Immigration debate no one is ready for

By Ruben Navarrette,
Sunday, December 20, 2009 at midnight

With the nation’s jobless rate at 10 percent and six applicants for every opening, you might think this is the worst possible time for Congress to legalize millions of illegal immigrants.

Yet that’s one of the proposals in a new immigration reform bill introduced by Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.

Those who believe you can’t discuss immigration reform in a down economy must also assume that newly legalized immigrants would automatically compete for jobs with U.S. workers, and that the last thing our homegrown workforce needs in tough times is more competition. This is an easy argument to make, but it’s not a very strong one for three reasons.

(1) There is never a good time for Congress to discuss legalizing the undocumented. The last time it debated the issue, from 2005 to 2007, the country had a stronger economy and an unemployment rate of less than 5 percent. Even then, many members found the issue too hot to handle. That’s because the sticking point isn’t the economy or jobs or what’s best for U.S. workers. What really concerns many Americans about the immigrants of today is the same thing that has concerned them throughout U.S. history – an irrational but insuppressible fear over shifting demographics and other changes that newcomers bring to the culture, language and landscape.

Americans aren’t trying to save jobs. They’re trying to save their quality of life. What they’re missing is that they often owe this quality of life to the availability of cheap and reliable illegal immigrant labor. If they would just admit this, the debate would be better off.

(2) The whole “illegal immigrants take jobs from Americansâ€