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 Date:1/18/2010 The Latest |
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The Immigrant Quagmire As members of Congress draft a bill to tackle illegal immigrants in the U.S. Michael J. Wildes maintains that they should remain – for economic, social and historic reasons. The Obama administration’s policy shift toward penalizing employers for employing or harboring illegal aliens has placed manufacturers on the front lines of the struggle for comprehensive immigration reform. While the Bush administration focused on detaining and deporting undocumented workers, the Obama administration has instead concentrated on taking action against employers who knowingly employ illegal aliens. Several high-profile companies have been audited by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) in recent months. In September 2009, clothing manufacturer American Apparel was forced to lay off 25 percent of its Los Angeles workforce after a government audit revealed irregularities in employee identity documents that job applicants submitted to the company once hired. About 1,800 employees, many of whom had been with the company for years, lost their jobs after the government determined them ineligible to work in the United States. American Apparel’s reputation for offering its workers fair wages and a good benefits package did not deter the government from making an example out of them. Similarly, in December, Pilgrim’s Pride, the United States’ largest chicken producer, reached a $4.5 million fine settlement with the government and agreed to adopt a set of more stringent hiring policies after a government audit discovered that over 300 of their employees were illegal aliens. And it appears that this government policy of auditing employers to ensure that their workers are authorized to work in the United States is unlikely to end anytime soon. After the completion of an initial round of 654 such employer audits, ICE announced that it would initiate a second round of 1,000 employer audits last November. Because current policy places their companies at risk of losing a large portion of their workforce overnight and paying the government millions of dollars in fines, manufacturers have a special interest in immigration reform. I believe that a provision legalizing the over 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States is the only tenable position. Adopting a system granting legalization to longtime residents without a criminal record will conserve government resources, increase tax revenues, and ensure our national security. It will also do much to relieve the pressure on manufacturers. It is unrealistic to believe that our government has the resources to find, detain, grant due process, and remove 20 million aliens from within our borders. Sanctioning employers is ineffective because they often cannot tell the difference between authentic papers and the many forgeries undocumented workers often submit. As such, the argument favoring mass deportation is unsustainable and a vastly inappropriate use of our limited deportation facilities. Disregarding the biased statistics advanced by those on both sides of the issue, simple math tells us that these workers provide approximately 4 to 5 percent of our national labor force. Legalizing them would result in them paying their share in taxes. The economic reality is that legalizing the presence of undocumented aliens provides a sorely needed resource to our shrinking Social Security fund, and removes the financial burden currently placed upon the taxpayer to provide medical and educational services to undocumented aliens and their children. We must accept the only rational course and admit that our past border policies have failed. A national admission of failure in this regard is, at this stage, acceptable if the lessons learned from it provide us with the improved policies and strategies needed for a safer future. With millions of illegal aliens living clandestine lives in our nation, any effort to document them is doomed to failure if it does not contain a reasonable opportunity for them to achieve citizenship at some point. Drawing the many, hard-working illegals out of the darkness is the only way to shine a light on the unwanted, dangerous few. A legalization program would give the government the opportunity to separate aliens with criminal records from the vast majority of undocumented workers, whose only crime is residing in the country illegally. I extend a plea to the members of Congress to deliberate and debate this issue with the requisite compassion and informed resolve that it requires. The complexity of the issue is matched only by the importance it bears to our national identity. Can anyone doubt that our nation possesses citizens with the combined intellect, compassion, and creativity necessary to meet the challenge of forging a balanced and lasting solution to the immigration question? Unfortunately, the conversation is taking place during a period of polarized, politicized, and partisan animosity almost unprecedented in our nation’s history. While issues of great social significance can be argued in the streets, they are not required to become street fights. It should be clear to all involved that while this conversation can’t be separated from the emotion of our time, it must be considered in the light of our entire history. We are a nation of immigrants. More than any other nation in modern history, we have embraced diversity and been strengthened by the contributions of the foreign-born members of our society. Every American reading this is blessed to be so called because of the opportunity of entry given to a member of his or her family. To deny this opportunity to others because of fear, economics, or bigotry is to deny our capacity to resolve this issue with the compassion and innovation worthy of our great nation. Michael J. Wildes is managing partner at Wildes & Weinberg P.C., a preeminent immigration law firm with offices in New York and New Jersey. |