Let Them In_ The Case for Open Borders - Jason L. Riley [63]
Unlike the restrictionists today who claim to speak in his name, Reagan understood the economic upshot of free and flexible labor markets. As a Californian, he understood the role of immigrant labor in agribusiness and other industries. And as a small-government conservative, he understood the unfairness and illogic of punishing companies for failing to detect and oust illegal aliens in their midst, especially when immigration authorities had themselves proven so inept at performing the same task.
George W. Bush understands this, too, and has argued that our immigration policies should be brought into compliance with the needs of our economy. But his opponents on the political right want the status quo. They want the current laws enforced and never mind the difficulty, impracticality, and potential economic damage. These folks essentially denounced the Reagan administration for not unleashing armies of G-men to harass business owners and immigrants who are freely contracting for labor. And they were terrified that if the Senate bill passed, Bush might be too much like Reagan in this regard. Oh, the horror!
AMNESTY AIN’T THE ANSWER
It may well be factually correct to say, as comprehensive reform critics like Meese have, that the amnesty provisions of the 1986 act didn’t solve the illegal alien problem. But it’s also highly misleading. After all, ICRA’s border enforcement provisions—and the numerous subsequent enhancements— haven’t stanched the illegal flow, either, but that hasn’t stopped Tom Tancredo from calling for still more security measures to be put in place.
The reality is that the amnesty provisions in ICRA weren’t destined to bring us any closer to stopping illegal immigration than were employer sanctions. Illegal immigration to the United States is a function, first and foremost, of too many foreigners chasing too few visas. Some 400,000 people enter the country illegally each year—a direct consequence of the fact that our current policy is to make available just five thousand visas annually for low-skilled workers. If we want to reduce the number of illegal entries, the most sensible course is to provide more legal ways for people to come.
This could be done through some sort of guest-worker program or by lifting the quota on green cards or both. The means matter less than the end, which should be to give U.S. businesses legal access to foreign workers going forward. ICRA did not do that, which is why it didn’t solve the problem. The 3 million illegal aliens who were brought into status in 1986 had already been absorbed by the U.S. labor market. The problem with ICRA is that its designers ignored the future labor needs of U.S. employers. After the amnesty took effect, our economy continued to grow and hungered for more foreign workers. But since the legal channels available were not sufficiently expanded, migrants once again began coming illegally, which is how today’s illegal population grew to its current size. Another amnesty, by itself, will do no more to “solve” this problem in the long run than the first one did.
It’s unfortunate that the “no amnesty” crowd was able to suck up so much oxygen in this debate. Talk radio hosts, cable news anchors, and former attorneys general used the term, quite effectively, to end conversations. And restrictionists in Congress invoked it as a political slogan to kill any reform. But from a public policy perspective, the fate of the 12 million illegals already here is largely a side issue, a problem that will take care of itself in time if we get the other reforms right.
As was the case in 1986, the United States today has easily absorbed the current illegal workforce, as evidenced by our steady economic growth