For the last month, immigration has rivaled the Iraq War as topic No. 1 in the news. Hardly a day goes by without reading or watching something about immigration in the news. We see the size of the protest. We hear about the number of “illegal” immigrants. We watch the immigration marches. We are asked to consider whether high school students should be suspended for skipping class to engage in protest.
There are some very basic issues, keys to understanding what is going on, that rarely make it into the news. Most basic is the fact that there will be no stopping the influx of immigrants, especially from Latin America, as long as they can earn 15 to 20 times as much here as they could at home. Ask yourself whether you would cross the border if you could earn as much in two days as you could in an entire month staying at home.
I think that the answer is that you would, preferably by legal means, but by illegal methods if necessary. You would not even consider yourself to be a criminal. You are doing this so that your family might live a better life. Most would not want to be away from their families for such a long time under such conditions of uncertainty. But still you would come. I think that we have to accept this as a fact. We could spend billions constructing a fence on the Mexican border, and still people will come.
Until something is done that will raise the standard of living in Latin America to a level closer to that of the United States, we will not have an end to the stream of immigrants coming here for a better life. NAFTA was touted as being the mechanism to accomplish this. When she was Attorney General, Janet Reno recognized that she could “protect our borders with the most personnel and the best technology, but let us also face facts: A richer, more stable, more competent Mexico is the only solution to real immigration reform. With NAFTA in place, I can work far more effectively with my Mexican counterparts to insure tough enforcement of our anti-drug laws.”
Unfortunately, NAFTA has been a failure at accomplishing this. True, some manufacturing has moved to Mexico, but it is all assembly work where the components have to be imported and the product exported. As a result, Mexico sees very little financial benefit. I ask whether it is better to spend billions of dollars for a wall or to spend similar amounts helping Mexico develop the economic base so that workers will not have to leave to seek employment elsewhere.
At least we have the Day Worker Center in Morgan Hill. It provides services to as many as 25 or 30 workers per day depending on the particular program that they are running. This community has recognized the facts of immigration and has committed to providing support to those who need it most.
Then, I ask what would we be doing without immigrants? I am not talking about having day laborers work on our yards, farm laborers in the 110 degree heat of the Imperial Valley summer or cleaning staff for our motels. It is much more fundamental. This is about growth.
Even the City of Morgan Hill bases all of its planning on the idea that growth is good. Our Chamber of Commerce says that growth is good. We build projects that we can not afford now, secure in the knowledge that with growth will come the necessary funding to run those facilities. In a way, growth is a part of the American Dream, along with a place of one’s own with a back yard for children to play and a good school within walking distance.
If you examine the birth rate in the United States, you will see that it has been dropping steadily for the last 20 years. We are now approaching the rate of 2.07 births per woman. That is the rate which is needed to sustain a population. Once the rate drops below that, the population will decline. So, if growth is good, if we need growth to keep the construction industry moving, if we need growth for real estate developers, if we need the revenue from new construction fees to finance local government, then we need immigration.
Without the annual influx of immigration the demand for new housing would drop precipitously. Removing 11 million residents from the United States, as some would have us do, could send this nation spiraling into a long recession cycle based solely on the fact that new housing construction would absolutely stop, laying off many construction workers.
Maybe we should be careful about what we ask for. We may get it. If the House of Representatives gets its way, we may see an end to the increasing home prices, an end to new construction jobs. Even Congressmen like our own Richard Pombo voted for these changes in spite of having strong financial support from developer interests. Sometimes, I just don’t understand politicians or their supporters.
Wes Rolley is a Morgan Hill resident who maintains a Web site that tracks Congressman Richard Pombo.
