Immigration Reform Should Aim Higher

Barack Obama and the Senate’s proposals on the immigration reform are a step in the right direction. However, they lose sight of the lesson from this experience: both future and present are equally important. This means that many people of foreign origin might end up outlaws again in a few years.

The reforms that have been proposed will reinforce border security and will entail severe measures against those employers who hire illegal immigrants. Thanks to these reforms, millions of undocumented foreigners will have access to citizenship. The number of visas will increase for some groups of people: for instance, the ones with a degree in advanced technical studies will be favored over others. These decisions will be made by politicians, not by the market. A more flexible approach, in line with the needs of the economy, would be better.

The reforms that have been proposed are a film that we have, in a way, seen before. While the technological advances will improve the employers’ verification and the border prohibition, the current initiatives do not differ from the amnesty given by Ronald Reagan in 1986. The main elements are the same: conditional legalization, improved border patrols and sanctions for employers.

However, that law is seen as a failure nowadays, not because of what it did earlier, but because of what it could not do later.

Unexpected Needs

The reforms of the Reagan era did not foresee the way in which the market’s needs would avoid the new restrictions, something that generated around 11 million undocumented workers who currently live in the United States. The same happened with the previous laws, particularly with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the national origins quota system and emphasized family reunification, just like Obama’s proposal is doing today.

Lawmakers and their electors need to understand three things. First, the number of immigrants required to fill jobs in the United States (from fruit picking to computer coding) is unlikely to be predicted. Second, the United States would not be invaded by undocumented workers if a more flexible system were implemented instead of establishing predetermined immigration quotas. Third, the current immigrants are not an economic or cultural danger to the United States, unlike the immigrants from the 19th and early 20th century, who were also harassed at the time.

The idea that a more flexible system would open the doors was illogical. In the first part of the last decade, around 800,000 undocumented immigrants arrived in the United States every year. By 2010, the net migration from Mexico, the main country of origin, had been reduced to zero. The main reason was not the reinforcement of the border patrol but the downturn of the economy. The same had happened after the bubble from the dot-com companies burst.

Similar patterns can be noticed elsewhere. In Spain, an important destination for Latin Americans and North Africans, migration has taken an ironic turn: thousands of Spaniards are now massively going to Northern Europe and Latin America.

The proportion of people of foreign origin in the United States, which stands at around 13 percent nowadays, is similar to that of other periods in American history. Until the 1920s, around 15 percent of the population was foreign. The average of both the 19th and 20th centuries is 10 percent.

The idea that immigrants steal jobs from citizens instead of covering the needs of the economy is false as well.

This is the case in Arizona. Before 2008, undocumented foreigners made up 10 percent of the labor force in Arizona, around 3 million people. However, the unemployment rate was only 4 percent. In other words, they were filling a gap; they were not taking the place of the locals.

The myth also prevails as far as the cultural danger of immigration is concerned.

Undocumented workers are currently acting just like the ones from the past did. As a general rule, adaptation is strong in the second generation and completed in the third one.

Similar Homes

The values of immigrants are closely aligned with the values of most American households. The overwhelming majority of Latinos that have been arriving since 1990 are Christian, mainly Catholic. Half of the undocumented immigrants are living with a spouse and a child. The proportion of households with only one father is a third among citizens and 13 percent among undocumented immigrants. Almost 12 percent of immigrants are self-employed workers, a similar percentage among citizens.

Lawmakers should pay attention to these facts when discussing and penalizing the new immigration law. They should also create a system that makes the entrance of immigrants with different levels of qualification easier according to the needs of the economy.

If they do so, they will be surprised to see how the wave of immigrants oscillates in a natural way. Sometimes, numbers will hardly be noticed.