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Here are three of the best commentaries to date, on the “hot”
sociopolitical and economic issue searing US politics. The first author is a well-known economist and author who writes a weekly
column at the New York Times. These two articles have generated responses from
both liberals and conservatives. The second author was born in India, now a US citizen, is also a well-known
columnist, author and news show guest.
He is the editor of Newsweek International, hosts his own half hour show
on PBS, Foreign Exchange: Where America meets the world,
interviewing foreign academics, journalists, politicians and experts on foreign
affairs. North
of the Border "Give me your
tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," wrote
Emma Lazarus, in a poem that still puts a lump in my throat. I'm proud of
America's immigrant history, and grateful that the door was open when my
grandparents fled Russia. In other words, I'm
instinctively, emotionally pro-immigration. But a review of serious,
nonpartisan research reveals some uncomfortable facts about the economics of
modern immigration, and immigration from Mexico in particular. If people like
me are going to respond effectively to anti-immigrant demagogues, we have to
acknowledge those facts. First, the net
benefits to the U.S. economy from immigration, aside from the large gains to
the immigrants themselves, are small. Realistic estimates suggest that
immigration since 1980 has raised the total income of native-born Americans by
no more than a fraction of 1 percent. Second, while
immigration may have raised overall income slightly, many of the worst-off
native-born Americans are hurt by immigration - especially immigration from
Mexico. Because Mexican immigrants have much less education than the average
U.S. worker, they increase the supply of less-skilled labor, driving down the
wages of the worst-paid Americans. The most authoritative recent study of this
effect, by George Borjas and Lawrence Katz of Harvard, estimates that U.S. high
school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican
immigration. That's why it's
intellectually dishonest to say, as President Bush does, that immigrants do
"jobs that Americans will not do." The willingness of Americans to do
a job depends on how much that job pays - and the reason some jobs pay too
little to attract native-born Americans is competition from poorly paid
immigrants. Finally, modern
America is a welfare state, even if our social safety net has more holes in it
than it should - and low-skill immigrants threaten to unravel that safety net. Basic decency requires
that we provide immigrants, once they're here, with essential health care,
education for their children, and more. As the Swiss writer Max Frisch wrote
about his own country's experience with immigration, "We wanted a labor force,
but human beings came."
Unfortunately, low-skill immigrants don't pay enough taxes to cover the cost of
the benefits they receive. Worse yet, immigration
penalizes governments that act humanely. Immigrants are a much more serious
fiscal problem in California than in Texas, which treats the poor and unlucky
harshly, regardless of where they were born. We shouldn't
exaggerate these problems. Mexican
immigration, says the Borjas-Katz study, has played only a "modest
role" in growing U.S. inequality. And the political threat that low-skill
immigration poses to the welfare state is more serious than the fiscal threat: the disastrous Medicare drug bill alone does far more to
undermine the finances of our social insurance system than the whole burden of
dealing with illegal immigrants. But modest problems
are still real problems, and immigration is becoming a major political issue.
What are we going to do about it? Realistically, we'll
need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants. Mainly that means better
controls on illegal immigration. But the harsh anti-immigration legislation
passed by the House, which has led to huge protests - legislation that would,
among other things, make it a criminal act to provide an illegal immigrant with
medical care - is simply immoral. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush's plan for a
"guest worker" program is clearly designed by and for corporate
interests, who'd love to have a low-wage work force that couldn't vote. Not
only is it deeply un-American; it does nothing to reduce the adverse effect of
immigration on wages. And because guest workers would face the prospect of
deportation after a few years, they would have no incentive to become
integrated into our society. What about a
guest-worker program that includes a clearer route to citizenship? I'd still be
careful. Whatever the bill's intentions, it could all too easily end up having
the same effect as the Bush plan in practice - that is, it could create a permanent underclass of
disenfranchised workers. We need to do
something about immigration, and soon. But I'd rather see Congress fail to
agree on anything this year than have it rush into ill-considered legislation
that betrays our moral and democratic principles. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032706O.shtml The
Road to Dubai For now, at least, the
immigration issue is mainly hurting the Republican Party, which is divided between
those who want to expel immigrants and those who want to exploit them. The only
thing the two factions seem to have in common is mean-spiritedness. But
immigration remains a difficult issue for liberals. Let me say a bit more about
the subject of my last column, the uncomfortable economics of immigration, then
turn to what really worries me: the political implications of a large nonvoting
work force. About the economics:
the crucial divide isn't between legal and illegal immigration; it's between high-skilled
and low-skilled immigrants. High-skilled immigrants - say, software engineers
from South Asia - are, by any criterion I can think of, good for America. But
the effects of low-skilled immigration are mixed at best. True, there are large
benefits for the low-skilled migrants, who may find even a minimum-wage US job
a big step up. Immigration also raises the total income of native-born
Americans, although reasonable estimates suggest that these gains amount to no
more than a fraction of 1 percent. But low-skilled
immigration depresses the wages of less-skilled native-born Americans. And
immigrants increase the demand for public services, including health care and
education. Estimates indicate that low-skilled immigrants don't pay enough in
taxes to cover the cost of providing these services. All of these effects,
except for the gains for the immigrants themselves, are fairly small. Some of
my friends say that's the point I should stress: immigration is a wonderful
thing for the immigrants, and claims that immigrants are undermining American
workers and taxpayers are hugely overblown - end of story. But it's important to be intellectually
honest, even when it hurts. Moreover, what really worries me isn't the narrow
economics - it's the political economy, the effects of having a disenfranchised
labor force. Imagine, for a moment,
a future in which America becomes like Kuwait or Dubai, a country where a large
fraction of the work force consists of illegal immigrants or foreigners on
temporary visas - and neither group has the right to vote. Surely this would be a betrayal of our democratic
ideals, of government of the people, by the people. Moreover, a political
system in which many workers don't count is likely to ignore workers'
interests: it's likely to have a weak social safety net and to spend too little
on services like health care and education. This isn't idle
speculation. Countries with high immigration tend, other things equal, to have
less generous welfare states than those with low immigration. US cities with
ethnically diverse populations - often the result of immigration - tend to have
worse public services than those with more homogeneous populations. Of course, America
isn't Dubai. But we're moving in that direction. As of 2002, according to the Urban Institute, 14%
of US workers, and 20% of low-wage workers, were immigrants. Only a third of
these immigrant workers were naturalized citizens. So we already have a large disenfranchised work force, and
it's growing rapidly. The goal of immigration reform should be to reverse that
trend. So what do I think of
the Senate Judiciary Committee's proposal, which is derived from a plan
sponsored by John McCain and Ted Kennedy? I'm all in favor of one provision:
offering those already here a possible route to permanent residency and
citizenship. Since we aren't going to deport more than 10 million people, we
need to integrate those people into our society. But I'm puzzled by the
plan to create a permanent guest-worker program, one that would admit 400,000
more workers a year (and you know that business interests would immediately
start lobbying for an increase in that number). Isn't institutionalizing a
disenfranchised work force a big step away from democracy? For a hard-line
economic conservative like Mr. McCain, the advantages to employers of a cheap
work force may be more important than the violation of democratic principles.
But why would someone like Mr. Kennedy go along? Is the point to help potential
immigrants, or is it to buy support from business interests? Either way, it's a
dangerous route to go down. America's
political system is already
a lot less democratic in practice than it is on paper, and creating a permanent
nonvoting working class would make things worse. The road to Dubai may be paved
with good intentions. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040106G.shtml To Become an American By Fareed
Zakaria, Washington Post OpEd, Tuesday, April 4, 2006; A23 Seven years ago, when
I was visiting Germany, I met with an official who explained to me that the
country had a foolproof solution to its economic woes. Watching the U.S.
economy soar during the 1990s, the Germans had decided that they, too, needed
to go the high-technology route. But how? In the late '90s, the answer seemed
obvious: Indians. After all, Indian entrepreneurs accounted for one of every
three Silicon Valley start-ups. So the German government decided that it would
lure Indians to Germany just as America does: by offering green cards.
Officials created something called the German Green Card and announced that
they would issue 20,000 in the first year. Naturally, they expected that tens
of thousands more Indians would soon be begging to come, and perhaps the quotas
would have to be increased. But the program was a flop. A year later barely
half of the 20,000 cards had been issued. After a few extensions, the program
was abolished. I told the German
official at the time that I was sure the initiative would fail. It's not that I
had any particular expertise in immigration policy, but I understood something
about green cards, because I had one (the American version) myself. The German Green Card
was misnamed, I argued, because it never, under any circumstances, translated
into German citizenship. The U.S. green card, by contrast, is an almost
automatic path to becoming American (after five years and a clean record). The official dismissed
my objection, saying that there was no way Germany was going to offer these
people citizenship. "We need young tech workers," he said.
"That's what this program is all about." So Germany was asking bright
young professionals to leave their country, culture and families; move
thousands of miles away; learn a new language; and work in a strange land -- but without any prospect of ever being part of their
new home. Germany was sending a signal, one that was accurately
received in India and other countries, and also by Germany's own immigrant
community. Many Americans have become
enamored of the European approach to immigration -- perhaps without realizing
it. Guest workers, penalties, sanctions and deportation are all a part of
Europe's mode of dealing with immigrants. The results of this approach have
been on display recently in France, where rioting migrant youths again burned
cars last week. Across Europe one sees disaffected, alienated immigrants, ripe
for radicalism. The immigrant communities deserve their fair share of blame for
this, but there's a cycle at work. European societies exclude the immigrants,
who become alienated and reject their societies. One puzzle about post-Sept. 11 America is
that it has not had a subsequent terror attack -- not even a small backpack
bomb in a movie theater -- while there have been dozens in Europe. My own
explanation is that American immigrant communities, even Arab and Muslim ones,
are not very radicalized. (Even if such an attack does take place, the fact
that 4 1/2 years have gone by without one provides some proof of this contention.)
Compared with every other country in the world, America does immigration
superbly. Do we really want to junk that for the French approach? The United States has
a real problem with flows of illegal immigrants, largely from Mexico (70% of
illegal immigrants are from that one country). But let us understand the forces
at work here. "The income gap between
the United States and Mexico is the largest between any two contiguous
countries in the world," writes Stanford historian David
Kennedy. That huge disparity is producing massive demand in the United States
and massive supply from Mexico and Central America. Whenever governments try to
come between these two forces -- think of drugs -- simply increasing
enforcement does not work. Tighter border control is an excellent idea, but to
work, it will have to be coupled with some recognition of the laws of supply
and demand -- that is, it will have to include expansion of the legal immigrant
pool. Beyond the purely economic issue, however,
there is the much deeper one that defines America -- to itself, to its
immigrants and to the world.
How do we want to treat those who are already in this country, working and
living with us? How do we want to treat those who come in on visas or guest
permits? These people must have some hope, some reasonable path to becoming
Americans. Otherwise
we are sending a signal that there are groups of people who are somehow unfit
to be Americans, that these newcomers are not really welcome and that what we
want are workers, not potential citizens. And we will end up with immigrants who have
similarly cold feelings about America. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/03/AR2006040301621.html |
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