Breaking the silence on immigration

Immigration is an issue those in power are reluctant to address. It provides cheap labor for rich nations. It pumps huge flows of money into the developing world. And usually it's the politically disadvantaged, lower-income workers who get hurt most. So the flows of people to the United States and elsewhere continue to grow, with little comment from most corners of officialdom.

The quiet is unlikely to last. For economic reasons alone, governments will have to act.

Here in the United States, immigration has reached a record level. Not even the recent recession and subsequent jobless recovery have slowed the flow of foreigners. But Washington keeps its head low, afraid of political potshots.

"There has been a deafening silence from the White House since Sept. 11," says Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, a pro- immigration group in Washington. The administration is trying "to do as little as possible [for] as long as possible."

But she suspects immigration nonetheless will become a hot issue in the 2004 election year.

Both pro- and anti-immigration groups criticize Washington for not developing a coherent immigration policy.

Congress took a tentative step last month when it approved a law extending a pilot system for federal-document verification from six states to all states and for another five years.

But the program is voluntary. It doesn't require employers to check in with the computerized system to see if new hires are in the US legally, and thus suitable as employees. At this writing, the law awaits the president's signature.

In the years ahead, anti-immigrant groups are expected to press Congress to make the checks mandatory. Pro-immigration groups may oppose that shift.

"I can't imagine that a government agency can manage that program," Ms. Kelley says. She suspects many mistakes may be made, stopping qualified immigrants from getting jobs.

To many nations supplying immigrants - such as Mexico or the Philippines - the upward trend is not necessarily a bad thing. On a worldwide basis, the remittances sent home by foreign workers in the US and other countries amount to about $100 billion a year. That's twice the amount of foreign aid that rich nations and various development institutions dole out to poorer countries.

Remittances help hundreds of millions of families in developing countries buy food, clothing, TVs, etc. Mexico alone receives about $10 billion a year from Mexican-Americans and Mexicans living in the US.

When politicians do speak out about controlling immigration, they often get pummeled.

Last year, for instance, Britain's Tony Blair and Spain's José Maria Aznar proposed that the European Union withdraw aid from countries that did not take effective steps to stem the flow of illegal emigrants to the EU. The idea died in a blast of protests.

One reason some governments like immigration: It bolsters population, especially important for developed nations with falling birth rates. Last month, Scottish nationalists argued that Scotland should take over its own immigration system to encourage more skilled immigrants to replace an aging population.

Page: 1 | 2