Bush’s proposed immigration policy potential workers

Note: This is the first part of a two-part series dealing with the United States’ immigration… Note: This is the first part of a two-part series dealing with the United States’ immigration policies.

President George W. Bush, on Jan. 7, proposed changing the United States’ immigration laws. Bush’s plan would permit workers illegally in the United States to join a temporary labor program, granting them three-year worker visas, which could be renewed once.

The newly-legal temps would be guaranteed wage and employment rights as long as they were working, and would be eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship at the termination of their visas, though they would be granted no preferred status in the lottery that all would-be immigrants must enter into to become Americans. If the immigrants lose in the lottery, or if they lose employment during the term of their visas, they would be obligated to return to their country of origin.

It’s good to see the president putting the revision of immigration law in the political spotlight, and surely this proposed relaxation of the law is a step in the right direction. But Bush’s proposal is at best a half measure, and insufficient for fairly reforming America’s immigration policy.

There are conservatives in Bush’s party who think even this is going too far. Their arguments center on the notion that immigrants are a burden on the United States’ economy.

Immigrants make a great contribution to America’s economy. In the most thorough survey of its kind to date, the National Academy of Sciences found that, in 1997, immigrants contributed $133 billion in direct tax money to federal, state and local governments, and on average, an individual immigrant contributes $80,000 more in his or her lifetime to the government than is returned in the form of benefits.

Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Labor predicted, at the time of the survey, that between 1998 and 2008, 20 million jobs would be created in America, with only 17 million native-born Americans available to fill them, prompting Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to say that, “there is an effective limit to new hiring, unless immigration is uncapped.”

Now, the president is doing what he can to make up for this labor shortfall by eliminating jobs in the U.S. economy – he’s already overseen the loss of 3 million jobs in America, which I suppose equalizes things a little. Way to help out, George!

In any case, the argument that immigrants are a burden on the U.S. economy simply isn’t true. With 70 percent of the immigrant influx into the United States already over the age 18 at the time of their arrival, the economy receives a boon of productive workers that it spent not a cent to train or educate – making for a $1.43 trillion gain for the United States, according to the aforementioned NAS survey.

Bush’s plan does nothing to ensure the eventual citizenship of those who would participate in the temporary workers program, which has drawn criticism from Democrats in Washington. As presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn) pointed out, “George Bush’s plan leaves foreign workers as fodder for our fields and factories, without giving them a path to legalization and a fair shot at the American dream.”

Since many of the illegal immigrants eligible for Bush’s temporary visas would be those already employed in the United States, it’s safe to assume that many of them have been contributing for years to the U.S. economy without receiving any of the benefits that U.S. workers enjoy.

Additionally, after receiving a visa, even newly arrived immigrants would spend up to six years contributing to the economy. To think this doesn’t entitle them to preferential treatment in the bestowal of citizenship is patently unfair.

Furthermore, the same NAS study found that, during their first years in the United States, immigrants tended to be a net cost to the economy. After 10 or so years, however, they tended to be a net gain. If the country goes ahead with the Bush plan, it would be evicting tens of thousands of productive workers just before they were able to start to substantially contribute to the American economy.

And so the Bush plan only reasserts, rather than corrects, the ill-informed idea that immigrants cannot make a lifelong, long-term contribution to America.

Sabrina Spiher encourages all of her fellow Democrats to vote for Joe Lieberman in the coming presidential primary. Visit www.joe2004.com and click the “Students for Joe 2004” link to visit Pitt’s Lieberman Web site.