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Immigration Matters: U.S. Badly Needs Workers, but the System Won't
Let Them In
How do you fill America's labor needs and ensure that immigrant
families aren't broken up?
By Jeanne Butterfield, New America Media
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Feb 17, 2006 - There are many signs that our
immigration system is broken, and that more of the same policies won't
make it work.
An estimated 11 million undocumented persons live and work in the United
States today. Smugglers, traffickers and criminal elements who prey on
undocumented migrants are hurting border communities.
Nearly 2,000 migrants have died trying to cross our border from the
south in the five years from 1998 through 2003, and nearly 400 migrants
continue to die at our borders every year.
Service-sector employers can't get legal workers -- restaurants, nursing
homes, construction companies, childcare centers and landscaping firms
are among those facing severe and growing worker shortages. Seasonal
temporary visas can't meet the demand. The winter vegetable crop is
rotting in the fields because fewer than one-half the workers needed for
the harvest are currently available.
Family immigration backlogs are extensive. Spouses and children
currently wait three to five years to reunite with their lawful
permanent resident loved ones, with the waits extending seven to 10
years for Mexicans.
What will it take to fix this broken system? What can meet our nation's
labor needs as well as uphold its values in support of family unity?
Not surprisingly, a great percentage of undocumented workers come from
Mexico. Economic integration engendered by NAFTA has led to the addition
of 500,000 export-manufacturing jobs in Mexico from 1994 to 2002, but in
that same period, over 1.3 million workers were displaced from the
Mexican agricultural sector. The search for cheaper labor has led many "maquiladoras"
on the Mexican side of the border to move overseas, resulting in a
further job loss of 30 percent of "maquila" jobs during the 1990s. These
factors continue to "push" Mexican workers to the United States in
search of work.
On the other hand, the U.S. labor market desperately needs immigrant
workers. This need will continue to grow in the coming decades. Already,
by 2001, undocumented workers were 58 percent of the agricultural work
force; 24 percent of private household service; 17 percent of business
services; 9 percent of restaurant workers and 6 percent of construction
labor.
The growing availability of jobs in many sectors of the U.S. economy
continues to "pull" Mexican and other workers to the United States. The
Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there will be a growing demand
for workers in the coming years as a result of the expansion of the U.S.
economy and the aging and retiring of the native-born U.S. work force.
Immigrant workers are essential to the nation's economic health.
So, simply throwing more money and resources at the border and an
emphasis on enforcement will not lead to an efficient and rational
immigration system. Government spending on border enforcement quintupled
in the years from 1993 through 2004 -- from $740 million to $3.8
billion. The number of Border Patrol agents increased threefold in the
same period, from 3,965 to 10,835. Yet, during this same period, the
number of undocumented immigrants in the country more than doubled, from
4.5 million to 9.3 million.
We need a better system. We need comprehensive reform that will make
immigration safe, orderly, legal and controlled. Such reform must
provide three things: 1) an opportunity for people already living and
working here to earn permanent legal status; 2) a new temporary worker
program with adequate labor protections, so that essential workers can
enter the U.S. safely, legally and expeditiously; and 3) reductions in
the backlog in family-based immigration so that families can unite in a
timely way.
Proposals that lack these three components and seek only to increase
enforcement of the current unworkable system will only perpetuate and
exacerbate current problems.
The window of opportunity for significant action on immigration is
spring 2006. By late spring, attention will turn to the upcoming midterm
elections, and the immigration issue will once again be deferred until
the new Congress convenes in 2007.
The dangers are many. Congress may enact harsh enforcement measures,
such as the recently passed Sensenbrenner bill in the House, that do
nothing to increase our nation's security but only raise the pressures
on hardworking but undocumented immigrants. These workers will be forced
to remain in the shadows. More and more immigrants will resort to
dangerous paths of entry to the United States and more and more will die
in the process.
Or Congress may engage in honest debate and enact realistic and
comprehensive reform that ensures that the United States will remain a
nation of laws and of immigrants in the decades to come.
Jeanne Butterfield is executive director of the
American Immigration Lawyers Association, and a lawyer who has been an
immigrant rights advocate for 25 years. |
