economist James Gerber. Their labor has helped sustain the growth of the area's housing and service economies.

The San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce sponsored the program at the Doubletree Hotel Hazard Center on the immigration legislation under consideration in the U.S. Congress.

Panelist Cesar Aguilera, owner of A&L Tile, which has worked on several large downtown construction projects, said legal workers in San Diego's robust construction industry are in short supply. Inability to find authorized workers is severely hurting his company, said Aguilera, who uses a federal verification system to check the legal status of job applicants.

“We started the application process (for a major downtown San Diego project) a few months ago, and we haven't been able to find the workers we need,” he said. “We probably will have to give up the project.”

The panelists offered little hope that Congress will produce legislation that will adequately address illegal immigration. Some doubted any law could be passed.

“Prospects for a careful, reasoned debate are pretty much nonexistent,” said UCSD economist Gordon H. Hanson.

The controversy surrounding the issue stems from the failure of President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox to handle the problem five years ago, said Jeffrey Davidow, a former U.S ambassador to Mexico who now heads the Institute of the Americas at UCSD.

“The conventional wisdom is that 9/11 put a halt to any kind of immigration reform. The fact is . . . the (Bush) administration decided it was a topic too hot to handle,” he said.

In Mexico, Davidow said, the response was not an understanding of the politics but an insistence on a whole-or-nothing approach.

As a result, he said, the problem has grown and generated “bitterness, opposition to migrants and a certain amount of racism.”

Fringe groups have captured the issue, there's been an increase in nativist attitudes, migrants have not seen their lives improve, and national security has not been enhanced, Davidow said.

“I do not see a solution in building more fences,” said Mexican Sen. Hector Osuna Jaime, a former Tijuana mayor. “You have to ask how high, what material will be used, and who will build it. We might even help you, but it's not going to solve the problem.”

Nevertheless, the contentiousness of the immigration debate in the United States has prompted Mexican leaders to take a more active role in finding solutions, Osuna said.

The country needs not only to provide jobs for its working population, but it must also provide jobs that pay high enough salaries to erase the current wage gap in which Mexican jobs pay one-eighth of what is offered in the United States.

“Solutions won't come for a long time,” Osuna said. “But we recognize we have our share of responsibilities.”

The U.S. Congress is not moving quickly in the days before the November general election and the end of its term to resolve differences between House and Senate versions of immigration legislation, SDSU's Gerber noted.

“There's a potential to do great harm here to U.S.-Mexico relations and San Diego-Tijuana relations,” Gerber said. “It could erect barriers in our binational community that would prevent us from working together in the future.”

He encouraged both communities to work together to influence Congress to come up with a reasonable immigration policy.

“A San Diego-Tijuana voice can have a big impact on shaping the legislation that ultimately results,” he said.


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Diane Lindquist: (619) 293-1812; diane.lindquist@uniontrib.com