"Georgia Immigration" - (Google) News Sweep - 4/3/'06
"Georgia Immigration" - (Google) News Sweep - 4/3/'06
4/3/'06 - The following article(s) were found in the media. Several stories are provided ... with links to the original sources ... for your convenience:
- Guest worker idea threatens U.S. heritage (AJC)
- Millions overstay legal visas while U.S. focuses on illegals (AJC)
- Economics of immigration could defy laws (AP)
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http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/bookman/stories/040306.html?COXnetJSessionIDbuild127=Ewf28GvxaguD2xwzrZeEuQ3O7MQT0oH7n1v2yKsxU37WpexCjHMv!-1985931906&UrAuth=%60N]NUOcNWUbTTUWUXUWUZT[U\UWU^UWUZUcU[UcTYWYWZV&urcm=y
Guest worker idea threatens U.S. heritage
Published on: 04/03/06
If the American people decide that 12 million illegal immigrants should be removed and sent back home, fine, we can try to do that.
The process would be hard and expensive and brutally inhumane at times, and it could never be entirely successful. But if we hardened our hearts and emptied our wallets, we could probably come somewhat close to achieving that goal.
Of course, banishing those millions from our borders would also mean that we would do without the labor they now provide in industries from construction to hotels and restaurants to agriculture to food processing. Some Americans — generally the most rabid and extremist among us — are ready to make that deal anyway, and there are politicians in Washington — including some from Georgia — willing to pander to that crowd, at least in theory.
Others, however, are trying to find a way to retain the labor that illegal immigrants provide without offering them the right to live here permanently, let alone the right to pursue citizenship. It's an effort to solve a politically tough problem by cutting the baby in half, placating anti-immigrant fervor without denying American business the cheap, docile work force it relies upon.
That is in essence the proposal championed by President Bush, who advocates "legalizing" millions of immigrants now here illegallly, but only on a temporary basis. After working several years, the temporary "guest workers" would be forced to return to their home countries to be replaced by new temporary workers.
That proposal has been condemned by extremists — most of them in Bush's own party — as offering "amnesty" to those who broke the law in coming here, as if punishment were more important than solving the problem. The more serious problem with that approach is practical; it assumes that workers will return home once their legal status has expired, and that's unlikely to happen.
It's also important to think about the guest worker approach in moral terms, in terms of the values that we claim to honor as Americans.
Under a guest worker policy, we will let the immigrants come here by the millions, but only temporarily. We will let them mangle their hands in our poultry plants and salt our farmlands with the sweat off their brows and break their backs at our construction sites and raise our children as nannies and clean our homes as maids, all at cut-rate wages.
But we will not allow them to dream — for themselves or their children — of sharing in the future they help to build here.
In other words, we are willing to let them serve us but not join us; they must by law be held apart and beneath us. We will import them to serve as a perpetually rotating servant class, and we will do so even while pretending to still honor that most American of principles, "that all men are created equal."
That system of second-class citizenship — far from slavery, but far from the full range of human rights as well — has precedent in American history. In colonial times, more than half of those who immigrated from Europe came here not as free people but as indentured servants.
In return for the cost of passage to the New World, they agreed to be legally bound to an employer for a number of years, unable to marry without permission and with no say over where they lived or how they worked. They could even be sold to another boss.
But even back then, when the period of bonded indenture ended — usually after seven years — the servant was freed and allowed to take his or her place as a full citizen.
In reality, there is nothing all that complicated about drafting a practical, humane policy on illegal immigration. It would have three basic components:
• Tighter border security, to cut off as much as possible the supply of illegal workers coming into this country;
• Much more effective enforcement against illegal employers, to reduce as much as possible the demand for illegal workers;
• A way to deal effectively and humanely with the illegal immigrants already here.
Any proposed solution that does not include all three components is neither workable nor serious. But in a consideration that is just as important, any proposal that condemns millions to a permanent menial class, even while profiting from their labor, is beneath us as a country and a betrayal of all we are supposed to represent.
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Millions overstay legal visas while U.S. focuses on illegals
Published on: 04/03/06
As the debate over the 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States continues in the Senate, a large group is getting overlooked: people who enter on legal visas and then never leave.
Known as visa overstays, these visitors make up between a third and a half of the illegal immigrants in this country, according to government reports — between 4 million and 6 million people.
 John Spink/AJC | |
| US-VISIT attendant Patricia Zachery (right) helps Judith Ortiz as Ortiz's daughter, Clara Londono of Athens prepares to say goodbye to her mother, who was returning to Cali, Colombia. | |
 John Spink/AJC | |
| Edelmiro Leal of Monterey, Mexico, used the US-VISIT system at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The system is being tested for the purpose of tracking visa overstays. | |
 John Spink/AJC | |
| A US-VISIT kiosk (above) helps track foreigners. Millions have entered the United States with legal visas then never left. At least three of the 9/11 terrorists were in the country on expired visas. | |
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The Senate is focusing on stepping up enforcement along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border and establishing a guest worker program. But those measures don't address visa overstays, critics say.
"Even if you succeed at the border, you're only catching 60 percent of the problem. I don't think that within the Congress the thinking is broad enough," said Deborah Meyers, senior analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank that compared immigration proposals in Congress.
Meyers and others say overstays are a matter of national security: At least three of the terrorists linked to the Sept. 11 attacks overstayed their visas.
Many in Congress, however, believe the border is the first priority.
That is "by far and away" the largest component of the illegal immigration problem, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said. The current system for keeping up with tourist and student visas lacks accountability, he said, but securing the border can help that.
"If we secure the border, I'm sure other resources could then be turned and focused on those that violate their visas," Isakson said.
George Grayson, a College of William and Mary government professor who has studied immigration, suggested why visa overstays don't get attention.
"There's drama at the border," he said. "Visa overstays is a yawn."
The Department of Homeland Security can command attention and dollars by focusing on the place where the immigration problem is starkest, Grayson said. And because immigration enforcers depend on Congress for their budget, they set their priorities according to what legislators care most about.
Of three main agencies that deal with immigration, the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in charge of catching those who overstay their visas, has about 5,500 agents nationwide. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which secures the nation's ports and borders, has 42,000 employees, including 10,143 U.S. Border Patrol agents assigned to the Mexican border. A Senate bill approved by the Judiciary Committee this week would add 13,000 more Border Patrol agents.
Temporary entries
In the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30, 2004, the most recent year for which complete figures are available, there were nearly 31 million temporary entries by foreigners into the United States. That included more than 5 million temporary visas granted to tourists, students, businesspeople, dependents of foreign workers and others. Some of those visitors entered and left the United States repeated times during the year. Visitors from countries that don't require visas also made nearly 16 million entries.
Half of all legal visitors in 2004 were from the United Kingdom, Mexico, Japan and Germany, Meyers said.
Carolina Colin-Antonini, adjunct professor at Georgia State University and an immigration attorney, said she thinks the reason the border gets more interest is that many of the visa overstays come from Asia and Europe and are more affluent and better educated people with whom Americans are culturally and economically in tune.
"This is an ethnic and racial issue as other immigration issues have been," said Colin-Antonini, who is Venezuelan-born and a naturalized U.S. citizen. "When voters think of immigrants, they don't think of the Canadian guy or the fellow at the computer. They think of the brown laborer waiting at the corner."
A Canadian's story
Brett Rutherford, 32, knows how easy it is to stay in the United States undetected.
A Canadian computer technician, he said he took a train to Springfield, Ill., in December 1996 to visit a woman. Canadians don't need a visa, but they are allowed to stay only six months unless they ask to remain longer.
Rutherford stayed for almost a decade, got engaged, married, bought a house, divorced and held several jobs, the last for a company that kept track of data on Illinois' Medicare and Medicaid recipients.
Rutherford said he tried to get legal status but could not get any help from the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service.
"I talked to 10 different people and got 15 different stories," Rutherford said.
He never made a secret of his Canadian origins, he said, even taping a Canadian flag to his computer terminal. His employers never asked for proof that he could work in the United States.
He said they merely told him that if he decided to go home to Canada, which he did at least once, he should tell U.S. border officials on his return that he was just visiting the United States.
Last June, Rutherford said, he returned to Canada to visit his ill mother. When he tried to return, U.S. border officials denied him entry.
Rutherford's story would not surprise many who want stricter limits on immigration.
"This is a huge issue, and we're very discouraged and upset by what's going on in Congress," said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which lobbies for stricter controls. "I haven't seen them get exorcised about visa overstays."
Stein said the Bush administration, and many in Congress, don't want to put any additional burdens on businesses that hire illegal immigrants. Enforcing the law and removing illegal immigrants would cut into their workforce and increase their costs, he said.
"Since business is the primary culprit, they need to be the primary target of any so-called reform," Stein said. "Just putting more people on the border is not going to do it."
Exit tracking
After 9/11, immigration officials developed a high-tech system using fingerprints and photographs to track people entering through U.S. airports, seaports and land borders.
US-VISIT has been tracking entrances in most locations since January 2004. Exit tracking is now being tested at two seaports and 12 airports, including Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
Before returning home, a visitor checks out at an ATM-style machine that scans a person's passport and takes a fingerprint and a photo. The traveler then gets a receipt to present at the gate. That information is not checked now because the program is still being tested.
If US-VISIT is implemented, the information could be verified against entry records, confirming that someone who came into the country left. Anyone shown as having entered, but not leaving within a certain period of time would become an overstay, said US-VISIT Director Jim Williams.
A Compliance Enforcement Unit was created in June 2003 to go after visa violators. The office acts as a central clearinghouse, gathering leads from US-VISIT and two other databases that track foreign students and visitors of special concern. Agents investigate and distribute the names of suspects to 176 ICE field offices for follow-up, said Dean Boyd, ICE spokesman in Washington.
In Atlanta, ICE chief Kenneth Smith says investigators in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina receive information from CEU every day and he has people working "full time" on visa overstays, though he would not reveal the number of agents
Since its creation, CEU efforts have led to about 2,000 arrests of visitors who overstayed their visas and of other violators, such as students who worked without permission.
Boyd said limited resources prevent more arrests.
But a Homeland Security Inspector General's report in October criticized the unit's performance, noting it took too long to complete cases.
It said the unit's 18 members, with contract worker help, investigated only 68 percent of more than 300,000 leads received between January 2004 and January 2005. Those investigations led to only 671 apprehensions.
Boyd said the unit was never meant to go after run-of-the-mill visa overstays without a criminal record. It targets the most dangerous offenders, such as those who commit crimes after entering the country.
"We may have a large population of visa violators, but is it wise to go out and, without prioritizing, try to round them all up?" Boyd asked. "Our investigators are charged with enforcing more than 400 different statutes."
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http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/business/14247722.htm
Economics of immigration could defy laws
ADAM GELLER
Associated Press
To the mostly immigrant workers and American employers who cross paths at El Centro Humanitario - a former car wash converted to a day labor agency on the fringes of downtown Denver - the nation's heated debate over illegal immigration is no abstract concept. It's economic reality.
"If people are willing to pay another $20,000 for their $200,000 house, then fine," said Chuck Saxton, a contractor who regularly hires immigrant workers for a fraction of what full-time U.S. workers would cost, to help him build additions and finish basements for Denver-area homeowners. "But if not, we need to talk about the consequences of throwing out 12 million people."
Those consequences - for U.S. businesses and consumers and the illegal workers who provide a consistent source of cheap, dependable labor - are impossible to deny.
That point has been largely overlooked as congressional lawmakers clash over proposals to step up enforcement and legalize foreign workers. But, regardless of the measures they devise, the economic forces underpinning illegal immigration will be exceedingly difficult to alter, experts say.
"If we enact a law that makes clear we're going to dramatically increase enforcement without allowing greater legal flows, employers and illegal immigrants will find ways around it," said Gordon Hanson, an economist at the University of California at San Diego.
While it is difficult to predict precisely what would happen as a result of future changes in the law, Hanson's assertion is backed up by past experience.
The last time Congress overhauled immigration laws in 1986, the rhetoric was at least as heated and sentiments were largely the same. Illegal immigration was alleged to pose a threat to national security. Critics said unauthorized workers were taking good-paying American jobs. Foreign workers were accused of taking advantage of the nation's generosity by soaking up public benefits.
In the end, lawmakers passed a bill that granted amnesty to workers already here, while promising to clamp down on the flow of new arrivals. Congress ordered employers to require documents from their workers, and said there would be consequences if they didn't.
Illegal workers, though, kept coming.
In the two decades since, the number of illegal immigrants in the United States has grown from about 4 million to between 11.5 million and 12 million, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. More than 40 percent - about 4.4 million people - have arrived within the past five years.
They account for about one in every four farm workers, hold 17 percent of all jobs in cleaning and building maintenance, 14 percent of all construction jobs and 12 percent of food preparation jobs, the center says.
Would tough new laws change that? The 1986 reforms failed because border and workplace enforcement were both weak, experts say.
Some lawmakers are calling for all employers to screen workers through a national computer system designed to catch those with fraudulent documents. A bill already passed by the House would require much more aggressive border enforcement, including an extensive fence along the frontier with Mexico.
Unlike the enforcement-focused House measure, a bill from the Senate Judiciary Committee calls for offering workers who are already here a chance at amnesty and citizenship over an extended timetable. At the same time, it would create a guest worker program to allow a continued flow of temporary workers, a response to intense lobbying by business groups.
But experts say that while the provisions in some of the bills might slow the steady stream of arrivals, that would only be temporary.
"When all the dust clears, we're going to have higher levels of legal immigration and lower levels of illegal immigration, but within a few years we'll return to the levels that we've seen," said Peter Schuck, a Yale University professor specializing in immigration law and policy. "Immigrants will figure it out. The zeal of enforcement will wane."
The problem is that enforcement is no match for potent underlying economics, experts say.
More than half the illegal workers in the United States are from Mexico, where the past decade's currency devaluation and debt crisis have created tremendous economic volatility. At the same time, the Mexican labor market has been fed by a baby boom a generation behind the one in the United States. The combination has created tremendous economic pressure, pushing a surplus of workers to seek out opportunities better than those offered at home.
The Rev. Ricardo Hernandez of Sts. Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church in Rockford, Ill., knows their stories well.
"I think they will keep on working no matter what changes are made in the law, and they'll still be hired by many business people who want only to find cheap labor," said Hernandez, many of whose parishioners are undocumented immigrants from his native Mexico, working in construction, retail and restaurant jobs. "Things are so bad in Mexico that they will have to work here, and they will stay even if the pay is very low."
Hernandez points to one couple at his church, both in this country illegally, who work at a restaurant in nearby Belvidere, Ill., for $3.50 an hour - well below the federal minimum wage of $5.15 and Illinois' $6.50 hourly minimum.
Even as overseas economics have pushed workers to leave their home countries, the rapid growth in the U.S. economy during the 1990s fueled huge new demand. It took a while for the boom to reach California, long home to the nation's largest immigrant population, where post-Cold War cuts in defense spending prolonged a downturn. But robust economic growth elsewhere drew large numbers of new immigrants to states that had previously seen relatively few, and into new industries, too.
Illegal workers flocked to factory jobs in Illinois, to clean hotel rooms and work in restaurants in Georgia, and to build homes in North Carolina and Colorado.
Saxton, the Denver-area contractor, said he began hiring immigrant workers about four years ago, after some of the American day laborers he'd previously hired arrived for work drunk. He needed 15 men for 3 days to dig out a basement, and found he could hire immigrant workers for $8 an hour.
He now pays $10 to $12 an hour. But he points out that is much cheaper then the $35 an hour he'd have to pay for full-time U.S.-born employees, including the cost of worker's compensation insurance.
"These guys work hard, they're honest, they're nice. I trust them with my tools, money, anything," Saxton said.
While illegal immigrants play a crucial role in the economy, their importance is sometimes overstated. Foreign workers account for less than 5 percent of the nation's labor force. They are concentrated by industry and geography in ways that would cushion the larger economy should they removed from it. While their labor affects the prices consumers pay for some goods, it is but one component.
Proponents of tougher immigration laws argue that the country has workers capable of doing the jobs done by immigrants, but that businesses must pay more.
"At what point in the last 20 years did Americans wake up and say `I no longer want to work in construction for $17 an hour?'" said John Keeley of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates stricter controls.
But business groups argue that growth in the number of workers in the United States is slowing, that most young workers do not want jobs that are often seasonal and temporary and involve tough manual labor.
The solution is a "practical real-world guest worker program that permits an appropriate number of guest workers in this country to address a growing need for labor to keep our economy strong," said Bob Dolibois, executive vice president of the American Nursery and Landscape Association, which has lobbied for such a change in the law.
The reality, though, is that given the motivations of the businesses and workers at its center, regulating the flow of workers at the periphery of the economy will be very difficult, whether or not immigration is legal, experts say.
"You're trying to legislate and end immigration in the face of tremendous economic demand for illegal immigrants," Hanson said. "Just like with the illegal drug trade, we can say it's illegal, but that doesn't mean it's not going to happen."
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AP Writers Colleen Slevin in Denver and F.N. D'Alessio in Chicago contributed to this story.
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Erik Voss
erik@ICAtlanta.org
404-457-5901 Direct
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