Amid the almost wholly pervasive
media attention directed towards Election Day and the evolving worldwide
economic jolt, recession or depression, however it turns out, the news is
quieter about immigration. If the media were noisier on the subject, the
confusion and countervailing forces would be difficult to report. This
commentary has explored, perhaps excessively, aspects of our lawful and
daunting unlawful immigration - six times this year alone. All such material is
available on the website, www.freecongress.org.
The latest developments are
worthy of attention but difficult to analyze, much less to prophesy.
Considering unlawful immigration has been estimated to have cost Americans $346
billion in 2007, or $9,000 per taxpayer, and for cultural and other reasons, a
bit more discussion seems warranted.
"Fence" and
"Visa" might be pertinent headings for the current confusion.
Some 670 miles of pedestrian and
vehicular fence are supposed to be built on the Mexican border. Absent a
substantial increase in border patrol, perhaps even use of some military, how
effective that fence would be if fully constructed and fully manned remains to
be seen.
Exactly how much is completed and
how much is now under active construction is unclear.
Also unclear is the projected
level of completion by Jan. 20, 2009, when, if polls translate to votes, we
would inaugurate a president even less enthusiastic and less persistent about
stopping unlawful immigration than President George W. Bush. Secretary of
Homeland Security Michael Chertoff currently is estimating that between 90 and 95 percent of the fence will be built or merely under construction
by Inauguration Day. In sum, it will be nowhere near reasonably
effective. Who knows what the federal government's unlawful-immigration
tolerance, even encouragement, level will be next year.
What about visas for allegedly
lawful immigrants? More delinquency - or benefit to illegals, however one cares
to phrase it. A (long overdue)
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services study, predicated upon a
sampling, reveals that about 13 percent of employer requests for so-called H-1B
visas were fraudulent and 7 percent contained technical violations. Sen.
Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Richard Durbin, D-IL, are looking into this
phenomenon.
Needless to say, the usual
leftist coterie is in varying degrees of opposition to any curtailment of
unlawful immigration, some of them in effect contending - can you believe it? -
that enforcement of the law violates human rights, adversely affects labor, so
on. There also is labor-union agitation, arguing in effect that enforcement of
the law harms workers. There likewise is some organized business agitation
because employers, and especially small businesses which apparently are the
greater culprits, are not supposed to be burdened by investigation and/or
adherence to law.
Of course, as the ever-prescient
de Tocqueville would have predicted, there is litigation.
At present, as a consequence of
the economic jolt and rise in unemployment, some unquantifiable percentage of
those people, mostly Hispanic or Latino, who unlawfully would immigrate are
staying home.
That downturn could continue as
long as our American economy is distressed inasmuch as many poor people who
unlawfully would come here wisely, if sadly for them, are remaining jobless at
home rather than here. This development obviously is no part of a long-range
means to curtail unlawful immigration.
Confusion and countervailing
forces as they are and, notwithstanding Secretary Chertoff's efforts, the next
president and the 111th
Congress will see the problem. The risk is that they minimize or ignore it.