Kennedy's Immigration Law Report : Iowa Immigration Lawyer & Attorney : Austin Kennedy : Brick Gentry Law Firm : Green Cards, Permanent Residency

The NYT editorial board is out today with yet another very strong piece on the wide-reaching economic arguments supporting immigration reform legislation that includes the legalization of the people currently located in the U.S.  without valid immigration status.  The key grafs: 

The unions, at least, understand that there is a better way. They see immigration reform as an issue of worker empowerment. If undocumented immigrants undercut wages and job conditions for Americans — and many do, by tolerating low pay and abuse and bolstering an off-the-books system that robs law-abiding employers and taxpayers — it is because they cannot stand up for their rights.

“Workers don’t depress wages. Unscrupulous employers do,” said Terence O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America. Unemployment in his industry is above 21 percent. Nearly two million construction workers are out of work. So what does Mr. O’Sullivan want? Reform that allows immigrants to legalize. “If we can free them so they can come out of the shadows, we can not only improve their lives, but all workers’ lives,” he said.

When framed in terms of the economic benefits to all American workers (especially laborers), rather than nativist misinformation, immigration reform and the legalization of currently undocumented workers just makes sense. 

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It's been a great couple of weeks for the immigration reform effort.  First, last week President Obama announces that he's determined to live up to the promises he made on the campaign trail and begin facilitating a national dialogue in support of immigration reform.  But the administration knows that immigration reform is one of the most challenging issues around, especially during an economic downturn, so it got out ahead of the predictable uproar by offering a helpful and clear-headed frame around the issue.  Basically, the administration said this:  immigration reform isn't an effort to add millions of new workers to the workforce, it's simply an effort to recognize those who are already in the workforce.  An argument of this nature has the benefit of being both reasonable and true.  How about that? 

And then earlier this week we learned that the A.F.L.-C.I.O and Change to Win, two vital segments of the American labor movement, had forged a compromise to support  the reform effort, including a disciplined path to citizenship for the undocumented. 

Why would two previously warring factions of the labor movement, two groups who represent many 'laborers' in the truest sense of the word, come around to be on the same side of this issue?  Well, as the NYT pointed out in its April 14, 2009, editorial, "[e]ven in a bad economy--especially in a bad economy--getting undocumented immigrants on the right side of the law only makes sense."  The editorial furthers the argument thusly: 

The country has suffered mightily in the meantime.  American workers and businesses continue to be undercut by the underground economy.  The economic potential of some of the country's most industrious workers is thwarted.  Working off the books--and living in constant fear of apprehension--they earn less, spend less, pay less in taxes and have little ability to report abuses or to improve their skills or job prospects. 

The ingredients of reform are clear:  legalization for the 12 million, to yield bumper crops of new citizens, to make it easier to weed out criminals and to end the fear and hopelessness of life in the shadows; sensible enforcement at the border that focuses on fighting crime, drugs and violence; a strengthened employment system that punishes business that exploit illegal labor; and a future flow of workers that is attuned to the economy's needs and fully protects workers' rights.

In other words, the writers of this editorial get it.  The legal American workforce doesn't gain anything by allowing the underground economy to exist in its current state, especially on the 'lower', less educated end of the skill spectrum.  If a scrupleless employer is faced with the prospect of hiring a likely undocumented worker for $6.50/hr., or a fully documented worker for $8.00/hr., who do you think he's going to hire? Nine times out of ten he'll choose the guy willing to work for less, the guy with no legal protections.  To say that immigration reform and the legalization of millions of undocumented workers is somehow going to hurt the legal American workforce is exactly wrong.   The tough part, however, is helping people see beyond their learned biases and come to terms with this basic economic reality. 

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While re-reading my earlier post below, it strikes me how far and how quickly we as a country have traveled in what appears to be our mindset and general reaction toward the politics of immigration.  It doesn't take a legal scholar to observe the fact that the topic of immigration and "immigration reform" serves today as a prominent flash point in our greater social conversation.  Witness the fomenting of Lou Dobbs, and the extent to which both presidential candidates avoided the topic whenever possible during the general election campaign...and this with the Hispanic/Latino population emerging as one of the (if not THE) new, electorally-desirable political constituencies!   We could of course debate for days why and how the topic of immigration stokes the visceral fires that it apparently does, but that's not really the point of this post. 

The point of this post is to point out that it hasn't always been this way.  We haven't always had communities waiting with baited breathe, wondering whether their town would be the next torn apart by an ICE raid.  We haven't always had Minute Men independently patrolling the border.  We haven't always had employers caught on the one hand with barely-functioning H-2A and H-2B programs, and on the other with extremely aggressive worksite enforcement raids. 

In fact, until 1986 no law made it illegal for an employer to hire an undocumented worker.  Can you believe it?!  I986!  And moreover, in 1952 Congress actually passed a law which said that it was specifically NOT illegal to hire an undocumented worker.  (Immigration & Nationality Act of 1952, Pub. L. No. 82-414, 66 Stat. 163)).  According to Stephen Yale-Loehr, this law became known as the "Texas Proviso", which meant that employers were free to hire whomever they chose, without having to verify an individual's eligibility to work.  If an unauthorized worker was among the ranks of their employees, nobody knew the difference and the employer was free to go about business as usual. 

Caveat:  I'm certainly not operating under the delusion that, from an immigration perspective, everything was great back in the 1950s or before.  In fact, opportunistic employers have taken horrendous advantage of undocumented laborers since the dawn of our modern economy.  To this very day we're still fighting the battle to make worksite conditions safer all over our country. Instead, my reason for highlighting the fact that it wasn't until 1986 that we had a law on the books criminalizing the hiring of undocumented workers is to bring some much needed perspective to our country's legislative approach to dealing with immigration.  As we move toward forming a plan for comprehensive immigration reform, we should keep in mind that our legislative framework for dealing with undocumented workers is fairly new, but in the relatively brief amount of time the laws have been on the books we've seen them act as a contributing cause to a great deal of human suffering and economic stagnation.  We've changed our immigration laws in the recent past and we can do so again--hopefully this time with common sense solutions that allow our country to once again remember that we all, at some time, were immigrants. 

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I'm extremely pleased to pass along the news that the Immigration Policy Center has launched a new and impressive blog called ImmigrationImpact.  The blog can be found here. 

As we make the push during this new administration for rationale comprehensive immigration reform legislation, it's extremely important to have blogs like ImmigrationImpact serving as a counterweight to some of the more nativist voices out there, and to ensure that interested parties are able to locate factual, empirically-sound pro-immigration information to be deployed in the greater immigration debate.     This new voice is a great resource and I encourage everyone to take a look. 

Links to the Immigration Policy Center's main website and its new blog can also be found to the right. 

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