Immigration

With President Bush's recent speech on immigration, now is a good time to share my thoughts. I could go on and on (I just wrote a ten-page paper on immigration), but I'll try to be brief.

First, partisans on both sides of the immigration debate tend to fall into twin fallacies. Those hostile to immigrants claim that immigrants take jobs away from Americans, as though there is a fixed number of jobs to go around; an odd proposition in an period of economic growth and low unemployment.

In response, some, including our president on Monday night, claim that immigrants take jobs that Americans don't want. But are cities with low numbers of immigrants lacking in industries supposedly good (or poor) enough only for immigrants?

Opposed to these distortions, immigration has multiple interrelated impacts on our economy. Immediately, native unskilled workers do lose jobs or at least earn lower wages, consequent market laws; as supply of labor increases, wages drop. As wages drop, however, profit goes up, and as industries become more profitable, they attract increased investment. Demand thus belatedly catches up to supply as capital adjusts to an increased labor supply, and losses in wages are eventually offset. Consumers, of course, benefit from cheaper labor costs all along, but who really cares about them? Furthermore, stopping immigration will not save native wages, as long as we promote free trade and movement of capital, as we committed to in NAFTA. If immigrants do not come to America, companies will outsource more, lowering demand for labor at home; this has the same effect on wages as increased supply of labor.

The chief problem, as I see it, is how to help immigrants assimilate into our economy. They bring their own language, culture, and traditions, also leaving behind memories and families. Because immigrants are unfamiliar with our language and institutions, employers can easily exploit them; their ignorance, and sometime their undocumented status, bars them from protections American workers enjoy, such as unions and courts. We need to encourage immigrants to learn English, educate their children, and engage our own civil society, without forgetting the families and communities they left behind. Though this is a strain on our resources, it is necessary to fully integrate them into our economy, to which they contribute their labor. For their part, immigrants must make these priorities their own. Rewriting the Star Spangled Banner, for example, is unhelpful; statistically, those who remain in their comfort zone by socializing predominantly with other immigrants and not perfecting English skills take longer to assimilate--their wages take much longer to catch up with native wages than those of more ambitious immigrants.

Today's immigrants, like those of our past, have a lot to offer America. Rather than seeing them as a threat to our jobs, we need to welcome them into our communities and workplaces. I suspect that most immigrants are not greedily out to snatch jobs from deserving Americans. A dangerous journey across the Mexican-US border, leaving everything familiar in a trail of dust, betrays not a jealous, selfish whim, but desperation. People have a duty to support their families, and when conditions at home leave families in constant jeopardy, migration becomes a necessity. It is not surprising, therefore, that so many Hispanic immigrants have strong family values; communities promoting family values are a prophetic voice to our lonely, individualistic culture. From this perspective, people have not just a right, but a duty to migrate if they cannot obtain gainful employment to support their family at home. That so many individuals endure enormous social and personal costs to come to America illustrates their desperation and noble self-sacrifice, which our protectionist fears obscure.

Immigrants face a difficult task: they must remain faithful to their first home, while concurrently participating in a new social, political, and economic culture. As they work out their identity, our policies need to help them. This is not a purely altruistic proposal, because by bringing undocumented immigrants into our society more officially, we can regulate their activity in labor markets, monitor their assimilation, and collect taxes. At all levels, from government to friendship, ties between immigrants and natives need to be nurtured.

Finally, the resolve of immigrants is not just a nice human interest story. The volume of immigration from Mexico to America shows that economic conditions in some regions of Mexico are deplorable. People have a right to migrate if they must, but they should not have to. Employment should seek the worker, not vice versa, because immigration strains families and robs local communities of their human capital. The US, therefore, should partner with Mexico to increase investment in the poorest regions of Mexico. This would ease the immigration strain on both countries, especially for those who would have a real alternative to migration.

Lastly, I ought to add that it's nice to find an issue that can make friends out of a ecclectic group of interests, some sworn enemies. Here's something where leftists, big business, and Catholic bishops can all agree on. I just hope such an odd intersection of interests does not cause a traffic jam in Washington, in which good initiatives will run out of gas.