Solving the migrant crisis depends on understanding why undocumented immigrants insist upon coming to the United States illegally.
Legal immigrants have been welcome in the United States for a long time. During the 19th and 20th centuries, America absorbed millions of peoples coming from less-advantaged countries around the world. There were times when citizens felt the country was being overwhelmed by immigrants and so undertook a pause or slowdown to give the residents of the nation time to assimilate these new arrivals before once more opening the doors to more of them. America has been one of the most welcoming of first-world societies to legal immigration. Thus we have the largest immigrant population in the industrialized world.
Legal immigration is not the problem and, if we could get ILLEGAL immigration under control, we could – in time – increase our ability to admit more legal immigrants.
Therein lies the problem, though.
Over the past five decades, undocumented immigrants have largely replaced low-skilled Americans in the unskilled labor market. Americans are legally required to work for no less than the minimum wage and are subject to tax evasion laws if they work “under the table.” Americans risk prison for working “under the table.”
Undocumented immigrants thus fill jobs that employers deem “not worth” the minimum wage – exerting downward pressure on wages in agriculture, construction, food preparation, meat packing, hospitality, and general maintenance.
Black Americans and first-generation legal immigrants are the most hurt by this practice. Even when unemployment is low, these workers often show a decline in labor participation because they simply can’t get hired for what they can legally work for.
The current overwhelming surge of illegal immigration then puts enormous fiscal pressure on towns, cities and states in the Southwest region, but also big Northeast and Midwest cities whose Democratic mayors started demanding federal action.
Finally, and most concerning, this influx of illegal immigration threatens the underpinnings of American democracy. Legal residents and citizens of the country belief those who receive the benefits of living in America should meet the obligations of citizenship. One obligation of living in American society is that you obey our laws, which illegal immigrants can’t do because they entered the country illegally. That shouldn’t be a hard concept to entertain, but apparently it is for some members of Congress. For our federal government to condone this on such a widespread basis leaves many multi-generational Americans feel “less-than” in their own country, as if they should go across the border and enter illegally to receive better treatment.
So something needs to be done. But what?
House Republican Plan
Last May, House Republicans passed H.R. 2, a “tough” immigration bill. Democrats immediately denounced it as too mean and President Biden (speaking the words his puppet master provided) promised to veto it.
Senate Republicans introduced their own proposals, supposedly modeled on H.R.2. They then tied it to funding for the Ukraine and Israeli wars, assuming whoever didn’t vote for it would be vilified as not caring about these two beleaguered nations.
That’s a topic for another time, but the vote failed.
The Senate also appointed a bipartisan committee to hammer out a compromise, but it hit a predictable roadblock. House Republicans announced that they wouldn’t accept a Senate bill that was substantially different from the House bill. Biden tried to sweeten the pot by offering to close down the border if crossings exceeded 4,000 a day.
Republicans can do math. That’s 1.8 million illegal border crossings a year.
And the Democrats have offered no other proposal to counter H.R. 2. They call for greatly expanding the asylum system and providing a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Most ordinary Americans feel this is like offering to make dinner for the burglar who broke into your house.
Of course Democrats are hoping to use this as a political wedge against Trump and the GOP (“they’re anti-immigrant), but there is such a thing as Wayback, so we can see that Biden voiced encouragement of illegal immigration in his first days in office and inspired the flood of illegal migrants we’re now experiencing. At least some Democrats are now recognizing this as a problem.
Oh, my God! The burglar is demanding dessert now!
Then, any honest reading of H.R. 2 shows many of its provisions are not unreasonable, which puts the lie to the Democratic narrative that anything coming out of the GOP is extreme nutbaggery that must be stopped at all costs. It’s a reasonable alternative to just allowing the continued invasion of the country.
Now, the burglar wants you to fix him a bed.
What’s In HR 2?
The House bill slightly toughens rules for asylum and parole, which have essentially allowed the Biden administration to release almost every illegal border crosser they encounter after giving them a court date in the distant future that nothing requires them to show up for. It would require asylum seekers to apply at official ports of entry. They would also have to apply for asylum (and be denied) in countries they transited through on their way to the United States. Migrants would have to convince US asylum officers that they face a “credible fear of persecution” in their home country rather than just state it.
The Refugee Act of 1980 allows migrants to apply for asylum based on “a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Biden illegally widened these criteria. H.R. 2 tightens it back to the legal standards.
Now ask me what I think of passing a second law to uphold the first law?
The House bill also re-establishes more stringent requirements for parole, which allows undocumented migrants to live in the United States and work for a specified period (6 to 24 months) after which they must apply for admission through normal channels. Dating back to 1952, parole was legally limited to individual cases that advanced a humanitarian cause or conferred a public benefit. Typically, migrants would be granted parole to seek medical attention, but periodically, it was used to admit people fleeing war-torn countries where the United States had intervened unsuccessfully, such as in Vietnam.
Biden has applied parole for people from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti, but also is being used by border officials to release undocumented migrants temporarily (that just somehow becomes permanent).
The House Republican bill would reaffirm parole’s original language. Cases would be taken one-at-a-time instead of applying to whole classes of people and a “humanitarian cause” would be restricted to such things as medical emergencies, the imminent death of a family member, or the attendance at a funeral. Parole would be limited to one year, which could be renewed once, and parolees wouldn’t be eligible to work.
Yes, the bill would drastically cut down on the admission of economic migrants.
We already have a system in place for orderly migration. The Biden administration should use it. There is a provision that allows for asylum “in extraordinary circumstances, such as those involving national security or foreign policy considerations” which would cover, for example, our contractors from Afghanistan who had to flee precipitously because of Biden’s inane policies.
What Do They Think They’re Doing?
When Senate Republicans announced their own bill in November, they claimed they based it on H.R. 2, but conspicuously omitted the E-Verify requirements.
This isn’t really anything new. My entire working life, every time I’ve been hired by an employer, I’ve had to provide legal proof that I’m legally permitted to work in the United States. Yes, I was born here, but that isn’t enough for American citizens to get a job in this country.
But, if you’re an illegal immigrant….
H.R. 2 requires all employers run their employees and applicants through a national electronic database that combines information from the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. If employers hired or continue to employ a worker who doesn’t meet the legal requirements to work in the United States, they could be fined $5,000 for each employee, and possibly, denied federal contracts.
Remember, American citizens have had to go through this process (without the database) most of my working life. It was meant to discourage illegal immigrant hiring which employers engaged in to lower costs and bust unions, and to discourage undocumented immigrants from crossing the border because they couldn’t gain employment and might get caught.
In the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, Congress decreed fines for employers who knowingly employed undocumented workers, and criminal penalties, including, possibly, jail time for repeated offenses, but businesses successfully lobbied for the law to say they only needed to see the evidence of legality and file a form, not actually provide proof to the government. Under these lax rules, the government prosecutes an overwhelming 15 cases annually about once a decade.
Since 1996, employers have been able to voluntarily verify Social Security numbers electronically. Ten states require employers to use E-Verify for all hires but other states limit its use to public employees, or leave it entirely voluntary.
Studies of its effects in the states that require E-Verify suggest it could discourage illegal immigration. States that use it have fewer unauthorized immigrants living there and there is evidence that when a state starts requiring it, undocumented migrants leave the state, which suggests they might leave the country if it was mandatory on a federal level.
Some of these studies show the E-Verify mandates ease the pressures of illegal immigration on unskilled American workers by removing their direct competition. Interestingly, some studies found employment rose among male Mexican immigrants who were naturalized citizens in states that adopt E-Verify mandates. Furthermore, earnings increased amoung US-born Hispanic men.
Skeptical
I don’t think this is the best solution. As a libertarian, I am highly suspicious of any federal program that tracks American citizens. But I also don’t think you can call yourself a country when you haven’t got a border – or the border you’ve declared has millions of people crossing it illegally.
E-Verify won’t fix America’s broken immigration system all on its own. It might discourage undocumented workers, but it’s not a panacea. It must be paired with more effective policing of the southern border, an increase in immigration judges familiar with the history of immigration in this country, and something needs to be done with the 30 million undocumented immigrants already living and, mostly working, in the United States.
Should they be given a legal pathway to employment in a country they entered illegally?
I think if you ask low-skilled Americans, especially males who typically can’t easily get welfare payments…no! Hell, to the NO! They often didn’t have the best advantages starting out in life and for those who want to work, the existence of illegal migrants who can work for less than the minimum wage sets up competition they can’t overcome. They go to prison if they’re caught working under the table, but illegal migrants just get an all-expense-paid vacation back to their home country. It’s not a fair system.
Every one of my ancestors who wasn’t a Native American was an immigrant. They all left behind stories of coming to America, risking getting turned away at a port of entry, working hard, learning English, and becoming citizens through a legal process. I suspect they’re rolling in their graves right now thinking about finding a burglar in their home and being required to provide him dinner, dessert and a bed for the night before he leaves with their television set under his arm in the morning.
Yes, some compromise is necessary to fix the migrant crisis, but that fix needs to recognize that Americans who are here now, for the most part, want immigrants to follow the rules their ancestors had to follow to come to this country. E-Verify helps. Tighter border security, a tight restriction on parole and asylum, and a formalized process to become legal workers in this country help more. But more than that, there needs to be a recognition that undocumented workers have been able to work in this country without they (or likely, their employer) paying income taxes. While I don’t agree with income taxes in general, I do recognize that the Americans who can’t find jobs because illegals have taken them all might feel differently.
Lela Markham is an Alaska-based novelist and commentator who is very pro LEGAL immigration.