Ningún Ser Humano Es Ilegal

Although nativism has long been part a prominent facet of a certain strain of American political character, it is essential for the public to consider the facts and history of immigration in order to fully understand the contours of the current debate. Arizona's law requiring police officers to ask for the immigration documents of any person they have "reasonable suspicion" to believe is an immigrant has lately become the center of this sometimes-ugly debate. Besides the obvious potential and likelihood for enforcement based on racial profiling, it seems to me to be antithetical to the conservative ideal of freedom from the tyranny of government. Somehow, taxes constitute a terrible abridgment of essential American freedoms but the ability of a state-sanctioned official to demand proof of identification with no apparent sign of other criminal activity is a protection of those freedoms? Tea Party members should recall that their namesake protest in 1773 was not against higher taxes, but actually a protest against the fact that independent merchants in the colonies were losing access to trade with the East India Comapany. The EIC had made a deal with the British government in which the government allowed the Company to appoint their own consignees and bypass middlemen both in the colonies and in England. In fact, the price of tea was lowered by the Act that the Bostonians were resisting. Bit of a digression, but I think its worth noting.

In Congress, there is support on both sides of the aisle for toughening our enforcement against "illegal" immigrants and even lowering the number of legal immigrants that the U.S. lets in. The support for this often comes from the emotionally (and on a certain level, logically) appealing but factually untrue assertion that both legal and illegal immigration take jobs away from native-born Americans. FactCheck has a very useful summary of the consensus of economic studies. Essentially, they say while immigration might lower job opportunities for a certain type of worker in a localized area for a small amount of time, the overall impact of both documented and undocumented immigrants on the economy is positive. David Griswold, a member of the Cato Institute, writes:

"The addition of low-skilled immigrants expands the size of the overall economy, creating higher-wage openings for managers, craftsmen, accountants, and the like. The net result is a greater financial reward and relatively more opportunities for those Americans who finish high school. "

The Cato Institute is most certainly not a liberal think tank, and praises of the economic benefits of immigration have come from the mouths of other conservatives as well. In his 2005 economic report to Congress, President Bush declared that "the foreign-born are associated with much of the employment growth in recent years." The terms of the debate over immigration need to be shifted from finding the best or most "humane" way of stopping immigration to figuring out how to attract both high-skilled and low-skilled new workers into our economy. The amount of time and money wasted on patrolling for economic migrants is massive, and would be much better spent policing actual criminal activity along the border, which unquestionably exists. This is a nation of immigrants, and I hope that we continue to be.