Oppositions talking points, we need to counter

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Column: A debate no one is ready for
By: Ruben Navarrette, Worthington Daily Globe

SAN DIEGO — With the nation’s jobless rate at 10 percent and six applicants for every opening, you might think this is the worst possible time for Congress to legalize millions of illegal immigrants.
Yet that’s one of the proposals in a new immigration reform bill introduced by Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.
Those who believe you can’t discuss immigration reform in a down economy must also assume that newly legalized immigrants would automatically compete for jobs with U.S. workers, and that the last thing our homegrown workforce needs in tough times is more competition. This is an easy argument to make, but it’s not a very strong one for three reasons.
(1) There is never a good time for Congress to discuss legalizing the undocumented. The last time it debated the issue, from 2005 to 2007, the country had a stronger economy and an unemployment rate of less than 5 percent. Even then, many members found the issue too hot to handle. That’s because the sticking point isn’t the economy or jobs or what’s best for U.S. workers. What really concerns many Americans about the immigrants of today is the same thing that has concerned them throughout U.S. history — an irrational but insuppressible fear over shifting demographics and other changes that newcomers bring to the culture, language and landscape.
Americans aren’t trying to save jobs. They’re trying to save their quality of life. What they’re missing is that they often owe this quality of life to the availability of cheap and reliable illegal immigrant labor. If they would just admit this, the debate would be better off.
(2) The whole “illegal immigrants take jobs from Americans” argument is bogus. It’s time to stop pretending that illegal immigrants are really in some wide-scale competition with U.S. workers. Often, what’s at stake are jobs that, by their very nature, are unpleasant — working in dairies, tarring roofs, cleaning horse stalls, picking apples, washing windows on skyscrapers, etc. Americans used to do these jobs, but their children and grandchildren won’t do them today. So immigrants are hired, many of them illegal. Besides, those relatively few undereducated and unskilled Americans who do compete with illegal immigrants — a group that often lacks education and the ability to speak English, as well as legal status — and still lose out have bigger problems than where their next paycheck is coming from. They’ve obviously made bad choices in life, and now they have to live with the consequences.
(3) As President Barack Obama himself has suggested, one way to level the playing field for beleaguered U.S. workers is to make undocumented immigrants legal and take away the incentive for unscrupulous employers to hire them because they can pay them less than U.S. workers. The best way to stop pitting one group of workers against another is to legalize the undocumented workers so they’re on par with U.S. workers. To the degree that there is a competition, such a change would make it a fair one and eliminate any advantage that illegal immigrants might now enjoy. Once this happens, employers won’t have an incentive to hire illegal workers. Problem solved. On the other hand, by keeping illegal workers in the shadows, we keep wages low and U.S. workers at a disadvantage. That’s not smart or beneficial to the same American labor force the opponents of comprehensive immigration reform claim to care so much about.
So, even with a sluggish U.S. economy, now is as good a time as any to restart the immigration debate. Although this time, we need to achieve a different ending. During the last go-round, there was plenty of ugliness but not enough honesty.
These days, everyone is a victim — even whole countries. The fearmongers, nativists and alarmists like to say that the United States is experiencing an “invasion.” This convenient narrative implies that Americans haven’t been willing actors in this drama and excuses them of any responsibility.
Illegal immigration is not something that was done to Americans while they were minding their own business. It’s something that Americans did to themselves over the last few decades by raising children who see the worst and dirtiest jobs as beneath them, and then hiring hardworking illegal immigrants who don’t have the luxury of doing the same.
If we’re going to have this debate again, let’s start from there and work our way forward.
Ruben Navarrette can be reached at ruben.navarrette@uniontribune.com. Kathleen Parker’s column will return Dec. 31.
http://www.dglobe.com/event/article/...group/Opinion/

Another one:

No one expects it to pass in its present form. Legislation on controversial matters inevitably is subject to a series of amendments. But the current bill, introduced in the House of Representatives last week, aiming to repair our broken immigration system lays a solid foundation for restoring our proud tradition as a nation of immigrants.
Naysayers on both ends of the political spectrum already are knocking it as either “too liberal” or “too conservative,” which is an indication that the bill — introduced by Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and co-sponsored by more than 90 other House Democrats — is indeed fairly balanced.
Undocumented immigrants would have to pay an application fee, a $500 fine for those who entered the country after turning 16, and demonstrate that they have contributed to U.S. society through work, school, the military or community service. But then each would be given a six-year conditional visa and a path to a green card and to eventually obtain U.S. citizenship.
And that has the conservative naysayers asking how anyone could be offering amnesty to millions of lawbreakers who are taking American jobs at a time when so many U.S. citizens are out of work.
Yet to stop illegal immigration in the future, the bill also supports strong border security and immigration enforcement. And to make sure that future hires are legally in the country, the bill also creates an employment verification system.
And that has the liberal naysayers complaining that this bill should be more lenient and less focused on enforcement. They say immigration should not be treated as a national security issue.
But just as the conservatives are wrong for opposing any form of amnesty, the liberals are wrong for opposing any form of enforcement.
The conservatives need to accept the fact that we would not be giving new jobs to millions of undocumented immigrants; we merely would be legalizing about 5 percent of our current workforce. Most of these people have well-planted roots in this country. Despite the obstacles, many have managed to survive and eventually thrive while making significant contributions to our society — by taking care of our kids and elderly, washing our restaurant dishes, cleaning our bathrooms, mowing our lawns, harvesting our crops and doing all the other menial jobs most Americans reject.
The fact that more U.S. citizens now have to accept those jobs is a reflection of our troubled economy, but it does not deny the fact that undocumented immigrants were needed here and that many still are essential to our economic recovery. Booting them out of the country would be not only inhumane but also counterproductive to our own national interests.
On the other extreme, the liberals need to learn how to live with the fact that immigration is indeed a huge national security problem; in this age of terrorism, an open-borders policy is a terrible idea. In fact, perhaps the strongest argument for an amnesty program is our need to identify everyone who is living in this country for the sake of our national security.
The liberals must understand that this comprehensive reform legislation would have to be the amnesty to end all amnesties, that after the current undocumented immigrants were legalized, we would have zero tolerance for future illegal immigration. When we gave amnesty to undocumented immigrants in 1986, the legislation failed to reduce illegal immigration. In fact, some people believe it actually encouraged more immigrants to come here illegally.
And that’s the reason that this time, no immigration reform bill is likely to pass without solid provisions to ensure that future illegal immigration would be reduced dramatically.
Gutierrez’s bill, called the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009, tries to establish a realistic balance between the liberal and conservative extremes to create an immigration system that would actually work!
However, because it was introduced by a group of mostly liberal Democrats to pressure President Barack Obama to keep his word on immigration reform, even Obama administration officials are reportedly dismissing it as “too liberal.”
It’s not! There is no question that Gutierrez’s bill takes a pro-immigrant approach, but it’s the fair, balanced and realistic way to finally fix our broken immigration system.
Nevertheless, the White House and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have indicated that the Obama administration is assisting in the creation of a more moderate and bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill that will be introduced in the Senate early next year by Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
The question now is: How much further to the right will the Schumer-Graham bill take us, and will it truly fix our immigration problems with the compassion that Obama promised?
To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
http://www.reporternews.com/news/2009/dec/23/perez/