Thoughts on immigration

We all came from somewhere. Some before the United States came to exist, most after. And yet immigration has been – and remains – the thorniest of political topics. For the one thing we all seem to have in common, is once we – and by “we” I include our forebears – have arrived, we seek to restrict the flow of new arrivals. Today it is the Mexicans and other Latin Americans flowing north in search of jobs their own economies cannot provide, but during the latter 19th and beginning of the 20th century, it was the “yellow peril” threatening to overrun the western US as Chinese and Japanese immigrants came east. On the east coast it was the Irish and Italians beginning in the 1850s and continuing sporadically into the first two decades of the 1900s bringing the “scourge” of Catholicism. Most had one thing in common – they did not have “immigration” visas: the vaunted document that now separates “legal” immigrants from “illegal” immigrants.

What does it mean to be “legal” and when precisely did the term enter our national lexicon? A good question which requires further research, but which is beyond the scope of this article… I speak now from my personal experience of fighting through the “legal” immigration process with my Japanese spouse, and I can say with some certainty that process is a large part of the problem. For the problem with which we contend is not one of allowing only “legal” immigrants with skills into the country, but rather a problem of supply and demand. There is a demand for unskilled workers in the American economy to perform jobs our own citizens currently decline as being too menial or “beneath” their status – whatever that means to an unskilled, unemployed worker. Certain segments of our economy – especially the agricultural sector – still rely on the labor of itinerant workers to bring in seasonal crops. While this is not intended to be a discussion on the failings of our own populace to meet the demands of certain segments of the economy – the fact is American industry has a demand unmet by the domestic populace, and Spanish-speaking countries south of the US have an ample supply of excess labor. And yet, what remains the primary difference between these “illegal” immigrants and our “legal” ancestors? Time.
The United States is unique in the community of nations in that our national identity is predicated on immigration. While we retain a “special” relationship with our former colonial power, the relationship has only been truly “special” since the mid-1930s and is significantly based on the special relationship that developed between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Spencer Churchill – himself half-American; prior to the early 20th century, the relationship was more often hostile than not, and even after Pearl Harbor in 1941 many Americans remained isolationists. Unlike the rest of the nations spun off from the former British empire, we do not define ourselves as a member of the British Commonwealth; we define ourselves by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Statue of Liberty… we see ourselves as the city on the hill, a source of emulation, and a melting pot into which all are welcome, regardless of religion, ethnicity or pedigree. And yet while we tend to romanticize the way our own ancestors came to America in our national mythology (slaves being the exception), we simultaneously denigrate those seeking to follow in our steps. It is so much easier to deal in the terms of demagogues – CNN’s Lou Dobbs comes to mind – and equate all immigrants as vagrants living off America’s largesse, seeking to take good, hardworking Americans’ jobs and giving nothing back in return. It is much harder to look at how and why the current system is broken beyond repair and only encourages illegal immigration, vice preventing or deterring new “illegal” immigrants.

The path to legal immigration is neither easy nor cheap. In my own case, I was seeking entry for my Japanese wife, who hails from a close US ally with no recent history of illegal immigration. She holds a bachelor’s degree from a well-regarded Japanese university in Tokyo, speaks English fluently, and at the point of our entry into the immigration system, our relationship was nearly four years old. Her application should have been a no-brainer. And yet for her to attain “unconditional permanent residency,” the entire process took nearly three years over a period from 2004 to 2006, it took three visits to the US Embassy in Tokyo, a visit to a stateside US Customs and Immigration Office (two years later), and nearly $700 in total fees. In other words, an amount exceeding the average annual wages in most non-“first world” countries. That amount has recently been increased, and if I read the CIS fee schedule correctly, it is more if the applicant is not a family member of a US citizen. Additionally, if the application is rejected, the fees are not refunded, making the entire process a huge roulette wheel for the average would-be immigrant.

Between the time requirement, necessity to visit an embassy or consulate on more than one occasion, and the significant monetary investment, we effectively eliminate most applicants from legal entry. Making matters worse, we have no easy system to facilitate the legal entry of temporary workers. What our system does not well anticipate is the choice of a normally law-abiding foreign citizen who is being forced to make a choice between illegally entering the US, or staying where he is and allowing his family to go hungry. Granted, his family may be going hungry because his own economy cannot generate sufficient numbers of reasonably well-paying jobs, and he may have more children than he can afford, but regardless, this is the position in which many would be illegal immigrants find themselves. Decrying such a situation does not make it go away.

Until the United States Congress and the President are willing to deal with this very real problem in a meaningful way, we will continue to have substantial problems with illegal immigration. We are collectively kidding ourselves if we think this is a problem solvable by building more fences or kicking out all the “illegals.” First, it is not possible to build a fence around the entire US, and the pundits who decry our not having done so are scoring easy points at the expense of an ignorant general public. Second, as long as nearly half our border comprises water, it will never be possible to keep out all those determined to get into the country. Third, our system cannot handle the mass deportation of 15 million people – the current estimate of illegal immigrants living in the US. This would be tantamount to moving the entire population of Utah somewhere else. The logistics notwithstanding, we do not have a law enforcement apparatus capable of finding and deporting every illegal immigrant.
The basics of what is required is easy – a combination of a guest-worker program, a path to legalization for those already in the US and working in the “shadow” economy, overhaul of our visa-processing apparatus, and a healthy cost-benefit analysis of the true risk we face from “terrorists” attempting to infiltrate the US through illegal points of entry. But until we are willing to have a true national dialogue unencumbered by those who would rather get TV ratings or score political points against their partisan opposites than solve the problem, illegal immigration will continue to be a festering sore and a blight on our national image.