Quo Vadis, America?

Without even knowing the technical literature — which, btw, strongly supports this line of argument — it seems reasonable to assume, to start, two things: a large and growing pool of illegal aliens displace American workers at the lower end of the wage scale and, secondly, make it difficult or for any practical purpose impossible for those affected American workers to unionize.

Today it would be unthinkable for a new César Chávez to emerge — recall, for example, the ongoing struggle over a mere one cent per pound pay raise for tomato pickers in Florida. In markets awash with cheap labor nobody can organize effectively. Not in agriculture, not in hospitality services, and likely not to a significant extent in a wide range of better jobs such as home construction. The group of American workers most directly hurt is black men (which may explain in part the late congresswoman Barbara Jordan's interest in immigration issues), but when society firmly disallows unions for jobs that pay the least then everybody who works is affected indirectly by a culture of routine union suppression.

It seems plausible, moreover, that social tolerance of a plantation mentality with regard to low wage workers makes it much easier as a matter of behavioral norms for corporate titans to offshore really good American jobs to foreign low wage markets. The notion that profit trumps community has hidden but nevertheless incredibly corrosive effects.

Taking a slice at it from an entirely different angle, it is unarguable that adding tens of millions of illegal immigrants to America must necessarily add an enormous carbon footprint. We might take all sorts of measures to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions but by adding tens of millions of people from parts of the planet where otherwise their carbon footprint is an order of magnitude smaller, we end up running in place or perhaps slipping back. It's similar to the problem that China, for example, faces, except that the Chinese have handled it admirably, in a determined and straightforward way, by drastically reducing their population growth. From a progressive point of view, being realistic, is the higher priority reducing greenhouse gas emissions or giving a better life to someone who makes it over the border? We can't do both.

There is yet another set of issues that should worry people who have a Burkian sense of tradition. Politically, adding tens of millions of illegal immigrants changes the nature of the system. To take just one specific change, because congressional redistricting is based upon population, seats that shift from areas of the country with established patterns of settlement to areas that have large numbers of recently arrived illegals become seats that can be won with comparatively much smaller vote totals from citizens. Thus you might need 50,000 votes to win a seat in California, say, while needing 150,000 votes to win a seat in Pennsylvania. That's not fair. Americans who are being structurally disenfranchised in this way shouldn't put up with it.

And as the numbers of illegal immigrants increase into the tens of millions so does their political and cultural influence in a self-reinforcing cycle. It's probably too much of an exaggeration to expect (viable) irredentist claims against California or Texas yet it's clear that cross-border sovereignty issues tend to evolve favoring Mexican legal norms rather than American ones. Will the sheriff in Laredo check with the Mexican Consulate before arresting a prominent Latin businessman? You can bet that he already does. A vague dual national identity again strains our sense of community.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that illegal immigrants came into the U.S. under a de facto system of naturalization. They now enjoy significant squatters' rights. Morally, it would be extremely problematic to argue that they should all be thrown out.

But what to do? The concept of balancing amnesty with new, effective enforcement makes sense — as various plans in Congress have attempted to do — except that there are a couple of important implementation points to bear in mind. First, sequence matters. An amnesty before an effective enforcement reform just encourages greater numbers of illegals to arrive. Having both at the same time would yield pretty much the same result because for an extended period of several years nobody would know whether the enforcement side of things was truly working. So enforcement must precede amnesty. Unfortunate from a humanitarian perspective, perhaps, but there it is, a fact of life.

What kind of amnesty makes sense? Proper enforcement of existing laws would actually make this problem easier as gradually large numbers of illegals, whether through deportation or on their own, returned home. It's hard to look ahead four or five years and guess at what kind of amnesty formula then might be reasonable — that discussion should probably be left for later.

One precautionary, supplemental step should be seriously considered, although because it requires a change in the Constitution it would be extremely difficult to achieve: namely, that birth in the U.S. does not automatically confer citizenship. While we cannot know exactly in advance the results, taking away the citizenship magnet surely would reduce illegal immigration.

The above arguments are by no means comprehensive, of course, but illustrate why progressives need to take illegal immigration seriously. And from a savvy political point of view immigration could be a critical "bridge" issue, bringing the left and the right together. That it isn't (so far) does not reflect well on progressive intellectuals.

On the other hand, probably it's fair to assume that there's a real disconnect between what ordinary, progressively-oriented people think and what established, left-leaning organs would like them to think.

To get at some of these issues my guest for this Friday's podcast is the brilliant political demographer Steven A. Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies. And I commend to you his recent op-ed in the Washington Post.