Posted on 09/26/2007 5:15:43 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Immigration is a resource. One that the United States has mismanaged horribly, Benjamin Johnson told members of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences Arts and Letters Tuesday.
The problem is that recent U.S. policies have focused on the supply of immigrant workers and failed to account for the steady demand for workers to fill the jobs that immigrants do, said Johnson, executive director of the Immigration Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
"There is a legitimate demand for immigration," Johnson said.
On one hand, immigrant workers are needed to fill low-paying jobs U.S. society little values; on the other, they are needed to fill high-tech jobs that fuel the innovation that made the United States a world leader, he said.
Johnson spoke at the Overture Center as part of an Academy series, "Understanding Immigration." Previous presentations looked at immigration's historical impact nationally and in Wisconsin. The series concludes next Tuesday with Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute, who will talk about the challenges facing today's immigrants.
Despite the heat emanating from the current debate on immigration, the proportion of foreign-born residents today approximates those in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before the Great Depression, War World II and Cold War spawned policies to restrict entry to the country, Johnson said.
"We need to acknowledge the culture we're so proud of -- rightly so -- in many ways has been shaped by immigration," he said.
The number of immigrants now entering the country, some 800,000 to 900,000 in 2006, is not keeping pace with the number of jobs created: some 2.6 million last year.
Immigration over history has closely tracked the employment rate and is highest at the extremes of education levels -- those without high school diplomas and those with advanced graduate degrees, Johnson said.
"The U.S. workforce is there in the middle," he said.
President Bush's remark that immigrant workers take jobs Americans don't want touched a nerve on both sides of the immigration debate, but Johnson maintained that the older, more educated workforce of America today indeed does not want to do the physical labor, regardless of whatever patina of romance surrounds it.
Many citizens today point to how grandparents entered the United States legally to build a life by the strength of their backs, but immigration policies have made that much more difficult for lower-skilled workers today, Johnson said.
"At Ellis Island, if you didn't have TB and weren't loony, you were in legally," he said. Only 5,000 "green cards" conferring permanent residency on low-skilled workers were issued last year, he said.
The country also is sending mixed messages to immigrant workers. Beyond the ironies of trying to keep people out with a 700-mile fence on a 2,000-mile border, "we're putting up a sign on that fence that says 'Help Wanted' right next to a sign that says 'Keep Out.' If people can't find a way through the front door, they're going to look for a way through the back door," Johnson said.
U.S. policies also put employers in a predicament with even more obstacles threatened. A proposed tightening of policy would penalize employers whose workers have Social Security numbers that don't match federal records, but no effective way of checking employee documents is being offered. "Let's stop vilifying employers," Johnson said. "A lot of them are your next-door neighbors."
The impact of legalizing immigrant workers on wages and prices is difficult to gauge in today's global economy, Johnson said. But there's no question in his mind the country would be better off without undocumented workers who enter an underground economy.
The burden on the social service system attributed to undocumented workers really is tied to low-wage jobs, he said.
"We should not be asking 'Where are you from?' We should be asking 'What is your wage? Is your workplace safe?'"
While amnesty for undocumented immigrants is a red-hot political issue, Johnson questions the practicality of proposals that would require them to leave the country. Of the estimated 12 million undocumented workers in the United States, some 4 million have been in the country 10 years or more.
"They are homeowners, their kids go to school with your kids. We uproot those folks at our peril," he said. "We've made investments to educate their kids -- that's the golden egg."
The political impact of the growing number of immigrant voters in the near future is hard to predict, he said.
The Hispanic electorate grew from 2.5 million in 1980 to 12.8 million in 2007. Hispanics have not lined up consistently with either major party, but are emerging as swing voters, Johnson said.
While they are not a monolithic block, Hispanic voters share some important traits, he said
First, research shows that for Hispanic voters, immigration is a top issue that gets them to the polls, Johnson said. And immigrant voters see the immigration issue through a different lens.
Native-born Americans see the immigration debate in terms of the "rule of law" versus "immigration reform," while immigrant voters see the debates in terms of enforcement versus discrimination, he said.
Hispanics support controls on immigration, but identify discrimination as a key problem facing their community. But when it comes to preventing undocumented immigrants from renting apartments, denying them drivers licenses and asking police to stop them on the streets, "that raises the hairs on a lot of people's necks," Johnson said.
While the United States grapples with who to let in, the rest of the world is aware that immigration has helped it develop "the most dynamic and creative workforce in the history of the world," Johnson said.
The United States attracts the best and brightest, he said. "Sometimes the best and brightest is someone with a lot of education and sometimes it's someone who has a dream."
Other nations are scrambling to attract workers, especially those who are highly skilled that the United States meets with indifference.
"We have to figure out what kind of immigrants we want and how to get them here legally," Johnson said. "Then we can grow the economy in ways that are powerful."
Still, he anticipates things will get worse before they get better, he said in an interview. "I think we're going to have to try to enforce our way out of the problem. And fail."
In other words...you are afraid to answer.
This is the big lie. The jobs are predicated on the expectation of the continuing existence of the modern day slave trade. Those jobs never really existed.
The example I have used to demonstrate this sophistry goes like this, "I want to create the worlds largest Persian rug factory in the US. I need one million Persians imported to my factories to craft these rugs. I am not being supplied with the workers to fill the jobs I have created.".
In reality, if there was 2.6 million new jobs created, the prospective employees number in the hundreds of millions right here in the US...the creator of the new job just needs to offer enough pay and benefits to coax workers away from their current jobs to got to work at the new jobs.
This is how workers' standard of living increases across the board. Other employers need to pay their employees more to keep them from moving to the newly created job.
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