Thoughts on the Immigration Debate, Zakaria Piece

I mentioned the immigration issue a few posts ago. With the sudden dearth of interns (we originally had eleven when I started. Most were part time, but the three full-timers left), I've been manning the phones at the personal office in Dirksen more often. Like I said, the thinly veiled (and sometimes completely blunt) racist commentary is really pretty disturbing.

The bill that emerged from the Senate Judiciary Committee (of which Durbin is a member), known as the McCain-Kennedy bill or as the Specter bill (Arlen Specter is the Chairman of the Judiciary Comm, and can usually be called a moderate, pro-choice Republican) is the one that Durbin was supporting. It would put those with five years or more in the country on what would become an eleven year path to citizenship. This has been characterized as "amnesty," and I suppose you could call it that if amnesty means that the immigrants would have to pay $2000 worth of fines, learn English, and produce documentation proving that they had in fact lived here for that minimum five years. I suppose if you desperately needed to use the word 'amnesty,' you may call it 'earned amnesty.' The point is though, that it's hardly a free ride. There are obviously other provisions in the bill, but that was the one most people were complaining about if they knew anything about it at all.

The problem now though is that whatever the Senate approves (and it looks like the McCain-Kennedy bill is either dead or will be rendered unrecognizable from its original form with all the amendments added to it), there will still be a hell of a time reconciling the Senate version with Rep. Sensenbrenner's bill out of the House side, which is an 'enforcement-only' bill. That's the one that calls for the building of the "Great Wall of Mexico" - a giant fence along the entire southern border.

While I don't believe such a wall will be built, I think just about any of these approaches are unrealistic, including the McCain-Kennedy bill that received bipartisan support in the Judiciary Committee (it passed 12-8, with eight Dems and four Republicans voting for it). The reason for this is that despite all the talk about allowing immigrants to "come out of the shadows" that you hear all over the place from both sides, it seems to me that you're going to have the same problem with the people who haven't been here for five years as you do now; they're not going to line up to become documented illegals just to take part in some guest-worker program that does nothing to suggest they will someday be citizens. Those who have been here for less than two years will face deportation, no guest-worker program, and no path to citizenship. Is there anyone who believes that any of these immigrants here illegally will rush to sign up for that? What's that? No, I didn't think so.

The solution?

Did you think that question was going to be followed by some great plan? It isn't. I don't know if there is a solution, but I have a pretty good idea that what's being discussed in the Capitol isn't it. The best thing I've seen written on this topic is an opinion piece by Fareed Zakaria that appeared in The Washington Post this week. I also had a chance to see him on The Daily Show. What he said made a lot of sense to me. The Post piece follows below:

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To Become an American

By Fareed Zakaria
April 4, 2006

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 percent 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.
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