Bush's immigration plan offers reasonable solution

March 27, 2006 —

In Los Angeles, 100,000 plus marchers protested on Saturday against tough U.S. House of Representatives proposed legislation that would increase the number of walls constructed on the U.S.-Mexican border and make it a felony to be in the U.S. illegally.

If you believe what most politicians are telling you, then the United States is heading down one of two paths. If you believe many socially conservative Republican politicians, hordes of undocumented, illegal workers are coming to steal your job for subsistence wages.

If you believe many liberal Democratic politicians (and, ironically, President Bush), then many illegal immigrants shouldn't be classified as illegal, since they are simply taking jobs Americans won't do.

Where does the truth lie? Like everything in politics, the truth is hidden somewhere between the extremists on both sides. Both sides are simply manipulating the facts in order to appease their own bases.

Conservatives say that illegal immigrants are taking away many American jobs. Yet how many illegal immigrants actually take away profitable jobs? It is difficult, if not impossible, for an illegal immigrant to get anything more than a menial, entry-level position due to the complexities of the paperwork that advanced jobs entail. In addition, if illegal immigrants had the skills to work in one of these jobs, they would not be entering the United States, as they would likely have the needed skills to compete in their home countries.

Liberals say that the U.S. has a moral obligation to take illegal immigrants, since nearly all of us are descendents of immigrants. Do we? Tell it to the custodian who eked out a modest, working-class existence that disappeared when their company decided to slash its costs by hiring a minimum wage illegal immigrant. First and foremost, America is supposed to protect the rights and benefits of Americans; as soon as the U.S. fails to do this, what is the purpose of our government?

The United States has always relied on low-wage immigrants to grease the gears of our nation. 150 years ago, the Irish escaped the potato famine to emigrate to the U.S. in search of economic opportunity and were met by a wave of racism and xenophobia. One hundred years ago Italians and eastern Europeans emigrated en masse to the U.S. Fifty years ago, the U.S. experienced a wave of Cuban immigrants that subsequently settled in South Florida, to escape racist sentiments elsewhere in the nation. Recently, the U.S. has taken in millions of Hispanic, predominately Mexican immigrants, both illegal and legal, although not without backlash, especially in the border states.

A reasonable solution exists outside of the polemicists on both sides of the political spectrum. The continued growth of the U.S. is due in part to our acceptance of immigrants, which provide a new infusion of genes into the genetic pool. Adding the collective experiences of immigrants from all over the globe will help to keep the U.S. a world leader economically and politically.

The U.S. cannot afford to simply wall itself off to illegal immigrants, as this will inevitably have a trickle down effect to general immigration patterns, which will likely keep skilled immigrants from moving here. At the same time, we cannot have an unrequited, doors open policy that would flood the U.S. with more immigrants than the infrastructure could support. The majority of illegal immigrants do work in low-paying sectors, but huge spikes in the number of illegal immigrants could spill over into other job sectors traditionally seen as off-limits to illegal immigrants.

Although his poll numbers have been falling, the policy presented by President Bush on immigration seems the most sensible. Offering guest worker status to many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in our nation would keep our economy sated with the necessary labor. This could be the first step in a feasible immigration policy that would recognize America's dependence on cheap labor that works the most dangerous and dirty jobs, yet would not let the border patrol simply roll over for a mass influx of immigrants.

A nation of immigrants should not turn its back on the hordes of the suffering that are clamoring for a way into the U.S. The next time you think we don't need anymore immigrants, ask yourself if you are willing to scrub the toilets. If not, then recognize that maybe your immigrant ancestors would have been willing to.