Thread: OPINION: Patrick McIlheran: How to decide who gets in?

OPINION; Patrick McIlheran: How to decide who gets in?

St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota)
May 23, 2009 Saturday
By Patrick McIlheran

The feds, it seems, may not require spiffed-up drivers licenses meant to thwart identity fraud. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano now talks of trying to repeal the 'Real ID' law. She says it's a costly hassle for states.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the Milwaukee-area Republican who wrote the law, says it's just the Obama administration out to kill an effective screen for illegal immigrants, because states must check immigration status. "But they're not going to admit it," he said. Licenses for illegal immigrants are unpopular with most voters but are a favor to an Obama-voting Latino bloc.

So one more dog gets wagged by the tail that is immigration policy. Presidents, lawmakers, left, right -- all say they want to fix immigration. Yet from college aid to what questions cops can ask, the immigration argument hides within other issues.

It's because many would rather avoid the real question: If our policies leave too many people waiting in line, then how much wider should the gate be opened?

It's hard even to get immigration advocates to commit. "That's a really tricky one," said Michele Waslin of the Immigration Policy Center, a think tank sponsored by immigration lawyers. Waslin suggested that perhaps we issue enough visas to make legal the current flow of "undocumented" immigrants -- "so it's not really adding any new people."

Others are still hazier. We can't have open borders, says Tony Baez, head of the Milwaukee-based Council for the Spanish Speaking -- it's "not about letting people just come in," he said sensibly. Maybe we don't need more, he suggested, just a different way of allocating visas. He feels we may be too easy on, say, engineers from India and not open enough for farmhands from Oaxaca.

Reasonable, if your focus is defending millions who got tired of waiting and sneaked in. But leave aside the hard question of illegal immigrants here. How do we handle years-long lines there?

We become more deliberate, Jacob Vigdor suggests.

Vigdor, an economist teaching public policy at Duke University, last year came up with a way of measuring -- as opposed to arguing fruitlessly about -- the degree to which immigrants fit into American society. His assimilation index measures not merely whether immigrants learn English and eat burgers -- that is, cultural assimilation. It measures whether they thrive in our economy and, as well, what he calls civic assimilation, their formal participation in American society, mainly through seeking citizenship.

Not all groups are alike. Take Canadians and Vietnamese. Culturally, Canadian immigrants are almost indistinguishable from the native-born, but they don't civically assimilate much. Many are students or here for work. They see their stay as temporary, even if it isn't. Vietnamese, says Vigdor, are slower to learn English and less often marry non-immigrants. But fleeing tyranny, "they became very dedicated to the country, and the naturalization rate of Vietnamese immigrants is through the roof."

Americans since the Founders have had a soft spot for such people. Customarily, immigration's been about welcoming foreigners who may go on eating kielbasa but would in some core way want to become Americans -- who "felt a permanent sense of attachment to the United States," Vigdor said. That's still important. You could probably muster broad support for more visas "if we're more serious about picking and choosing the people who we think are going to fit in with our historical vision" -- if we filtered for people more likely to civically assimilate.

How? We could, he suggests, mirror Australia's policy of discounting entrance fees. Ours are comparatively low. Suppose we raised them but gave refunds when immigrants learned English or were naturalized. We now mainly allow in relatives and those with scarce skills. Vigdor would keep those channels, but with such competition for the few visas for others who just want to come and find opportunity, we can widen that channel selectively: "There's millions of people out there who would jump at the chance," he said.

Just saying it shows why a comprehensive fix is hard. Ethnically based immigrant rights groups may well balk at pushing assimilation instead of their own groups' family reunification. Businesses often are keen on temps, especially the skilled experts who, as Vigdor said, "view themselves as citizens of the world."

The question is what's best for the U.S. Certainly, fixing that which allows and attracts millions of illegal immigrants is important. But it's fair as well to ask what we want of those we let in. A longing to be American might be a start.

Patrick McIlheran is an editorial columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. His e-mail address is pmcilheran@journalsentinel.com

http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/En ... 58&start=4

Who to let in? Those who will not end up on the public dole and would actually contribute to our economy (instead of sending the money overseas or the border).