As the political conventions continue, the long-simmering effort to fix the nation’s broken immigration system has seemingly fizzled.
Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain willingly raises this controversial issue.
Yet beyond the secure perimeters of establishment politics, immigration looms as a major concern affecting workplace survival for millions of U.S. workers and employers.
More than a thousand pro-immigration activists marched through Denver on Thursday before streets were cleared for Obama’s nomination acceptance speech at Invesco Field at Mile High.
Ten minutes from last week’s festivities, in a north Denver industrial zone, U.S. citizen workers were puffing cigarettes on break at a plastics factory, where operations chief Scott Schreiber, in the back office, wondered how he’ll manage to keep 60 jobs here in the face of Chinese competition.
“We’d never hire illegals to do the work,” Schreiber said. But if taxes and competition increase, he said, “outsourcing to Mexico is an option.”
Meanwhile across 56th Avenue, Jesus Manuel, 38, an illegal worker from Mexico, hurried to a warehouse for his job installing carpets.
Issue a top priority
After losing three fingers on his right hand in a welding accident in Arizona, he’s trying to get the money for surgery to repair the mangled stubs.
Working illegally here brings $3.25 per yard of carpet installed, about $500 a week, five times what he’d make in Mexico, Manuel said. If Obama or McCain eliminates illegal work options, “it would affect me a lot,” he said. “I’ve got to be able to work.”
Polls show that voters, especially in Western battleground states that may determine who wins the presidency, regard immigration as a top priority.
Obama and McCain stay mum, analysts say, because the emerging solutions are deeply divisive.
A politician who utters “immigration” will “lose as many people as he wins,” said Doris Meisner, former chief of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, now senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute think tank in Washington, D.C.
When pressed in an interview last week, Obama’s domestic-policy director, Heather Higginbottom, said immigration hasn’t been discussed because it isn’t one of the “top three” issues but that Obama “absolutely” plans to fix what he sees as a broken system in the first year of his presidency.
Obama believes “it is critically important to revive immigration reform,” Higginbottom said.
An essential step will be implementing “a very strong program so that employers can’t hire undocumented immigrants,” she said.
“It’s a tough issue. But it’s not one we are going to shy away from because it is tough,” Higginbottom said.
McCain recently has focused on fortification of the southwestern U.S.-Mexico border by building more fences and deploying surveillance aircraft.
Once borders are secure, McCain campaign spokesman Tom Kise said, McCain would “prosecute bad-actor employers” and set up temporary foreign-worker programs for employers.
Electronic verification
Obama also favors border security, but “the most important enforcement tool we can put into place is a simple but mandatory electronic verification system so that employers can make sure workers they hire are legal,” Obama spokeswoman Shannon Gilson said.
Violators would face “much higher fines,” Gilson said, and illegal workers currently in the country would have to “go to the back of the line” to seek citizenship.
“No job should go to a foreign worker without first being offered to Americans at a competitive wage with competitive benefits,” she said.
“And foreign workers cannot be exceptionally vulnerable to abuse, or some employers will prefer them over Americans.”
Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com
