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| America's Immigration Dilemma |
| Country divided over pros and cons of opening the borders to foreign workers |
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Bhuwan Thapaliya (Bhuwan)  |
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Published 2006-04-19 15:46 (KST) |
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While the U.S. Congress is contemplating a crackdown on illegal immigrants, many immigrants are demonstrating throughout the country in favor of granting legal status to those currently working illegally in the United States.
Some senators were prepared to stick their necks out for a proposal widely seen as a bailout for illegals, but some conservatives badly misjudged the mood of the nation as well as the time needed to get the package passed, if it could be passed at all.
This was not unexpected, because, for decades, U.S. immigration reform has been the most polarizing of issues - ideologically raw, politically charged, and an ethnic hot button.
The Senate has yet to pass the immigration legislation, but the politics of the issue are in flux, reflecting the waves made by business groups, who say they need a reliable supply of low-cost workers, and by the conservatives, who are urging Congress to seal off the borders to illegal immigrants.
Both groups, however, seem uncertain as to whether they would be better off agreeing on a compromise and are still monitoring public opinion.
Contentious though they may be, none of these considerations is decisive. The question is, how serious are they, as skepticism has been rife even in places that supposedly have the most to gain?
Unfortunately for the illegals, the landmark Senate bill, which would offer eventual citizenship to an estimated nine million of them -- those who could show they had been in the United States for more than two years -- fell victim to internal politics, with President Bush blaming Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid for the potentially fatal blow dealt to the compromise immigration legislation, while Democrats countered that the Sensenbrenner Amendment -- which would have criminalized illegal immigrants -- was the reason for the bill's defeat.
Meanwhile, it must also be recognized that, during the last three decades, the U.S. has experienced a remarkable surge in immigration, and the share of foreign-born workers in total employment has steadily grown.
Related to this surge, the debate about the economic effect of illegal immigration on native-born Americans has gained momentum both within and outside academia.
Spurring the debate, a large body of empirical research examining the effect of immigration on the wages of the native-born has provided varied results, and America is involved in a political row over whether and how it should curtail the potential torrent of people wanting in.
Immigration supporters claim that foreigners come to do jobs that Americans won't do, but opponents say that immigrants steal American jobs. The first argument is reasonable -- the second is topsy-turvy.
The correlation between immigration and wages, however, is not transparent, even in theory, and, when welfare is considered, the answer will carry huge consequences.
For example, according to some economists, immigration raises the supply of workers and hence reduces wages. But let us not forget that cheaper labor increases the potential return to employers. By building new factories, they create extra demand for workers, both native-born and immigrant, and this will be good for any economy.
But other economists refute this by arguing that a large inflow of low-skilled people could push down the relative wages of low-skilled native-borns (mostly high school dropouts), assuming they compete for the same jobs. On the other hand, most analysts believe that the native-born would be relatively better off if the immigrants had complementary skills.
Their argument is simple and superficially compelling. But as wages depend on the supply of and demand for labor, most analysts say that we need to understand how quickly capital can adjust and how far new immigrants substitute for native-born workers to measure the full impact of immigration on wages.
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©2006 OhmyNews
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