The case for Immigration: Including information from the Texas Democratic Convention

June 10, 2008

Sometimes we here in the United States feel that we are the only ones on Earth that face certain problems. Sometimes we live in a bubble. That's a problem, because there is much we could learn by looking at our problems in a broader context and learning from the rest of the World. We also tend to compartmentalize many issues and see them only through a very small prism. We don't like the complex. But the reality is that many issues overlap and sometimes not in the most obvious of ways. Immigration is one such issue.

Poor people who cannot manage to feed or educate their families, at least the brave, pro-active ones, will often move to unknown, foreign lands in an effort to provide for those they love. Many people have come to this country in recent years looking to better their lot and that of their families. Here in Texas, many of those immigrants are Hispanics, many of those Hispanics are Mexicans, but in other parts of the United States you will find illegal Irish (some of whom are headed back now that their home country's economy is on the rise), illegal Africans, illegal Asians and on and on. The Dominican Republic, a third world nation by most anyone's standards, is doing very well when compared to the hapless nation of Haiti with which it shares an island and the DR is inundated with immigrants coming to work in cane fields and other back breaking jobs.

On the other side of the World, Western Europe is the destination of choice for many immigrants from Northern Africa, the Middle East, some Eastern European countries and even--Latin America. Ironically, since I had decided yesterday to write on this topic, today's New York Times addresses the immigration issue as tackled by Spain, a country whose population is only 40 million, meaning that its immigrants represent an enormous percentage of its inhabitants, even when compared to the United States. In his article "Border Crossing: Spain, Like the U.S., Grapples With Immigration, Times' reporter, Jason DeParle, informs us that since 1985, Spain has run six legalization programs. Three years ago, in one such program more than 600,000 were legalized. While some argue that the legalizations encourage more immigration--and it might, especially the immigration that comes from the reuniting a families, the Spanish feel the benefits of a legalized, documented and therefore known workforce trumps those concerns. Besides, the majority of Spanish, and immigrants themselves, believe that most immigration stems from economic need regardless of the opportunity for legalization or lack there of.


June 14, 2008 (I was pulled away from my blog, but I am back.)

In Spain, where medicine, among other social safety nets, is socialized, even illegals have always been granted free access to health care. With legalization programs, all services and work protections become the right of the newly naturalized immigrants. With these additional protections in place, most immigrants have seen their wages rise. Immigrants need not live in the shadows and the Spanish government is aware of who lives among the greater population.

While Eastern Europeans and Africans make up a substantial portion of the immigrants to Spain, the majority of the country's newcomers come from Latin America. That does aid in the assimilation to Spanish life, because the language barrier is minimal, but that should not keep us from learning from the Spanish experience.

Also in Europe and covered, too, this week in the New York Times in an article titled "Classroom Door Gives Immigrants an Entry to Society" by Souad Mekhennet, is a model for integrating immigrants into the adopted society through language classes. Germany's immigrant population is largely made up of Muslims from cultures very different from its own--more foreign to the modern German society by any stretch of the imagination than our Mexican immigrants are from its US neighbor. And the percentage of foreign-born residents is seemingly overwhelming in some major German cities. The article reports that of Frankfurt's 600,000 residents, almost 1/3 are not German citizens.

For years, the ever growing numbers of Muslim students in the city's public schools seemed to have parents who didn't care about their education, who never participated in parent-teacher conferences or responded to letters mailed to their homes. The Muslim kids were not engaged in school or in the larger German society. Well, neither were their moms--those charged with raising these children in a foreign and often forbidding foreign land. Then came "Mama lernt Deutsch", or "Mom learns German", a program for women only provided at their children's elementary schools during the school day with daycare for the younger siblings. In addition to being convenient, local and taking into account the need for childcare, the program was also designed to eliminate another extremely important obstacle for many of the women it hoped to help. No men were allowed. No male students. No male teachers. Some Germans balked at this. But it was the key to the success of the program.

Now that the women were learning German, and just as importantly, interacting with their female GERMAN teachers, they finally had a safe door into German society. The women started venturing out into the community. They could now read the letters and invitations to their children's schools and stopped throwing the strange writing into the trash can. They started showing up to parent-teacher conferences. Their kids started doing better in school. They, in turn, will contribute much more to the German economy and will no longer belong to such a separate World within Germany's borders. The program costs $235 per student and at this point, though it has been shown to be successful and has been copied in several German states and has been introduced nation-wide in Austria, the government has not picked up the tab. Only those who can afford the tuition can participate at this point. As in the United States, immigration policy is a touchy subject in German politics.What this program shows is that even the most desperate cultures can be integrated if people take the time to understand and accommodate initial differences at the start.

Okay, I promised some insight on what I learned at the Convention and all I've done is feed you a bunch of stories from far off lands. There is a method to my madness. On the morning on Saturday, June 7th, I attended a caucus with the title of Immigration and the Economy. The presentation, titled "Connecting the Dots: How to Achieve Border Security and Immigration Reform through Economic Sustainability" was made by Eddie Aldrete, Senior Vice President of International Bank of Commerce and member of the Alliance for Security and Trade (AST). He is also associated with the Texas Boarder Coalition on whose website (www.texasbordercoalition.org) you can find a wealth of information on the immigration issue. I have written to Mr. Aldrete in hopes of getting a link to his Power Point presentation and a list of the links to the video clips shown. Of course, I'll pass them on if I can.

For those of us who are familiar with the immigration issue in this county, there were plenty of stats to back up our arguments that the fence is not practical and is financially irresponsible. There were knowledgeable, experienced people to site when talking about the senselessness of rounding up twelve million people, of the almost complete neglect of the Northern border, coastlines and enforcement of visa overstays, which blow holes in the "national security" argument to the border control fight. There was also a great graph to demonstrate how the inflow of immigrants mirrors the employment trends in the United States. People come when there are jobs to be had. What made these sections of the presentation so very powerful was that the sources for the information in the presentation were almost entirely government agencies--not partisan think tanks or PACs.

But the most powerful point of this presentation was an argument that will tie us right back to our friends in Europe. The fertility rate. Western European countries and famously, the Japanese (more on them later), have been experiencing constantly lower fertility rates for decades. Spain, a country discussed earlier in this post, has a birthrate of 1.29. The United States currently sits at exactly 2.1. What rated do you need to replace your current population level? 2.1. And, keep in mind, the reason we are even as high as 2.1 is because immigrant families tend to have more children than do native born Americans. Take away immigration and we fall below the sustainable fertility rate. Native-born Americans do not have enough babies to sustain our population.

Now I know what you are thinking. Our population keeps rising. Well, that is true. But what keeps the population growing is the improvement in the health of Americans. They are living longer. That means that we are graying. We all know we've got a huge population of baby boomers about to retire and therefore getting ready to collect social security--for longer than the generation that preceded them. Colleges bursting at the seams right now are fixin' (God, I love Texas) to see their enrollments or at least their applicant pools shrink when its current wave has rolled through. Eventually, we'll start dying and our population will begin to fall. Who will pay for social security? Who will fill our universities? Who will drive our economy? Do we want to end up like Russia, where the population drops by 700,000 people per year and where women are paid $9000 to have a child? Desperate times.

Meanwhile, to our south, is Mexico, whose birthrate is currently at 2.4, though even that is expected to drop below the replacement level of 2.1 fifteen years after ours does. So do we want to turn the 12 million back and slam the door shut or do we want to legalize those who are here? Do we find out who they are, educate them, collect more taxes from them (in addition to the billions they pay already--including into social security, which they currently cannot collect), allow them to continue sending remittances home, shoring up the economy of our neighbor and thereby truly improving our security?

What's the next step? Well we currently allow only 65,000 work visas to skilled workers, such as engineers, per year, though last year 120,000 people applied on the 1st day of the application period and despite the fact that major tech employers are now setting up facilities in Canada and taking all the related jobs that go with them and could be filled by Americans should they keep the facilities here, because they can't get their people into this country. There are only 5000 visas available annually to unskilled workers--our excess demand--485,000 workers annually. What does that mean? Well, already many of the California farmers who have not been able to get the needed workers to harvest their crops over the last couple of seasons are moving their operations to Mexico. What does that mean? Well, our groceries have to get trucked back to us and small Mexican farmers are in trouble--hurting their economy and displacing more people.

What's the next step? Up the visa numbers to reflect the need. Let it float. Streamline it. Let legalized workers come and go home when they are done. Tax their wages. Not so many people will bring their families along to stay if they can come and go without fear. It will be interesting to see what happens if our unemployment rate continues to rise. Will this be the first time that we don't see Mexican workers heading back to Mexico when times are tougher in this country, because they are afraid they won't be able to get back and because the lives of their entire families is now rooted on this side of the border?

Of course there are humanitarian arguments for immigration reform, but those afraid of job loss and the collapse of our economy need to hear the economic argument. We are lucky. People want to come here. And we have a lot of experience in assimilating large immigrant populations. It takes time, but it can be done. Let's not wait until we become like the Japanese.

Yesterday Reuters, in an article "Japan Must Boost Immigration--Ruling Party Panel", reported that in Japan, a small island nation with a highly homogeneous population with no history of assimilating anyone the ruling party has come to the conclusion that they may need to stimulate immigration to their country to equal as much as 10% of their population if they want to save their economy. Their fertility rate? 1.22 (source CIA World Factbook).