Next Up, Comprehensive Immigration Reform
In addition to health care reform and climate change legislation, are we ready to juggle yet another ball? Ready or not, here comes efforts for comprehensive reform of our immigration policies. I guess this heavy agenda is what we get following 8 years of a President Shit-for-Brains and then electing someone with intelligence, vision and compassion into office.
Like health care in this country, the immigration process is completely broken and in need of overhaul. It also comes at a time of economic hardship and therefore must be addressed in terms of its impact on our economy.
Reform Immigration for America argues that “[t]he economic crisis is first and foremost on everyone’s mind. The Congress should act quickly to address the economic crisis and to create jobs. Fixing our broken immigration system is key to fixing our economy because we can’t build a strong economy on top of a broken immigration system. Comprehensive immigration reform will add 1.5 trillion dollars to the U.S. economy, drive up wages for all workers, support nearly a million jobs, and increase tax revenues. If we want to fix our economy we must fix our broken immigration system.”
Yet, with the mistaken allusion that 12 million undocumented immigrants in our country will pick up and leave, some in Congress (to include Rep. Glenn Nye) are intent on maintaining the status quo. A group of short-sighted members of Congress have recently signed onto a bill introduced by Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz. The “Bipartisan Reform of Immigration through Defining Good Enforcement” (aka BRIDGE) resolution demands that the federal government simply do more of what it’s doing (or not doing) already.
It’s a “Bridge to Nowhere”. Writes America’s Voices: “This ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ offers no new ideas to reduce illegal immigration, and instead prohibits Congress from creating any sort of program that brings undocumented immigrants into legal status so that they are paying taxes and playing by the same rules as everyone else”.
The anti-amnesty clause in this bill is especially wrong. Any reformed immigration process must include pathways to citizenship, not just for the economic contribution it makes but for humanitarian reasons as well. Families split up make for less productive workers, for example. With pathways to citizenship, all Americans benefit with better wages, working conditions, and labor protections.
Many undocumented immigrants are entrepreneurial, creating small businesses that in turn create jobs. These jobs form a huge network that our economy has become completely dependent on in good times and bad. The fear that undocumented workers will take away jobs otherwise available for U.S. citizens is unfounded. These jobs are already existent and are instead jobs lost should many of our undocumented immigrants be forced out of our country.
Reform Immigration for America has a staff person, Meghan McNamara, now working in Virginia Beach. She is organizing around the issue of comprehensive immigration reform. She would love your assistance in these efforts, especially related to outreach to Rep. Glenn Nye. Contact Meghan via email or phone 847.922.1213.
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January 27th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Also up next: a jobs bill, banking regulation, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and the Employee Free Choice Act. Congress has a lot of work to do.
February 2nd, 2010 at 3:39 pm
While I was out west, I can recall National Public Radio (NPR) reporting how illegal immigrants were devastating the small business construction enterprises of legal citizens. Illegal immigrants were willing to hang drywall at prices that were driving everyone else out of business. I will note that the example that NPR provided was of a small business owned by a minority business owner who could no longer compete.
I do not understand how flooding the market with additional people seeking employment is going to help those in the current labor market get higher wages. There are arguments that can be made for compassion, and those in favor of immigration reform should stick to those arguments. Attempting to appeal that such reform is in the best interests of the American blue collar worker does not pass the common sense test. Whether you realize it or not, some of us blue collar workers get around some and have personally witnessed where legal citizens have been displaced to the detriment of the middle class and the benefit of the upper class (lower wages equals higher profits).
Right now is absolutely the wrong time to pursue expansive immigration reform. You are not going to convince the majority of citizens on the unemployment or underemployment lines that they should cut their own throats. That they should allow that illegal immigrant to now legally be allowed to take that job they were hoping for at a wage they they could never have supported their family on.