The Illegal America

In theory, it looked simple: Illegal immigrants would leave, and the unemployed in Georgia would take their jobs. An agricultural season and $79.4 million in losses later — from a harvest left on trees and in fields — the equation has been proven wrong. Threatened by a growing problem in the primary sector of Georgia’s economy, the state government made an unusual decision: to replace illegal immigrants in the fields — chased down by the restrictive legislation introduced in Georgia this spring — with criminal offenders charged with misdemeanors.

The United States of America may have been built on immigration, but today it doesn’t have the strength to reform an immigration system that has long ago hit a dead end. Although politicians keep repeating that the current situation is unacceptable — and several states have decided to launch their own state reforms — on a national level Republicans and Democrats cannot even agree on giving a start to the negotiation process on the subject. The slow economic recovery and the approaching presidential elections fuel swings between drastic measures and complete apathy.

The opponents on the Republican presidential track have been competing against each other on who is going to build a higher wall on the Mexican border. The only presidential candidate who has experience in this area, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, was booed at the debates when he tried to explain why it would be better to educate the children of illegal immigrants instead of letting them get marginalized and criminalized.

Federal Failure and Local Populism

For years both Republican and Democratic administrations have been promising to give a legal solution to the status of about 10 million illegal immigrants and to facilitate the process of issuing work visas for highly qualified foreign workers willing to work in the States. The reform, though, provoked strong emotions among many Americans who believe that such a reform would reward the violation of the law. Instead of trying to communicate to the general public why it would be even worse to leave the matter the way it is now, Washington simply abandoned the subject after the first public scandal.

The federal failure does nothing but fuel anger, populism and ideas for drastic measures. Conservative local governments in Arizona, Utah, Georgia, Indiana and South Carolina pushed legislation that would encourage law enforcement units to check on the residency documents of locals, providing a tool to cut down the number of illegal immigrants. Alabama went further than the other states, requesting local authorities to check even the status of the children in schools and their parents.

“All these laws create more problems than they solve,” Wendy Cervantes, an immigration expert with First Focus, an advocacy organization dedicated to making children and families a priority in federal policy, explained to Capital. “The worst part — they impact the weakest: children and women,” she adds. Although different in the details, the reforms in the mentioned states generally expand the authority of local law enforcement units to check on the immigration status of residents. For instance, if a person is pulled over for a reason that has nothing to do with immigration, and the police officers suspect that the person may be an illegal immigrant, they have the right to ask for his immigration or residence ID. In the U.S., there is no universal mandatory ID card, and people widely use their driver’s licenses as a form of identification. In many states, though, driver’s licenses have been issued without checking with the immigration authorities, and many illegal immigrants may have a valid driver’s license ID without being legal residents, which often helps them to escape detection.

Paranoia and Issues

The restrictive measures insinuated fear and panic. “Women don’t dare to call the police when they are victims of domestic violence, because they fear extradition. Others don’t even dare to go to the hospital to give birth. In Alabama, where schools check on the status of children and parents, the situation is the worst. According to the statistical data, [during] the first week the law went into force, 2,300 kids did not show up at school,” Cervantes explains. The American media has shown striking images of Latin American immigrants leaving their residences in a hurry, leaving behind furniture and belongings. Other critics of the new legislation point out that it will create a burden to local prisons, which are overpopulated even without that extra pressure. The legislation in Alabama is the most severe not only because of the school checks, but also because it declares illegal any act of providing help, signing a contract or making a residence available to an illegal immigrant.

“We have almost 10 percent unemployment, and we need to put our people to work,” Alabama Sen. Scott Beason, who introduced the law to the Senate, replied to critics. The defenders of the new legislation in other states also insist that the pay of illegal immigrants undercuts salaries, congests infrastructure and hospitals, and leads to a higher crime rate. Others point out that the measures are a desperate attempt by local senates to force Washington to finally take care of the matter.

The Department of Justice, though, challenged in court the implementation of Alabama’s legislation, arguing that immigration issues are not under the authority of the states. Barack Obama’s administration shows conflicting views on the matter. Trying to silence the complaints that nothing is done to reduce the flood of illegal immigrants, it has raised the number of deportations to a record level.

396,906 undocumented individuals have been deported for fiscal 2011 — the highest number in American history. It is true that 55 percent of them have been charged with criminal acts, but according to the journalistic investigation of the popular TV show “Frontline,” immigration agents often arrest people who just happen to be at the crime scene and even those who called police for help. That is all done to make sure they meet their deportation quota goals.

For experts such as Wendy Cervantes, the most troubling fact is that deportation often separates families. According to Applied Research Center’s data, 5,100 minors who have American citizenship are currently in shelters or with foster families supported by the government, because their parents have been deported. To help, the federal government announced in August that it would deport only illegal immigrants with criminal records. The lack of legislative measures, though, leaves the door open for all kinds of wrong practices to come on board.

An Inevitable Reality

Most people who think of New York in Manhattan-terms only would be surprised if they took a walk around it. A predominant part of the area is populated with neat cow farms, lush pastures and hundreds of dairies. The chance of bumping into an illegal worker there is bigger than bumping into a cow. As a matter of fact, the New York Farm Bureau is one of the loudest proponents of extending and simplifying the programs allowing temporary workers in the U.S. Even though there is a constant hunger for agricultural workers, bureaucratic procedures let only about 30,000 people a year come to the states. A potential program for temporary workers would allow farmers to legally employ immigrants who today work under the table.

“They are my salvation — the best workers I ever had,” says Julia, who runs a family farm in the northern part of New York, about two Guatemala-born “employees” currently working in her barn. Before they showed up on her doorway, she had been looking for months for Americans ready to do the hard job for a modest compensation. Julia says that, for the most part, the local unemployed don’t know much about farming, and even if they agree to take the job, the conditions soon chase them away. The Guatemala guys, though, would sleep in the barn if a cow was about to give birth.

The same principle that is in the works in Georgia, where the harvest never left the trees, is valid in New York: The immigrants are here because America needs them. Georgia’s agricultural losses would be the perfect example of what happens when the authorities are taking temporary measures where long-term decisions are needed.

Isolated measures here and there across the country could only underline the fact that the reform is overdue and badly needed. A comprehensive decision should take care of the legislative loopholes and open the door to the workers the American economy needs. In this respect, a strong signal was sent recently by Arizona, the state that was the first to introduce restrictive measures. The electorate voted out Sen. Russell Pearce who authored the anti-immigrant laws. It turned out that anti-immigration rhetoric did not make his state either more secure or more prosperous.