Photo of White House by Scott Ableman.
Gebe Martinez wrote in this week’s Politico that “in presidential transition offices, immigration is cited as a top-tier issue that Obama will have to tackle early in his administration.” While everyone knows the economy is the first order of business, even Michael Chertoff would agree that something needs to be done about immigration especially after it was revealed that undocumented workers were tidying up his suburban Maryland home.
Chertoff would find himself in Conservative company. Leading Republicans have begun to publicly criticize the GOP’s handling of the immigration issue following the Party’s historic losses in November and the Republicans are rethinking their Hispanic strategy.
On the Democratic side, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that immigration reform was on the docket for the 111th Congress, that he didn’t expect “much of a fight at all.”
Senator Reid is right that there’s an appetite for reform across the nation. A strong majority of voters deeply concerned about the economy agree that legalization, rather than mass deportation, is a stronger approach. When asked if the country would be better off if undocumented immigrants “left the country because they are taking away jobs Americans need,” or “became legal taxpayers so they pay their fair share,” 62% of voters nationwide chose legal status, as did 69% of Latinos and 66% of voters in swing districts. Less than a fifth of voters chose the more restrictionist policy.
Other indications come from Obama’s nominations of key champions of tough, fair, and practical immigration reform to serve in his Administration including Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, and National Council of La Raza Senior Vice-President Cecilia Muñoz.
Still fresh in people’s minds is President-elect Obama’s promise to make immigration reform a first-year priority, even before the overwhelming Latino and immigrant vote helped launch him to the Presidency. It’d be wrong to think that’s a promise he won’t deliver on.
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Dave Bennion
December 13, 2008 at 3:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yes, but …
I don’t remember Speaker Pelosi ever ‘clarifying’ her remarks that
“‘Maybe there never is a path to citizenship if you came here illegally,’ Pelosi said. ‘I would hope that there could be, but maybe there isn’t.’”
Don McAninch
December 13, 2008 at 7:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
In this time of high unemployment and overpopulation, it is crucial to start shutting down immigration. Both legal and illegal immigration should be eliminated.
Nightprowlkitty
December 13, 2008 at 9:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I find it sincerely laughable that immigration would be claimed as an issue for the state of our economy. What needs to be “shut down” and “eliminated” is the horrendous Republican ideology that claims we are all on our own, that “I’ve got mine, so you can go to hell.” If we look at our own history we can see that attitude has only made things worse and that expansion and inclusion has always made things better.
It is plain old fear that leads folks to think migration is something that either can or should be “stopped.” It’s equivalent to holding your hands over your eyes saying “la la la la la, I can’t see you so you don’t exist!”
AndiMedi
December 13, 2008 at 11:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Mr. McAninch wants to reduce overall immigration, which we are doing by eliminating or sharply curtailing opportunity in the US economy.
However, he falsely sees a link between the level of legal immigration set by Congress and the actual level of overall immigration. Relative to the size of the economy, increasing legal immigration reduces illegal immigration (the reform that Congress failed to pass the last two or so years) and reducing legal immigration increases illegal immigration (the problem we have been experiencing for about two decades now with an expanding economy).
Immigration (the overall level) is market driven and goes down when the market contracts, as we have seen for the past several years, but is not much affected by Congress’ actions.
We can put our immigration system on a legal footing, eliminate illegal immigration, and get those here illegally into the system and accountable, and in so doing, gain much more control over immigration and security in the process. The problem is that we have confused our desire to reduce immigration with our desire to reduce or eliminate illegal immigration.
Peter Coyotl
December 14, 2008 at 1:48 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Don, interesting post. Is it possible to articulate your points? What evidence do you have that “eliminating” immigration will benefit the current economy?
What kinds of jobs are being impacted the most? How many immigrants are in these impacted industries? Are only citizens being laid off? Would they take a job that a migrant performed and work it at the same wage? In a bad economy could the employer afford to pay higher wages? Would the employer go out of business if he/she had to pay an higher wage? Would an unemployed skilled worker work the same job at the same wage? Is self-deportation adjusting the rate of immigration to the point where migrants are not hurting the rate of unemployment?
As to over-population, does having more people produce more need for production thus producing a need for more workers? I do not know. Please help me Don. Also, should Mormons, who traditionally have large families due to their belief in a pre-existence (it is more complicated than that) be eliminated in your grand scheme of things? Should anyone with a large family be “eliminated” also in your version of a nation trying to survive a bad economy?
I just gotta know Don.
I have so many questions Don. Simple statements like yours should have evidence and facts to back them up least they sound like more anti-immigrant rhetoric coming at a time where America has shown that it is tired of the division of hate.
Please, Don, give us more. I just gotta know!
Jerry Northington
December 14, 2008 at 7:31 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
For many years people entering our nation from foreign countries have brought much benefit in terms of intellectual and cultural diversity. That diversity makes our nation a stronger and better place in the overall.
The issues of today must include finding ways to maintain diversity while insuring real humanity and justice reign in immigration. We cannot close our borders. That will lead to stagnation and end in isolation that will not benefit any one in the land.
We must look to new and different ways to approach immigration. People need to be able to traverse international borders without severe restriction for work or for visitation. To solve the immigration issues in the U.S. today we must approach the economic and social issues around the globe. Isolationist thinking will not resolve issues on either side of the border.
Peace.
Porter M. Corn
December 14, 2008 at 8:45 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
With 6.7% unemployment rate, I don’t see these unemployed Americans rushing to take the obs left vacant by the recent raids and the seasonal migration back to Mexico.
What’ with that? Is it possible there are jobs Americans are too lazy to take or feel it is beneath their perceived “station in life”! Methinks that is the case!
Bryan
December 16, 2008 at 9:26 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Porter: Really? Do you not read up on aftermaths of the raids? Usually they increase pay and recruit. Here’s an example from the NY Times (of all places). It’s not like this is the only example, either.
After 15 Years, North Carolina Plant Unionizes
By Steven Greenhouse
The New York Times, December 12, 2008
After an expensive and emotional 15-year organizing battle, workers at the world’s largest hog-killing plant, the Smithfield Packing slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, N.C., have voted to unionize.
The United Food and Commercial Workers, which had lost unionization elections at the 5,000-worker plant in 1994 and 1997, announced late Thursday that it had finally won. The victory was significant in a region known for hostility toward organized labor.
The vote was one of the biggest private-sector union successes in years, and officials from the United Food and Commercial Workers said it was the largest in that union’s history.
The union won by 2,041 votes to 1,879 after two years of turmoil at the plant. As a result of a federal crackdown on illegal immigrants, more than 1,500 Hispanic workers have left the plant. Its work force is now 60 percent black, up from around 20 percent two years ago.
. . .
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/us/13smithfield.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Andrea
December 17, 2008 at 10:34 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Actually Bryan the UFCW win and the wage increase was the result of a 15 year worker struggle and a lawsuit which finally ended in Smithfield being required to desist from engaging in any heavy anti-union smear campaigns. The raids did have the effect, however, of warding off an exploited and petrified population of immigrants who were too intimidated to become union supporters and fight for better wages and working conditions. The raids did nothing but further terrorize the entire workforce and drive undocumented immigrants deeper underground. How can I be sure of this?–I’m a former employee of the UFCW and spoke with Smithfield workers who can tell you themselves.
Bryan
December 17, 2008 at 2:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Again, that wasn’t the only example…just happened to be an article I was reading that day.
An immigration raid aids blacks for a time
By Evan Perez and Corey Dade
The Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2007
Stillmore, GA — After a wave of raids by federal immigration agents on Labor Day weekend, a local chicken-processing company called Crider Inc. lost 75 percent of its mostly Hispanic 900-member work force. The crackdown threatened to cripple the economic anchor of this fading rural town.
But for local African-Americans, the dramatic appearance of federal agents presented an unexpected opportunity. Crider suddenly raised pay at the plant. An advertisement in the weekly Forest-Blade newspaper blared “Increased Wages” at Crider, starting at $7 to $9 an hour — more than a dollar above what the company had paid many immigrant workers. The company began offering free transportation from nearby towns and free rooms in a company-owned dormitory near to the plant. For the first time in years, local officials say, Crider aggressively sought workers from the area’s state-funded employment office — a key avenue for low-skilled workers to find jobs. Of 400 candidates sent to Crider — most of them black — the plant hired about 200.
A customer at a convenience store in Douglas, Ga., told April Paulk, a part-time clerk, that a recruiter was in town looking for workers. Ms. Paulk passed the word to her husband, 32-year-old Germaine Royals, who had just been laid off from the latest in a series of temporary jobs. Both are African-American.
Less than a month after the raids on illegal immigrants, Mr. Royals and three other workers met at a gas station parking lot and piled into a van sent by Peacock Poultry Inc., one of several contractors hired to fill the ranks of Crider’s production lines. Two hours later they pulled into an austere complex of brown dormitories owned by Crider that three weeks earlier had teemed with Hispanics. Mr. Royals stashed two small bags of belongings and a boom box in a dingy room and took his place the next morning on a production line at the chicken plant.
For the first time since significant numbers of Latinos began arriving in Stillmore in the late 1990s, the plant’s processing lines were made up predominantly of African-Americans.
. . .
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07017/754517-28.stm
Bryan
December 17, 2008 at 2:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
My main point was to refute Porter’s statement that, “[w]ith 6.7% unemployment rate, I don’t see these unemployed Americans rushing to take the [j]obs left vacant by the recent raids and the seasonal migration back to Mexico.”
As for your statement, “The raids did nothing but further terrorize the entire workforce…” If the “entire workforce” was so terrorized, how did they manage to unionize? It seems that you mean only the undocumented workforce.
Andrea
December 17, 2008 at 2:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
As I said before, the union win was a result of a lawsuit in which a judge ruled that Smithfield could not engage in anti-union campaigning, NOT the raid which only made matters worse at the time. The wage raise in Georgia after the raid was the result of the elimination of an exploited workforce that was willing to work for less. So maybe rather than spending billions of taxpayer’s dollars in the middle of a recession trying to deport our way out of the problem, we should concentrate more on enforcing labor and wage laws and bringing undocumented immigrants out of shadows so that all working people in this country get paid their fair share.
Andrea
December 22, 2008 at 11:06 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And as quoted in the American Prospect: When immigration agents raided Smithfield Food’s huge North Carolina slaughterhouse two years ago, union organizer Eduardo Peña compared the impact to a “nuclear bomb.” The day after, people were so scared that most of the plant’s 5,000 employees didn’t show up for work. The lines where they kill and cut apart 32,000 hogs every day were motionless. “Workers think it’s happening because people were getting organized,” said Vargas at the time.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=unions_come_to_smithfield