Immigration reform, both nationally and here in Colorado, is shaping up to be one of the defining issues of the 2006 election season, and I say, “Hallelujah.”
This is an extremely complicated and important issue, and it doesn’t lend itself to simple solutions. U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo has become known for stridently pushing draconian measures to rid the country of illegal immigrants, but he has few political allies, because most of our leaders understand that there are broad constituencies that must be appeased.
As we embark on this debate, here are some basic, unambiguous truths we should consider.
We’re a nation of immigrants. We’ve built our population, language, industry, innovation and culture through the continuous immigration of hard-working, ambitious people. Some of our most famous and accomplished Americans have been immigrants (such as Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, Oscar de la Renta, Sydney Poitier, Carlos Santana and Arnold Schwarzenegger).
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 434,938 foreign-born people living in Colorado in 2004, which constituted about 10 percent of the state population. About half of them (estimated around 200,000) were believed to be undocumented.
Certain U.S. industries (think of agriculture, hotels, restaurants, hospitality and construction) are heavily dependent on immigrant workers. Just as global corporations are addicted to outsourcing, domestic firms and the customers they serve have developed an insatiable appetite for “in-sourcing.” Lobbyists for these businesses will strongly oppose any political effort to choke off their supply of cheap labor.
Tancredo is right about one thing. Given the war on terrorism, we must control our borders. We can’t afford to let people secretly cross into the United States. To discourage illegal immigration, we need to speed up the legal immigration process, develop a guest-worker program that will meet the demand for labor and create incentives that will encourage workers and businesses to follow the rules.
We must protect the wages and work opportunities of our lowest-paid citizens. Illegal immigrants primarily fill employment niches that U.S. citizens won’t touch. However, in those instances in which they do compete with Americans, they tend to reduce wages and/or take away jobs.
The survival of our Social Security program may depend on immigrants. With the first wave of baby boomers nearing retirement age, the Census Bureau projects that the number of people age 65 or older will double by 2050. During the same period, the number of people under 65 will increase by only 35 percent. The solvency of the Social Security system may depend on the addition of many more foreign-born workers in the labor force to maintain a reasonable ratio of workers to retirees.
The concept of the “anchor baby” is a myth. The argument goes that pregnant illegal immigrants come to the United States to give birth, because doing so will ensure that the parents and the rest of the family can become legal. It’s true that the 14th Amendment guarantees that any child born here is a U.S. citizen. However, the child of illegal immigrants can’t do anything to improve his parents’ legal status until he reaches age 21. Even then, his parents would have to return to their native country to apply for permanent resident visas, and since they’d been in the United States illegally for more than a year, they would face an additional 10-year bar on re-entry.
I’m glad that immigration will be a major political issue this year. I hope the debate will educate all of us about this complicated issue, and I hope our leaders will devise rational and just policies that will protect our most vulnerable workers, allow immigrants to attain legal status, preserve industries that rely on immigrant labor and further secure our borders against penetration by terrorists.
Former Bronco Reggie Rivers (reggierivers2002@yahoo.com) is the host of “Global Agenda,” Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. on KBDI-Channel 12. He writes Fridays on the op-ed page.
