Borderline Cases

In the modern American political tradition, immigration policy has a somewhat undistinguished record.

"The usual practice is for policymakers to ignore and deny the realities of immigration, then something happens to force them to act, and we come up with some extreme policy. It's not very pretty,"said Noah Pickus, assistant professor at Duke's Sanford Institute of Public Policy.

That's why Pickus sees some positive signs coming out of the current discussion between the Bush administration and Mexican President Vincente Fox over immigration reform. There are several proposals on the table. Fox has proposed an amnesty for illegal Mexicans in the United States. An additional proposal from a Bush administration task force has supported a guest workers program that would regularize the flow of Mexican workers.

The talks will have far reaching consequences, Pickus said. The number of illegal Mexican residents in the United States is conservatively estimated to be around 3 million. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than half of all illegal immigrants in the United States are Mexican. In North Carolina, the numbers of illegal Mexican immigrants range between 100,000 and 150,000.

The size of the illegal population calls for some honesty, and the reform proposals are a step in that direction, Pickus said.

"The positive development is that we're not sweeping issues under the table," he said in an interview. "It's a recognition by the policymakers of the reality of the situation. It has the possibility for establishing more effective controls, and it tries to deal with the human dimension of the issue."

By the human dimension, Pickus says he's talking about some of the most sensitive aspects of the immigration issue. Many of the illegal immigrants have faced dangerous border crossings over difficult countryside. Once settled in the United States, many find work in poor conditions with little benefits. If family members are here, there are health and educational issues also to consider.

But Pickus said while the proposals promise more honesty in the discussion, there are other dimensions to the issue that can be problematic. One is the economic forces driving the immigration. He gives praise to Fox for working on development issues and reducing corruption in Mexico, both of which relate to why so many Mexicans leave the country looking for better economic opportunities.

On the American side, however, Pickus said policymakers need to confront how immigration affects the economics of the working class. "You hear business leaders talking about a labor shortage in the U.S.," Pickus said. "What they're often saying is that they won't pay for the American workers who are here when they can pay less for the immigrant labor. Wages for poor Americans are not going to rise as long as employers can turn to these guest workers for lower wage work."

There are other problems in the guest worker program proposal, Pickus said, relating to the quality of life the immigrants face. Guest workers are always vulnerable to the whims of the sponsoring employer, he noted. "They have few rights, often work in horrible conditions and can't complain about it because once they do, the employer has them sent right back."

Furthermore, although the program is conceived as a temporary situation for the worker, it generally doesn't work that way. Once a worker puts down ties in a community, he usually finds a way to stay illegally, Pickus said.

In fact, Pickus noted that European countries, which have a more extensive history with guest worker programs, are moving away from this approach.

"These programs always seem to be effective at first, but in the long run they just end up being spurs for more illegal immigration. The guest workers just don't go back. This then means that the public, not the employers, is left to deal with the social and economic fallout of increases in illegal immigration."

There are no easy solutions, but one key Pickus keeps coming back to is the advantage of dealing with the issue more forthrightly. "If you want to expand immigration, then expand immigration: Convince Americans that we should let more people in the country legally. Then you can start dealing more effectively with the economic and human consequences of immigration."

The politics driving this issue has some unusual aspects, he said. Some relate to long-standing interests of employers. But what's new is the experience President Bush had as governor of Texas, where he faced the consequences of immigration policy on a regular basis. Another factor is Republican efforts to reverse nearly a decade of key defeats in the important state of California, where former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson's anti-immigration campaign helped turn Hispanic and other ethnic voters into Democrats.

"So you have George W. Bush, who tried to reach out to Hispanic citizens, and he ends up in the White House," Pickus said. "And there is Pete Wilson who's in California twiddling his thumbs watching his party take defeat after defeat there. So, yes, that's part of what is driving this interest.

"What is also different about this is who is in charge of the policy for the White House. The key negotiator on the issue has been Colin Powell, the secretary of state. This is effectively turning the policy, which traditionally has been treated as a domestic concern, over to the foreign policy team. The State Department is always interested in stability, so that's a new perspective being brought to the issue."

That preoccupation with a superficial stability, Pickus said, may conceal deeper civic problems with guest worker proposals. He noted that while Mexicans constitute the largest number of illegal immigrants in the country, "much of the most recent immigration has come from other countries, especially from Central and South America. Any immigration policy that tries to carve out special immigration rights for Mexicans "could pit immigrants against immigrants and set us back a hundred years by favoring certain nationality groups over others."

Even more unsettling, Pickus said, is the possibility that a guest worker program would sever immigration from citizenship.

"Importing temporary workers while hindering access to citizenship or even permanent residency risks replacing the Ellis Island model with the labor camp. At some point we need to discuss what are the civic consequences of creating differences in who is encouraged to come here and who is allowed to become an American citizen."