The U.S. has grown by nearly 70 million people since 1990. Most of that growth was driven by immigrants and their children. The decision to bring upon ourselves this enormous growth was made by Congress in response to corporate lobbies, wanting to expand the labor pool and flatten wages, and ethnic politicians wanting to expand their voter base. The American public never asked for this stunning expansion.
Seventy million is more than the population of France. But France had centuries to build the roads, schools and infrastructure to support its population. Congress has required us to assume these huge costs in just 25 years, despite stagnant wages and outsourced jobs. Our infrastructure, from bridges to universities, from courts to basic research, is crumbling. We face overwhelming costs and insufficient public funds.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, 18 million new immigrants have arrived since 2000, and the native-born, working-age population has grown by 16.5 million. But job growth over this period was just 9.3 million. Too many workers, not enough jobs! In addition, the U.S. government admits 700,000 guest workers every year, 500,000 foreign students, and 70,000 refugees. Since 2000, the U.S. government has issued a whopping 30 million visas to either permanent immigrants or temporary workers.
We have choices. We could discuss the numbers and their impacts on jobs and wages and their costs to taxpayers, or we could continue to ignore them. We could expand immigration, or we could reduce it. Bottom line: Americans get to decide what policies serve their national interest.
With the “ comprehensive immigration reform” favored by President Obama and Democrats dead, what’s the alternative? Here’s one possibility.
The centerpiece of real reform begins not with wasting $18 billion on border enforcement every year, but removing the magnet that attracts job-seeking immigrants to the U.S. by requiring all employers to use E-Verify. This free federal website documents work eligibility within seconds with 99 percent accuracy. Hundreds of Maine companies already use it, making certain that workers who deserve the jobs get the jobs.
We can make legal immigration more rational and less political by convening a nonpartisan commission (similar to the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform in 1990) to identify goals of immigration policy and ensure that immigration aligns with other national goals, such as reducing poverty and public debt and expanding the middle class. We should reconvene the commission every eight years to tailor future numbers to changing demographics, business, and labor conditions.
There are also best practices the U.S. could adopt from other countries, such as skills-based immigration and admitting nuclear families only.
We can reward legal immigration. People won’t spend the time and expense for legal immigration if they can achieve equivalent results by cheating the system.
And we should recognize that different groups within the illegal immigrant population deserve different responses. Families who’ve lived here for years could be granted a limited legalization, allowing them to keep their current jobs without fear of deportation. But they shouldn’t be allowed to compete equally with American citizens and legal immigrants for better jobs. And they shouldn’t receive public benefits, such as Medicaid, child credits and citizenship.
Illegal immigrant youth, brought by their parents before age 14, could be eligible for a one-time-only pathway to citizenship. But their parents who broke our laws would receive limited legal status only.
We need serious enforcement: No more “catch and release.” We should have mandatory detention and expedited deportations at the border. And we should stop tax credit and welfare payments to illegal immigrants; establish criminal penalties for visa overstays; enforce our public charge laws, deporting those likely to become largely dependent on government assistance; and cancel federal funding for sanctuary cities. We should suspend visas to countries who won’t repatriate criminal illegal immigrants, and we should empower local officials to coordinate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
We can close loopholes in our asylum system that have led to massive fraud, and complete the entry-exit system to cut back on those who overstay their periods of admission.
We need to set limits and enforce them. Someone with a compelling personal story will always be on the wrong side of any limit we set. But public policy should be determined by national goals, not anecdotes.
Immigration is far too important to allow business and ethnic lobbies to manipulate the political narrative and determine national policy. Nor should we allow a president to unilaterally declare null and void this country’s immigration laws, enacting executive actions that Congress has repeatedly and explicitly rejected.
We need “immigration reform” to serve our national interest, not the donor class. Let’s try again.
Jonette Christian of Holden is a founder of Mainers for Sensible Immigration Policy. She can be reached at jonettechristian@rocketmail.com.