Many Democrats are conservative on immigration reform Democratic Party representatives who favor giving unconditional amnesty to illegal immigrants, now estimated at 12 million and growing, are out of step with the rank and file of their party. Count me, a registered Democrat and progressive on economic issues, as a conservative on immigration reform. A rich and powerful nation owes it to its citizens to control its borders -- or are we Iraq? Would not blanket amnesty be an invitation for more illegal immigration? Many progressive Democrats oppose amnesty. After the September issue of The Nation, which is well to the left of the Democratic Party, attacked critics of illegal immigration such as Lou Dobbs, the magazine acknowledged receiving an "avalanche of furious mail" from readers who objected the treatment of Dobbs and to the use of the term nativist to describe those who oppose illegal immigration. Seldom does the impact of undocumented workers on working-class African-Americans, who vote strongly Democratic, enter the discussion. A poll by the Pew Hispanic Center last year found that more than one-third of blacks said they or someone they knew had lost a job to an illegal. In Chicago that figure rose to 41 percent, compared to 15 percent of white, non-Hispanic residents claiming job loss to undocumented workers. This pattern has been repeated many times in our history. Before the Civil War, owners of new factories used poor Irish immigrants to break strikes, speed up work and keep wages low among native workers. During the great immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe of 1880 to 1920 (when my grandparents came here, legally) blacks, other natives and older immigrant groups lost jobs to legal and illegal immigrants who were used as scabs, accepting lower pay and miserable working conditions. Big employers always have wanted cheap and docile labor. Samuel Gompers, an immigrant who was the first president of the American Federation of Labor and who held the post for almost 40 years, favored more federal control and opposed illegal immigration. He argued that illegal immigrants lowered the wages and standard of living of American workers, native or foreign-born like himself. The Center of Immigration Studies reached the same conclusion in a 2004 report, "The High Cost of Immigrant Labor." What about the simplistic sound bite that illegal immigrants "take jobs Americans won't do"? A Pew study last year found, for example, that unauthorized workers accounted for 1 in 6 of cleaning-janitorial workers. That means five-sixths of those jobs are done by Americans, native or foreign born. Short- and long-term illegals accounted for 12 percent of construction jobs, 14 percent in leisure and hospitality. Of course, there were heavy concentrations of undocumented workers in agriculture in certain states, but 25 percent nationally. Americans do those jobs, and more of them would for decent pay. But employers like Wal-Mart and Swift meat packing plants (raided in six states last month) want illegal immigration and guest workers to keep wages low and to avoid labor laws regarding overtime pay and worker safety. The remedy is not a 700-mile fantasy fence at the border, but a tamper-proof identity card for any job applicant and high fines and criminal penalties for employers who hire workers without cards. Then, employers would be forced to offer living wages and benefits. Does the political class, Democrats and Republicans and their business buddies, have the stomach for this? We learned during the Clinton years that even some of the politically correct Democratic elite liked having their non-green-card nannies cleaning their bathrooms and minding their children. |