Homocon

The accusation, or insinuation, on the part of political critics is that the President could only be talking about an amnesty program, or a guest worker program that allows illegal immigrants to stay in the country as their applications are processed, as a cynical attempt to buy off the Hispanic vote for upcoming elections.

Yet both the Democrats and Republicans presented virtually the same policy on illegal immigration reform during the run-up to the 2004 elections: increase the level of legal immigration to the U.S. each year while also supporting policy that would give illegal immigrants presently in the country a path to citizenship.

Prairie Sociology notes that "What is more interesting . . . is that this stance is not necessarily supported by the American public; at least not if we focus our attention on the opinion of non-Hispanic Americans. The apparent disconnect between the policy advocated by politicians and the policy advocated by public opinion makes an interesting subject of study for public sociology."

Interesting indeed. While Prairie Sociology falls into the popular trap of assuming that support for higher levels of legal immigration and/or a type of amnesty program for illegal immigrants is based merely upon the greed for Hispanic votes, could it be possible that there are facets to this conversation which our politicians are talking about but that the rest of us are ignoring, the most important being that even as we're experiencing an influx of millions of illegal immigrants, economic growth continues nonetheless, and often in spite of catastrophic events and global trends?

The Center for Immigration Studies published a paper which noted that the problem with illegal immigration across our southern border is not an unwillingness to work or participate in American society, but rather the lack of skill sets as a result of coming from countries with inferior educational systems -- this prohibits their rapid assimilation into American middle-class culture, while also driving up the costs associated with their presence in this country, costs in the form of low-income assistance, public housing, subsidized health care and food stamps.

While Steven Camarota, the Director of Research for the Center for Immigration Studies believes that an amnesty will only increase the net costs to society rather than offset them, particularly due to the educational disparity, as, he says, "In other words, if we gave illegal aliens legal status, they would become basically unskilled, for the most part, legal immigrants. And as a consequence, the costs, the net fiscal deficit, would nearly triple."

Yet B. Lindsay Lowell, the Director of Policy Studies for the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University has a slightly more pragmatic view. While Lowell agrees that the educational disparity is a problem, and that the costs associated with the presence of illegal immigration must be addressed, Lowell also asks that we remember that illegal immigrants come to this country, for the most part, to work. And if the cost of having them here is high, then what is the cost of keeping them out? As he stated, "suppose all unauthorized aliens were to leave tomorrow, wouldn't you still need border enforcement?" The costs associated with the presence of a large influx of illegal aliens into the United States wouldn't necessarily decrease to level zero, and yet we'd have a large gain in expenditures as we increased patrolling of the borders, increased funding for the INS and jacked up funding for other policing and enforcement measures, while entirely losing the benefit of an influx of workers willing to take their part in the economic engine.

If the problem is a lack of educational training, is the cost to educate the illegal immigrants greater than the cost to toss them all out and increase funding for greater border security? And if the costs are relatively equal, then which is the wiser choice for a nation which relies on productivity and innovation to retain its place as one of the premier economic engines of the world?

Unfortunately, the culture-wide problem of inadequate education throughout much of Central America brings with it an incidence of higher crime, and the presence of a disproportionate amount of illegal immigrants among our prison population has people justifiably alarmed, and not just over the fiscal costs of clothing, housing and feeding the prisoners, but also over the social costs involved in allowing an influx of criminally oriented individuals across our borders. Yet, instead of pouring billions into increased border security overall, what if we poured those same billions into federal enforcement assistance to only those areas hard hit by an increase in criminal immigrant behavior? We'd still have the benefit of an increased labor force everywhere else, and we could educate future workers in our educational system while successfully containing the elements that don't wish to participate in legitimate business and social opportunities.

The American Immigration Law Foundation suggest that "expansion of the workforce is crucial to sustained growth in the labor-intensive industries that generate the greatest number of less-skilled jobs . . . Immigration fills this gap between native labor supply and domestic labor demand," which, said another way, means that immigration is an essential element in the recipe for a thriving nation. While swelling the welfare rolls is not what any country has in mind as its ultimate goal, if the majority of illegal immigrants are willing to work (as suggested by the Center for Immigration Studies), it's the lack of education that's the largest obstacle to their full participation in American society. So if we take a look at the hard numbers required to fully enforce immigration policies and make our borders increasingly secure against an influx of millions of Central American immigrants, how do those numbers compare to the hard costs involved in legalizing, educating and providing basic services for this same influx?

If what we want, and arguably need, are hard-working educated immigrants, willing to participate in the American system, then are we best served by spending our tax monies on border enforcement to keep immigrants out, especially considering the depressed birth rates of our native population, or are we better served by semi-open borders and an educational system that's been streamlined for the rapid assimilation of an undereducated immigrant population?

If under-education is the biggest problem we face with illegal immigrants, why are we not talking more forcefully about what seems to be the potential system-wide failure of our present educational system to adequately train an incoming immigrant population for rapid entry into the American system? It's one thing to say, "Hey, you're in America, speak the language and get with the program," yet entirely something else to offer a way for the individual to do just that.

While the talking heads theorize over the net costs involved with illegal immigration, it doesn't change the fact that the American economy continues to experience consistent growth, and demands an expanding labor force which the native population is unable to satisfy. This concern is underlined with another quote from the American Immigration Law Foundation's published paper titled, "Economic Growth & Immigration: Bridging the Demographic Divide".

"Labor force growth is the product of two factors: labor force participation and population increase. Given that labor force participation rates in the United States are unlikely to increase, population growth will be the primary source of labor force growth in the years to come. Population growth, in turn, can come from two possible sources: rising birth rates or immigration. In light of the demographic trends of the native-born workforce, immigration will continue to play a critical role in providing the workers needed to sustain overall economic growth."

Talking big about containing and controlling the flow of immigration in lieu of encouraging a systemwide process for rapid assimilation into the American workforce can only breed an American version of the Paris is Burning syndrome we witnessed last month as Muslim immigrants across France indulged themselves in a cultural confrontation fueled by Islamic radicalism combined with economic dissatisfaction. If we're to avoid the same fate in the future, our discussions of how our educational system fails even members of our own native population should expand to include how it may better serve all under-skilled members of the population, including illegal immigrants.