The Voice of the White House for April 3rd 2006
‘If we enact a law that makes clear we're going to dramatically increase enforcement without allowing greater legal flows, employers and illegal immigrants will find ways around it,’ said Gordon Hanson, an economist at the University of California at San Diego.
The last time Congress overhauled immigration laws in 1986, the rhetoric was at least as heated and sentiments were largely the same. Illegal immigration was alleged to pose a threat to national security. Critics said unauthorized workers were taking good-paying American jobs. Foreign workers were accused of taking advantage of the nation's generosity by soaking up public benefits.
In the end, lawmakers passed a bill that granted amnesty to workers already here, while promising to clamp down on the flow of new arrivals. Congress ordered employers to require documents from their workers, and said there would be consequences if they didn't.
Illegal workers, though, kept coming.
In the twenty since, the number of illegal immigrants in the United States has grown from about 4 million to between 11.5 million and 12 million, according to the Pew Hispanic Center or twenty to twenty-two million according to other sources. More than 40 percent - about 4.4 million people - have arrived within the past five years.
They account for about one in every four farm workers, hold 17 percent of all jobs in cleaning and building maintenance, 14 percent of all construction jobs and 12 percent of food preparation jobs, the center says.
Would tough new laws change that? The 1986 reforms failed because border and workplace enforcement were both weak, experts say.
Some lawmakers are calling for all employers to screen workers through a national computer system designed to catch those with fraudulent documents. A bill already passed by the House would require much more aggressive border enforcement, including an extensive fence along the frontier with Mexico.
Unlike the enforcement-focused House measure, a bill from the Senate Judiciary Committee calls for offering workers who are already here a chance at amnesty and citizenship over an extended timetable. At the same time, it would create a guest worker program to allow a continued flow of temporary workers, a response to intense lobbying by business groups.
But experts say that while the provisions in some of the bills might slow the steady stream of arrivals, that would only be temporary.
‘When all the dust clears, we're going to have higher levels of legal immigration and lower levels of illegal immigration, but within a few years we'll return to the levels that we've seen,’ said Peter Schuck, a Yale University professor specializing in immigration law and policy. "Immigrants will figure it out. The zeal of enforcement will wane."
The problem is that enforcement is no match for potent underlying economics, experts say.
More than half the illegal workers in the United States are from Mexico, where the past decade's currency devaluation and debt crisis have created tremendous economic volatility. At the same time, the Mexican labor market has been fed by a baby boom a generation behind the one in the United States. The combination has created tremendous economic pressure, pushing a surplus of workers to seek out opportunities better than those offered at home.
Illegals are quite willing to work at almost any wage: one couple both in this country illegally, who work at a restaurant in nearby Belvidere, Ill., for $3.50 an hour - well below the federal minimum wage of $5.15 and Illinois' $6.50 hourly minimum. This means that young Americans, coming out of high school, find it impossible to earn any kind of a living wage because they could not survive on such low wages. Especially hard hit are American blacks, already disadvantaged. Illegals have driven this group of American citizens completely out of the entrance level jobs, forcing them onto the welfare rolls and producing a huge, indigestible, and unemployable mass in the body politic
Even as overseas economics have pushed workers to leave their home countries, the rapid growth in the U.S. economy during the 1990s fueled huge new demand. It took a while for the boom to reach California, long home to the nation's largest immigrant population, where post-Cold War cuts in defense spending prolonged a downturn. But robust economic growth elsewhere drew large numbers of new immigrants to states that had previously seen relatively few, and into new industries, too.
Illegal workers flocked to factory jobs in Illinois, to clean hotel rooms and work in restaurants in Georgia, and to build homes in North Carolina and Colorado.
.While illegal immigrants currently play a crucial role in the economy, their importance is sometimes overstated. Foreign workers account for less than 5 percent of the nation's labor force. They are concentrated by industry and geography in ways that would cushion the larger economy should they removed from it. While their labor affects the prices consumers pay for some goods, it is but one component.
Proponents of tougher immigration laws argue that the country has workers capable of doing the jobs done by immigrants, but that businesses must pay more.
‘At what point in the last 20 years did Americans wake up and say `I no longer want to work in construction for $17 an hour?'’ said John Keeley of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates stricter controls.
But business groups make the specious excuse that growth in the number of workers in the United States is slowing, that most young workers do not want jobs that are often seasonal and temporary and involve tough manual labor.
That having been said, given the motivations of the businesses and workers at its center, regulating the flow of workers at the periphery of the economy will be very difficult, whether or not immigration is legal, experts say.
The major hurdle to Congress legislating a working solution to the enormous mass of illegal aliens now in the United States is the tremendous economic demand for illegal immigrants as cheap, off-the-books workers in the American business community. Frustrated by union-mandated high wages, American business eagerly welcomes illegal immigrants who will work for a small fraction of American union wages, not protest dangerous working conditions and increase corporate profits. Even now, corporate America is doing its level best, through the ever-active lobbyists, to arm twist Congress into permitting both increased immigration and the continued use of existing illegal workers.
And , finally, there is a very easy way in which this devastating problem can be legally and ethically addressed and implemented. That would be for the individual states to address this issue at the economic levels. More and more, the States are defying a useless President and thoroughly corrupt Congress. In one instance, the Bush administration, catering shamelessly to the Christian Right, declined to support any but the least objectionable stem cell research. There would be, he mandated, no Federal financial assistance to these programs, so detested by the right-wing Christians. A number of states, recognizing the vital importance of stem cell research, passed their own laws permitting such research in their own states. The Federal government cannot interfere with these new laws and therein lies the solution to the mass of illegal immigrants that Congress will do nothing about.
States most heavily impacted by these millions of immigrants should consider:
·Banning any state welfare payments of any kind to illegal non-citizens. This prohibition ought not to impact any legal immigrants.
·No citizen of that state should be permitted to operate a motor vehicle on the roads of that state without a valid state driver’s license and proof of insurance.
·A state driver’s license can only be obtained by the presentation to the motor vehicle department in charge of driver’s licenses of proof of citizenship that must be verified by said agency prior to issuance of any license.
·No citizen of that state should be permitted to vote unless they are able to produce a valid and legal state driver’s license at the voting stations
·No medical facility should be compelled to treat indigent and illegal persons without their possessing a valid state driver’s license.
·No person should be permitted to attend any public school in the state without their parents being able to produce valid state driver’s licenses.
·No business in the state should be permitted to hire, either as temporary or permanent employees, any person who is not in possession of photo ID, or a valid Social Security number and that businesses that do hire persons without such identification, shall be subject to an immediate heavy fine on the first instance and the jailing of their CEO on the second.
·Contractors of any kind who persistently hire such illegals should have their state contractor’s licenses permanently revoked.
·Any illegal operating a motor vehicle on public roads, if apprehended by law enforcement, should have said vehicle impounded and held until proper identification can be produced. If such identification should not be forthcoming, the said vehicle should be auctioned off to the public and the proceeds placed in a special educational fund for state residents in need of public aid.
In summation, if you keep your food in sealed containers and the floors and counters in your kitchen cleaned, the cockroaches will go elsewhere to feed. The enforced rounding up and deportation of millions of people is simply not possible, much to the joy of the mass of illegals now in the United States. They are well aware of this logistical nightmare and bask in the realization that they are hopefully untouchable. If, on the other hand, economic freeloading becomes impossible, they will voluntarily go elsewhere to feed in another public hog trough.”
My next article in this series will cover La Raza, its foreign connections and its growing militancy.
Congress split over immigration bill
April 2, 2006
by Mark Felsenthal
Reuters
WASHINGTON- Lawmakers clashed on Sunday over whether to let some illegal immigrants stay in the United States and work for citizenship, suggesting compromise may elude Congress on a politically sensitive issue.
"There's a chasm between the House and the Senate," Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
The Senate is debating a bill that would tighten security along the Mexican border, create a temporary "guest-worker" program, and could create a process for some of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States to become citizens.
The immigration issue has taken on heightened importance before November congressional elections and poses a dilemma for U.S. President George W. Bush, who wants Congress to approve a guest-worker program despite strong opposition from within his own Republican Party.
Durbin and other Senate Democrats said they oppose the route taken by the House of Representatives, which in December passed a measure that would define illegal aliens as felons and would build a 700-mile fence along the border with Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out.
"The House approach is unacceptable," Durbin said.
Meanwhile, prominent Republican lawmakers said the guest-worker program is at odds with the immediate goals of legislation beefing up border security.
"If we don't firm up the border, the guest-worker program is going to encourage more people to enter the country illegally," said Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, speaking on the same program as Durbin.
A Republican senator and potential presidential candidate in 2008, George Allen of Virginia, breaking ranks with President Bush, said the legislation should focus on border security and put off debate on a guest-worker program.
Bush has backed allowing illegal workers to have temporary legal status while performing jobs Americans are unwilling to do. He favors a comprehensive immigration bill, while some Republicans prefer a limited bill addressing only border security.
HOUSE-SENATE DIFFERENCES
"It may be several years down the road or months down the road we can get a consensus on how you handle a good temporary-worker system," Allen said on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."
"I don't think we ought to be passing anything that rewards illegal behavior or amnesty," he said.
Debate over immigration has exposed rifts within the Republican Party, with some GOP lawmakers agreeing with Bush that immigration legislation must have a broader focus than sealing the border to illegal immigrants.
"Any type of immigration reform must include some type of pathway to a legal status," said Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, speaking on CNN's "Late Edition."
Sensenbrenner acknowledged that division in Congress over the guest-worker program poses a major obstacle to a compromise on immigration legislation.
"This will be tough, and it's the toughest thing that I've done in 37 years in elective public office," he said.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said on the CNN program that he expects the immigration bill to reach the Senate floor by Friday.
The House and Senate would then have to work out differences between different versions of the legislation, but any measure that does not create some path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants already in the United States "is simply not going to work," the Tennessee Republican said.
The House bill caused an uproar in the Hispanic community and has drawn opposition from groups as diverse as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Catholic Church.
Virgin Mary tombstones full of drugs
March 30, 2006
AP
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal agents on Thursday said they had broken up a ring of Mexican drug smugglers who used tombstones featuring the Virgin Mary to move hundreds of pounds of cocaine into the United States from Mexico.
The Drug Enforcement Agency announced arrests of 12 people as part of an alleged conspiracy stretching from New York to Mexico City.
Four of those arrests came Thursday, one in Houston and three after an early morning raid on a warehouse in New York's Brooklyn borough.
At the warehouse, agents found bricks of cocaine packed inside tombstones, some decorated with figures of the Virgin Mary, the DEA said.
"Like grave robbers who have no respect for the dead, this drug organization used revered tombstones to smuggle millions of dollars worth of cocaine into New York City," said John Gilbride, the special agent in charge of the New York DEA office.
At the Brooklyn warehouse, agents found eight tombstones, five of which were packed with 20 to 25 kilograms each of cocaine. They also found remnants of smashed tombstones.
An earlier seizure at a Long Island stash house netted 84 kilograms of cocaine and nearly $500,000 in drug proceeds, officials said.
The investigation, dubbed Operation Omni Presence, began in May 2005 based on a tip from Long Island's Nassau County investigators, and it eventually drew in law enforcement personnel in Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and Florida.
The DEA said the raids dismantled the entire supply chain, from the source in Mexico to the New York street dealers. A New York grand jury has indicted the suspects on charges including money laundering, possession with intent to distribute, and conspiracy.
Last month, the DEA said it had arrested a separate group of suspected smugglers who surgically inserted drugs into puppies as part of another scheme.
Border Troubles: Drugs, Immigrants Today; Terrorists, Bombs, Tomorrow
April 2, 2006
by Olivia Albrecht
Today, optimistic Mexican illegal immigrants traipse across the U.S. border; last month, authorities discovered a 2,400 yard tunnel from Tijuana, Mexico into southern California being used to transport tons of drugs.
Tomorrow, devious al-Qaeda terrorists sneak into our southern states, and an underground-tunnel from Mexico into the U.S. transports a nuclear weapon enroute to a major U.S. city.
Regretfully, this speculative scenario is more realistic than Americans are willing to admit.
Illegal immigration and homeland security are intimately entangled, and the U.S. is vulnerable on every front. Yet, as Americans, we struggle to uphold our historically pro-immigrant principles while striving to protect our citizens’ lives, resulting in stalemated opportunity for actionable policies to solve this national security dilemma.
Terrorists can be counted on to try to exploit this vulnerability.
Over 500 million people cross our borders each year, and only 170 million are American citizens. Specifically, the Mexican border sees 10,000 illegal alien crossings each day – that is more than three million illegal attempts each year. The U.S. illegal immigrant population has swelled by an estimated 3.7 million over the last five years.
Lately, Mexican officials considered distributing maps of the border terrain, cell-phone coverage on the trails, and water stations maintained by the U.S. charity Humane Borders to help promote safe (illegal) passage. However, Mexican officials say the government wants to ‘rethink’ this plan because they are concerned the maps would direct anti-immigrant groups (like the Minutemen civilian patrols) precisely to where migrants would likely gather -- thereby ostensibly guaranteeing capture.
It should be noted that Mexican President Vicente Fox has a very clear incentive for aiding illegal migrants into our country -- migrant workers in the U.S. send home an estimated $16 billion a year. The revenue is Mexico’s second largest source of foreign currency after oil experts. President Fox has made it all too clear that he wants our shared border porous and will continue to pressure the U.S. to keep it that way.
However, those crossing the borders are not only Mexican drug-traffickers, optimistic workers, or families. More than 100,000 illegal immigrants entering the U.S. from Mexico each year are not Mexicans. Last year alone, 450 people crossing the Mexican border were from such officially-designated “special interest” countries as: Afghanistan, Angola, Jordan, Qatar, Pakistan and Yemen.
As for our northern neighbors, the vast Canadian border has also been exposed as a weakness. In 1999, Ahmed Ressam was arrested entering Washington State with explosives and bomb components in the trunk of his car. That same week, authorities thwarted plans by Lucia Garofalo and Bouabide Chamchi to terrorize millennium New Year celebrations in the United States when they arrested the pair on the Vermont-Canada border.
While we do not know yet whether the southern border has been breached by terrorists to gain entry into the U.S., there is every reason to believe that al-Qaeda and other such nefarious types will utilize it as a fluid passageway into the states. A large smuggling ring specializing in bringing Middle Easterners across the southern border was broken up in the late 1990s, which suggests the prospect is all too real.
As if government sponsored maps of the U.S. border and armed incursions between suspected Mexican military and U.S. border patrols weren’t enough of a breach of our homeland security, last month a 2,400 yard tunnel was discovered running from Tijuana, Mexico to Otay Mesa, California. Over two tons of marijuana was discovered in the Tijuana warehouse where the tunnel began.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials were quick to admit the national security implications of such a tunnel: “Whether they are designed to smuggle drugs, people, weapons or other contraband, these tunnels pose a threat to our nation’s security.”
The threat posed by such tunnels, 21 of which have been discovered since Sept. 11 when investigations and enforcement were augmented in the region, grows well-beyond the socio-economic burden created by illegal immigrants, drug-trafficking and other contraband. This is a national security disaster.
Notoriously unscrupulous and corrupt Mexican drug-traffickers could easily be paid for their "tunnel services" on a "don’t ask, don’t tell" agreement by such unsavory (and wealthy) characters as al-Qaeda terrorists. While trafficking terrorist members through such sophisticated tunnels would be bad enough -- imagine if these terrorists smuggled in a nuclear weapon or massive bomb components?
If such a scenario were ever to occur, we could not blame naiveté. The facts are startlingly clear: borders are the United States' Achilles heel. If we don’t seriously commit to shoring them up, a worst-case scenario will become reality.
Olivia Albrecht is the John Tower National Security Fellow with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. Ms. Albrecht researches international relations and national security issues, with a focus on the ‘Islamofascist’ phenomenon. Albrecht previously worked for the Pentagon (Non-Proliferation Policy) and with the Heritage Foundation, and is a graduate of Princeton University with a degree in Philosophy.