U.S. Immigration Reform Likely In 2007

Oxford Analytica


U.S. Immigration Reform Likely In 2007

Oxford Analytica 10.18.06, 6:00 AM ET


Immigration reform legislation has failed to pass this year. Yet the need for comprehensive reform remains acute.

There is no definitive data on how many undocumented immigrants are present in the U.S. The most reliable estimates assume that there are between 8 million and 12 million families. The scale of these numbers is striking when related to the U.S. labor force. From 1999 to 2005, 4.1 million workers are estimated to have arrived from abroad, or approximately 86% of the net increase in the total number of employed persons over the same period.

This onward march of immigration poses policy challenges that lawmakers have repeatedly failed to address:

1. Economic challenges. Employers, native-born workers and immigrant workers have different interests:

-- Business leaders have cautioned against excessive restrictions on immigrants. Employers seem to be eschewing native-born workers in favor of new immigrant workers.

-- Labor unions have dropped their historical opposition to immigration, but still fear that cheap immigrant workers displace U.S.-born workers.

-- President George Bush has sought to address continued high employer demand for immigrant labor, backing a "guest worker" program for temporary migrants.

2. Political challenges. Immigrants form an increasingly significant interest group in U.S. politics, but the political debate has become increasingly polarized:

-- Hundreds of thousands of mostly Hispanic immigrants staged demonstrations this spring to protest against new immigration enforcement measures being considered in Congress.

-- Some House Republicans have called for strict policies to deport new "illegal aliens" and oppose any sort of amnesty for longtime undocumented residents.

-- Bush, many Democrats and some business-oriented Republicans favor a system of managed migration.

3. Security challenges. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have transformed immigration into a security issue, with significant policy ramifications:

-- Security concerns have fueled calls to strengthen the physical barriers against immigrants along the Mexican border, and to impose new registration requirements on immigrants along both the northern and southern frontiers.

-- Immigration is now a responsibility of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, headed by the assistant secretary who directs the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. The agency has introduced a voluntary Basic Pilot Employment Verification Program, a federal database through which companies can determine the validity of employees' identification documents.

-- Employers face increasing scrutiny about their employees' legal status.

-- The White House has faced intense pressure from some Republicans to toughen immigration laws and deport migrants on the grounds that they constitute a security threat.

One factor that complicates the immigration debate is that the interests and cleavages associated with the issue do not follow strict partisan lines. Both major parties have significant, historically entrenched, internal divisions over immigration policy:

1. Republican disunity. The interests and aims of populist Republicans are at odds with employers who depend on low-wage immigrant employees.

2. Democratic infighting. Historically, trade unions have been hostile to mass immigration. This resistance has declined in the last decade, but union Democrats favor only modest immigration numbers. More liberal and civil-rights-minded Democrats have promoted an open and reform-oriented approach to immigration.

The failed reform effort this year was designed to overcome the deep divisions on immigration within and between the two parties.

However, the reform effort stalled for two reasons:

-- Ideological chasm. The division between lawmakers who opposed any sort of amnesty and those who wished to promote some mechanism for transforming illegal immigrants into legal residents was too great to overcome.

-- Institutional barriers. Institutionally, the structure of the U.S. legislative process favors inertia over reform. The political system, in effect, gives a veto to sufficiently determined interests.

Reform has become more difficult, because the Bush presidency has presided over a deeply polarized political system. However, comprehensive immigration reform will re-emerge as a major issue in 2007, due to:

-- the sheer numbers of illegal immigrants and the cost of maintaining a border security policy to exclude them;

-- the overwhelming desire, on the part of the business community, for legal clarity and an adequate supply of personnel; and

-- the political prize of winning the rapidly expanding Hispanic population's electoral support.

While entrenched interests have blocked progress on immigration, a desire to clarify the legal status of millions of U.S. residents, and the demands of the business community, will give the issue legislative impetus. The next Congress is likely to enact comprehensive immigration reform.

Immigration Flood Unleashed by NAFTA's Disastrous Impact on Mexican Economy

commondreams.org
Published on Tuesday, April 25, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Immigration Flood Unleashed by NAFTA's Disastrous Impact on Mexican Economy
by Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter

The recent ferment on immigration policy has been so narrow that it has excluded the real issue: family-sustaining wages for workers both north and south of the border. The role of the North American Free Trade Agreement and misnamed 'free trade' has been scarcely mentioned in the increasingly bitter debate over the fate of America's 11 to 12 million illegal aliens.

NAFTA was sold to the American public as the magic formula that would improve the American economy at the same time it would raise up the impoverished Mexican economy. The time has come to look at the failures of this type of trade agreement before we engage in more and lower the economic prospects of all workers affected.

While there has been some media coverage of NAFTA's ruinous impact on US industrial communities, there has been even less media attention paid to its catastrophic effects in Mexico:

NAFTA, by permitting heavily-subsidized US corn and other agri-business products to compete with small Mexican farmers, has driven the Mexican farmer off the land due to low-priced imports of US corn and other agricultural products. Some 2 million Mexicans have been forced out of agriculture, and many of those that remain are living in desperate poverty. These people are among those that cross the border to feed their families. (Meanwhile, corn-based tortilla prices climbed by 50%. No wonder many so Mexican peasants have called NAFTA their 'death warrant.'

NAFTA's service-sector rules allowed big firms like Wal-Mart to enter the Mexican market and, selling low-priced goods made by ultra-cheap labor in China, to displace locally-based shoe, toy, and candy firms. An estimated 28,000 small and medium-sized Mexican businesses have been eliminated.

Wages along the Mexican border have actually been driven down by about 25% since NAFTA, reported a Carnegie Endowment study. An over-supply of workers, combined with the crushing of union organizing drives as government policy, has resulted in sweatshop pay running sweatshops along the border where wages typically run 60 cents to $1 an hour.
So rather than improving living standards, Mexican wages have actually fallen since NAFTA. The initial growth in the number of jobs has leveled off, with China's even more repressive labor system luring US firms to locate there instead.

But Mexicans must still contend with the results of the American-owned 'maquiladora' sweatshops: subsistence-level wages, pollution, congestion, horrible living conditions (cardboard shacks and open sewers), and a lack of resources (for streetlights and police) to deal with a wave of violence against vulnerable young women working in the factories. The survival (or less) level wages coupled with harsh working conditions have not been the great answer to Mexican poverty, while they have temporarily been the answer to Corporate America's demand for low wages.

With US firms unwilling to pay even minimal taxes, NAFTA has hardly produced the promised uplift in the lives of Mexicans. Ciudad Juarez Mayor Gustavo Elizondo, whose city is crammed with US-owned low-wage plants, expressed it plainly: "We have no way to provide water, sewage, and sanitation workers. Every year, we get poorer and poorer even though we create more and more wealth."

Falling industrial wages, peasants forced off the land, small businesses liquidated, growing poverty: these are direct consequences of NAFTA. This harsh suffering explains why so many desperate Mexicans -- lured to the border area in the false hope that they could find dignity in the US-owned maquiladoras -- are willing to risk their lives to cross the border to provide for their families. There were 2.5 million Mexican illegals in 1995; 8 million have crossed the border since then. In 2005, some 400 desperate Mexicans died trying to enter the US.

NAFTA failed to curb illegal immigration precisely because it was never designed as a genuine development program crafted to promote rising living standards, health care, environmental cleanup, and worker rights in Mexico. The wholesale surge of Mexicans across the border dramatically illustrates that NAFTA was no attempt at a broad uplift of living conditions and democracy in Mexico, but a formula for government-sanctioned corporate plunder benefiting elites on both sides of the border.

NAFTA essentially annexed Mexico as a low-wage industrial suburb of the US and opened Mexican markets to heavily-subsidized US agribusiness products, blowing away local producers. Capital could flow freely across the border to low-wage factories and Wal-mart-type retailers, but the same standard of free access would be denied to Mexican workers.

Meanwhile, with the planned Central American Free Trade Agreement with five Central American nations coming up, we can anticipate even greater pressure on our borders as agricultural workers are pushed off the land without positive, alternative employment opportunities. People from Guatemala and Honduras will soon learn that they can't compete for industrial jobs with the most oppressed people in say, China, by agreeing to lowering their wages even more. Further, impoverished Central American countries don't have the resources to deal with the pollution and crime that results from moving people from rural areas to the city, often without their families.

Thus far, we have been presented with a narrow range of options to cope with the tide of illegal immigrants living fearfully in the shadows of American life. Should they simply be walled off and criminalized, as Sensenbrenner and House Republicans suggest? The Sensenbrenner option seeks to exploit the sentiment that illegal immigrants entering the US -- rather than US corporations exiting the US for Mexico and China -- are the primary cause of falling wages for most Americans.

The Bush version is only slightly different, envisioning the "illegal immigrants" as part of a vast disposable pool of cheap labor with no meaningful rights on the job or even the right to vote, to be returned to Mexico upon the whim of their employers.

Yet there is another well-known path of economic and social integration that has been ignored in the debates over immigration in the US: the one followed by the European Union and their "social charter" calling for decent wages, health care, and extensive retraining in all nations. Before then-impoverished nations like Spain, Greece and Portugal were admitted, they received massive EU investments in roads, health care, clean water, and education. The implementation of democracy, including worker rights, was an equally vital pre-condition for entry into the EU.

The underlying concept: the entire reason for trade is to provide improved lives across borders, not to exploit the cheapest labor and weakest environmental rules. We need to question the widely-held assumption that what benefits American corporations benefits Mexican workers and American workers. An authentic plan for growth and development isn't about further enriching Wall Street, major corporations, and a handful of Mexican billionaires; it is about the creation of family-supporting jobs. It is also about a healthy environment, healthy workers, good education, and ordinary people being able to achieve their dreams.

The massive tide of illegal immigration from Mexico is merely one symptom of an economic arrangement where human needs -- not maximum profits-- are not the ultimate goal but a subject of neglect. Neither a massive, shameful barrier at the border nor a disposable guest-worker program will address the problems ignited by NAFTA.

Programs providing stable, decent employment, modern transportation, clean water, and environmental cleanup are needed to take the place of the immense NAFTA failure and allow Mexicans to live decent, hopeful lives in their native land. But such an effort is imaginable only if the aim is truly mutual uplift for all citizens in both nations, instead of the NAFTA-fueled race to the bottom

Q&A: Illegal Immigrants and the U.S. Economy

NPR
by Adam Davidson
March 30, 2006
Nearly 12 million illegal immigrants are estimated to be living in the United States. The vast majority work in low-skill, low-wage jobs. More than half work in construction, manufacturing or leisure and hospitality.

Advocates on both sides of the immigration debate predict dramatic change if illegal immigration is drastically curtailed. Supporters of a crackdown argue that the U.S. economy would benefit if illegal immigrants were to leave, because U.S. employers would be forced to raise wages to attract American workers. Critics of this approach say the loss of illegal immigrants would stall the U.S. economy, saying undocumented workers do many jobs few native-born Americans will do. NPR business correspondent Adam Davidson explores the issue.


Q: What is the impact of illegal immigration on wages in the United States?


Well, for an individual, it depends on where you are, what kind of work you do and whether you have skills that illegal immigrants don't. But overall, illegal immigrants don't have a big impact on U.S. wage rates. The most respected recent studies show that most Americans would notice little difference in their paychecks if illegal immigrants suddenly disappeared from the United States. That's because most Americans don't directly compete with illegal immigrants for jobs.

There is one group of Americans that would benefit from a dramatic cut in illegal immigration: high-school dropouts. Most economists agree that the wages of low-skill high-school dropouts are suppressed by somewhere between 3 percent and 8 percent because of competition from immigrants, both legal and illegal. Economists speculate that for the average high-school dropout, that would mean about a $25 a week raise if there were no job competition from immigrants.


Illegal immigrants seem to have very little impact on unemployment rates. Undocumented workers certainly do take jobs that would otherwise go to legal workers. But undocumented workers also create demand that leads to new jobs. They buy food and cars and cell phones, they get haircuts and go to restaurants. On average, there is close to no net impact on the unemployment rate.


Q: But what about wages in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, where there are many illegal immigrants? And what about wages in industries that use many undocumented workers?


More than a third of illegal immigrants live in just three cities: New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. But even in these places, economists believe there is minimal impact on wages. That's because many Americans from other parts of the country choose not to move to areas with large numbers of immigrants, because they want to avoid competing for jobs.


Even in industries with high concentrations of illegal workers -- such as construction, restaurants and some parts of agriculture -- the impact isn't as great as many people think. If there weren't illegal immigrants working in construction in places like Chicago and Miami, then demand for legal workers would go up, which would mean wages would rise. But very quickly, legal workers from other parts of the country would move to those cities, and wages would go back down. The net impact on wages would be relatively modest.


Illegal immigrants do often take some of the country's least attractive jobs, such as in meat packing and agriculture. If there were no undocumented workers available for those jobs, employers would likely invest in new technology, replacing workers with automation.


Q: How do illegal immigrants affect the overall U.S. economy?


Illegal immigration has both negative and positive impacts on different parts of the economy. As noted above, wages for low-skilled workers go down. But that means the rest of America benefits by paying lower prices for things like restaurant meals, agricultural produce and construction. Another negative impact is on government expenditures. Since undocumented workers generally don't pay income taxes but do use schools and other government services, they are seen as a drain on government spending.


There are places in the United States where illegal immigration has big effects (both positive and negative). But economists generally believe that when averaged over the whole economy, the effect is a small net positive. Harvard's George Borjas says the average American's wealth is increased by less than 1 percent because of illegal immigration.


The economic impact of illegal immigration is far smaller than other trends in the economy, such as the increasing use of automation in manufacturing or the growth in global trade. Those two factors have a much bigger impact on wages, prices and the health of the U.S. economy.