May 2, 2006
Invasion of the Hedge Clippers Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 05:05 PM EST What the debate on immigration needs, and will not get, is honesty. The biggest problem with the current situation is that it requires us all to shrug off massive violations of the law. Everyone knows that large numbers of workers in restaurants, landscaping, the building trades, and many other industries are illegal aliens, usually paid off the books, yet we pretend that nothing is wrong. Not only does this breed disrespect for laws in general and force legitimate business operators to become criminals, but it makes the problem hard to address by the usual means: Why bother replacing a law that doesn’t work with another law that doesn’t work? Cases like this, where a law with important consequences is unenforced or unenforceable, have occurred in the past in American history, and they have usually led to trouble. The Boston Tea Party took place not because the British government had imposed a new tax but because it was trying, through devious means, to collect an old tax that had been almost universally evaded. Some unenforced or underenforced laws have been bad (fugitive slave laws, prohibition) and others good (the Fifteenth Amendment, which supposedly guaranteed equal voting rights regardless of race), but either way, the remedy is the same: You must either (1) do what it takes to enforce the law and deal with the consequences, (2) repeal the law, or (3) alter it to reflect what can actually be achieved. Otherwise you’re just encouraging both sides to resort to extralegal measures. In our current immigration situation, option (1) not only would present a massive enforcement problem but would play havoc with the economies of the U.S., Mexico, and Central America. No one can say that illegal immigrants are being exploited; if they were, they wouldn’t hike hundreds of miles across the desert to come here. Keeping illegal immigrants out, let alone sending home the ones who are already here, would amount to a way of artificially elevating wages above market levels. Schemes like that never work; in this case, it would increase unemployment here and create a crisis for our southern neighbors, who depend on remittances from abroad to keep their economies afloat. Option (2) would be even worse, depriving us of any control over immigration. Option (3), on the other hand, in the form of true border enforcement coupled with a guest worker program having no restrictions on wages and benefits, would work quite well. America’s and the guest workers’ home economies would both benefit; immigration could be monitored and controlled; and the rule of law would be reinforced instead of being brought into contempt. Unfortunately, as I said at the start, it would require some honesty, which is in eternal short supply in American politics. Both sides would have to admit that illegal immigrants aren’t going away, that they make an important contribution to our economy—and that what makes these things true is the crummy wages they’re paid. In the examples I mentioned above, it took war, depression, and a decades-long protest movement to make this nation face reality. Will something similar be needed to bring us a set of immigration laws that aren’t a joke? Anything is possible, but the historical record is certainly not encouraging.
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