Immigration policy reform

Part 2:  Penetrating the myths

By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

Twelve million people now live in the United States illegally, more than at any previous time. There are many solid reasons why the United States should have a rigorously enforced immigration policy. However, these reasons have little to do with certain myths that have entered this debate. Among these myths are contentions that undocumented immigrants are disproportionately violent criminals, shirk paying taxes while exploiting generous social services, take jobs from American citizens, and threaten public health.

Formulating effective immigration policy requires a comprehensive understanding of immigration’s underlying reality, including beneficial and harmful impacts. Verifiable evidence published by federal agencies and peer-reviewed scientific journals are generally a better source for developing this understanding than the allegations of such professional gadflies as CNN’s Lou Dobbs.

Mr. Dobbs tells his audience, for example, that one-third of U.S. jail and prison inmates are not U.S. citizens. U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics say that in 2005, 6.4 percent of all federal and state prisoners were not citizens, down from 6.8 percent in 2000.

Men, age 18 to 39, comprise the vast majority of the prison population. Among this group, 3.5 percent of native-born Americans are incarcerated, as opposed to 0.7 percent of immigrants, both documented and undocumented. In other words, the rate at which native-born Americans are in prison is five times greater than that for immigrants. This holds true for every ethnic group, without exception. Native-born Hispanic men, for example, are 7 times more likely to be in prison than foreign-born Hispanic men.

The National Academy of Sciences, Cato Institute, and the Social Security Administration all agree that immigrants who are here illegally contribute substantially more in taxes than they consume in services. Undocumented immigrants pay sales taxes. The Social Security Administration (SSA) estimates that about 75 percent of them pay payroll taxes, to the tune of about $8 billion annually that they will never be able to claim. As of 2005, SSA’s “suspense file,” containing paid-in taxes that cannot be matched to a social security number, was at $519 billion, leading irreverent types to suggest that we finance the coming social security crisis by relaxing immigration enforcement.

Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and most other public benefits. Determined individuals can game the system. But a University of California Study found that only 2 percent of illegal Mexican immigrants had ever received welfare, and only 3 percent got food stamps, while 84 percent paid taxes. A Princeton University study of 6,000 undocumented Mexicans found that 7 percent had received Supplemental Security Income, and 5 percent or less had received AFDC, food stamps, or unemployment compensation. The U.S. Department of Education and the Census Bureau say that in 2000, only 1.5 percent of elementary schoolchildren and 3 percent of secondary children were undocumented.

As for taking jobs from Americans, the conservative Cato Institute found that immigrants do not increase joblessness, even among lowest-paid workers. Cato could find “no statistically reliable correlation” between immigration and unemployment. The more liberal Brookings Institution observes that, “The largest wave of immigration to the U.S. since the early 1900s coincided with our lowest national unemployment rate and fastest economic growth.”

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data show that recent immigrants are healthier than U.S. natives in almost every particular. General health indicators like birth weight and infant mortality are better among babies born to immigrants than to U.S.-born mothers. Interestingly, the longer that they live in the U.S., the more immigrants’ health indicators decline.

Advocates for strict immigration enforcement who are themselves the descendants of immigrants are fond of pointing out that their ancestors came here legally. That’s a morally and emotionally satisfying distinction, but it’s also somewhat misleading.  Before 1921, there were no immigration laws. My paternal grandmother’s family fled the Irish potato famine. When I try to imagine what would have happened if U.S. immigration law had existed then, I cannot, in turn, imagine the family patriarch saying, “Dang, if we went to America, we’d be illegal aliens, so we’ll just stay here and starve.”

The 1921 immigration law put strict quotas on “undesirable” Eastern and Southern Europeans, like…Italians. So, they came in illegally, in droves. Within four years, the Immigration Service estimated that 1.4 million illegal immigrants were living here: “The figures presented are worthy of very serious thought, especially when it is considered that such a great percentage of our population ... whose first act upon reaching our shores was to break our laws by entering in a clandestine manner.” Sound familiar?

Discovering the reality behind inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric does not lessen our need to get control of illegal immigration. Instead, it can help us understand how best to do so.

Comments

[Imux]

Ron, how about you don't have a valid license, or the license you have is noticeably forged/fake, and/or you don't speak a lick of english, but you're driving a work truck/vehicle and it's obvious you've been the one working. Reasonable suspicion? Yeah... I'd say so. So once you've got 'em on the traffic issue you then follow up on the immigration status. When they fail that - punt 'em. Easy.

Ron, I don't recall if I've asked you this yet, but do you believe we need to start enforcing our immigration laws. Yes or No?

[Election]

Not only immigration laws, but also many other laws. For instance, traffic laws in MA. Ask cab drivers what they think about Boston drivers and they'll tell you that they see major infractions routinely and that laws are not enforced, basically.

[Ron Newman]

I know you'll hate me for this, Imux, but I don't see the immigration laws as a high priority. I'd prefer to concentrate on assimilation, Americanization, English teaching, labor organizing, and enforcement of wage and hour laws.

[Imux]

I know you'll hate me for this, Imux, but I don't see the immigration laws as a high priority. I'd prefer to concentrate on assimilation, Americanization, English teaching, labor organizing, and enforcement of wage and hour laws.

Posted by: Ron Newman | October 27, 2007 at 09:13 PM

Ron, most of these illegals refuse to assimilate, Americanize or learn english. Also, who would pay for that and if you provide all these services don't you realize even more and more will show up? Why wouldn't they if they are getting all that (assimilation, Americanization, English teaching, labor organizing) for free?

Labor organizing? Ron, I somehow have to believe that you're no iron worker. I doubt the industry you're in even has labor unions. Am I right?

Also, I don't think I hate anyone. I may not like your views, but it's still a free country - in spite of the best efforts of you and your libaloon friends.

[Election]

So, Imux, wanna come to our little meeting in Davis Sq? JN would be there too, just a few drinks somewhere near Davis Sq. Ron, Bill, and I said we'd be there...

[Imux]

I'm in. Though I am not much into Davis square these days. Also, can we invite a few women - preferably ones who shave their armpits. In other words, any women who doesn't live in Davis now.

Oy Vey!

[Election]

I'd hope so. JN, what think?

[Election]

From the NYT:

What Part of ‘Illegal’ Don’t You Understand?
By LAWRENCE DOWNES

I am a human pileup of illegality. I am an illegal driver and an illegal parker and even an illegal walker, having at various times stretched or broken various laws and regulations that govern those parts of life. The offenses were trivial, and I feel sure I could endure the punishments — penalties and fines — and get on with my life. Nobody would deny me the chance to rehabilitate myself. Look at Martha Stewart, illegal stock trader, and George Steinbrenner, illegal campaign donor, to name two illegals whose crimes exceeded mine.

Good thing I am not an illegal immigrant. There is no way out of that trap. It’s the crime you can’t make amends for. Nothing short of deportation will free you from it, such is the mood of the country today. And that is a problem.

America has a big problem with illegal immigration, but a big part of it stems from the word “illegal.” It pollutes the debate. It blocks solutions. Used dispassionately and technically, there is nothing wrong with it. Used as an irreducible modifier for a large and largely decent group of people, it is badly damaging. And as a code word for racial and ethnic hatred, it is detestable.

“Illegal” is accurate insofar as it describes a person’s immigration status. About 60 percent of the people it applies to entered the country unlawfully. The rest are those who entered legally but did not leave when they were supposed to. The statutory penalties associated with their misdeeds are not insignificant, but neither are they criminal. You get caught, you get sent home.

Since the word modifies not the crime but the whole person, it goes too far. It spreads, like a stain that cannot wash out. It leaves its target diminished as a human, a lifetime member of a presumptive criminal class. People are often surprised to learn that illegal immigrants have rights. Really? Constitutional rights? But aren’t they illegal? Of course they have rights: they have the presumption of innocence and the civil liberties that the Constitution wisely bestows on all people, not just citizens.

Many people object to the alternate word “undocumented” as a politically correct euphemism, and they have a point. Someone who sneaked over the border and faked a Social Security number has little right to say: “Oops, I’m undocumented. I’m sure I have my papers here somewhere.”

But at least “undocumented” — and an even better word, “unauthorized” — contain the possibility of reparation and atonement, and allow for a sensible reaction proportional to the offense. The paralysis in Congress and the country over fixing our immigration laws stems from our inability to get our heads around the wrenching change involved in making an illegal person legal. Think of doing that with a crime, like cocaine dealing or arson. Unthinkable!

So people who want to enact sensible immigration policies to help everybody — to make the roads safer, as Gov. Eliot Spitzer would with his driver’s license plan, or to allow immigrants’ children to go to college or serve in the military — face the inevitable incredulity and outrage. How dare you! They’re illegal.

Meanwhile, out on the edges of the debate — edges that are coming closer to the mainstream every day — bigots pour all their loathing of Spanish-speaking people into the word. Rant about “illegals” — call them congenital criminals, lepers, thieves, unclean — and people will nod and applaud. They will send money to your Web site and heed your calls to deluge lawmakers with phone calls and faxes. Your TV ratings will go way up.

This is not only ugly, it is counterproductive, paralyzing any effort toward immigration reform. Comprehensive legislation in Congress and sensible policies at the state and local level have all been stymied and will be forever, as long as anything positive can be branded as “amnesty for illegals.”

We are stuck with a bogus, deceptive strategy — a 700-mile fence on a 2,000-mile border to stop a fraction of border crossers who are only 60 percent of the problem anyway, and scattershot raids to capture a few thousand members of a group of 12 million.

None of those enforcement policies have a trace of honesty or realism. At least they don’t reward illegals, and that, for now, is all this country wants.

[Ron Newman]

Doesn't matter to me where you have the meetup -- Davis, Ball, Teele, Union, lower Broadway -- I'll try to e there.

[Election]

Me neither, I just thought it'd be convenient for JN...

[Norski]

Election - What a sob story. Now here is one from the other side. Years ago in my father’s home town there was an auto plant. It was staffed by proud, hardworking German Americans and Italian Americans. One day the Owner decided that he had to make more money and so he fired all those workers and hired a bunch of workers he had recruited and imported from Denmark. His Danish workers were so unskilled quality suffered, and as a result, his customers received a poorer product for the same price, while he happily added to his personal fortune.

His move not only hurt his ex-workers who did nothing more than ask for a fair days wage, it hurt the community by reducing the amount of money workers had to spend at local businesses. It also caused a great deal of hatred toward the Danish workers. The Danes saw no reason why they shouldn’t come to town and take everyone’s jobs since they needed them, while the German American and Italian American workers saw the Danes as foreign “scab labor”. Who was right? If you are one of the fired workers you know that a gross injustice was just done to you. If you were one of the imported workers, you know that you were just granted a tremendous opportunity. Who was wrong? How can you tell somebody that just lost their job that they should welcome the person who took it from them into their community? Shouldn’t we all be mad at the business man? After all, look at all the heartache he caused in his community.

In order to solve this dilemma and others like it we have decided as a society that U.S. jobs are for U.S. Citizens and Legal Residents. By extension, we have decided to put an end to allowing employers to replace employees with imported lower paid immigrant labor en masse. If a job cannot be filled with a U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident, then there is a process by which somebody from outside the U.S. can be brought in to fill that position at a fair wage. If you try to circumvent this process and reside in the U.S. without permission your presence is illegal and you are subject to being sent back to your home. Unfortunately, too few people are bothering to enforce or abide by these laws. And too many people want to throw out those laws or ignore them with “amnesty”. And in the argument we loose sight of the fact that we have more unemployed Americans than we have working Illegal Immigrants. And thus we have the story of my Father's home town repeated in spite of the protection of the law.

[Norski]

Mr. Shelton - I presume your comments about Illegal Immigrant crime rates are based on a study by Ramiro Martinez, Professor of Criminology at Florida International University, who analyzed homicide data in border cities such as San Diego, California and El Paso, Texas and found homicide rates among Mexican residents of these cities to be lower than those of other ethnic groups, including whites. And I presume that you also noted that he found the same pattern of behavior in Haitian immigrant communities in the Miami area. And you are probably also quoting Andrew Karmen, another Criminologist, who studied the subject in New York City and discovered young and poor immigrants between 1980 and 1990 had a positive influence in lowering crime rates in their neighborhoods. And finally, you are probably also quoting Robert Sampson of Harvard University. Sampson studied Chicago, where he found the number of violent criminal acts among Mexican-Americans is much lower than that of other ethnic groups, including whites. But these studies were done on ALL Immigrants, Legal and Illegal alike. But because the Illegal Immigrant population is much smaller than the Legal Immigrant population the true statistics for Illegal Immigrants are washed out by the behavior of Legal Immigrants.

Here are some statistics you should also note. The Office of Immigration Statistics in the Department of Homeland Security estimated that 10.5 million Illegal Immigrants were living in the United States in January 2005. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics the number of prisoners under the jurisdiction of the Federal or State Adult Correctional Authorities was 2,245,189 as of June 30, 2006 They go on to state that this is a 2.8% increase from Midyear 2005. So the prison population in mid 2005 was approximately 2,184,000. According to the New Your Times “In 2005, at least 270,000 illegal immigrants spent time in local jails and state prisons, according to the Justice Department.” In 2004 the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that there were 288,280,000 people in the U.S., of whom 254,037,000 were native born and 34,243,000 were foreign born. This is the most recent data. By these statistics, 10.5 million Illegal Immigrants were responsible for 270,000 inmates so the overall crime rate requiring incarceration for Illegal Immigrants is 1 in 39 people. And "Catch and Release" was in effect at that time so these are truly criminal incarcerations. Deduct the Illegal Immigrant inmates from the estimated 2,184,000 total inmates and you have 1,914,000 Native Born and Legal Resident inmates. By taking the census data and assuming the studies cited above, if you lump Legal Immigrants and Illegal Immigrants together, almost all of these 1,914,000 remaining inmates would have to be Native Born. So therefore, the above data says that Legal Immigrants contribute very little to the inmate population just like the surveys say. And that puts the Native Born incarceration rate at 1 in 133 people. This says that Illegal Immigrants are 3.4 times more likely to commit crimes that are the Native Born. And it says that lumping Illegal Immigrant committed crime with Legal Immigrant committed crime is statistically not sound and a grave injustice to the law abiding nature of Legal Immigrants.

[William Hurst]

At the beginning of one of my posts I asked "When do we close the door". Mr. Shelton was the only respondent (unless that was not you Bill) he stated "Now". Perhaps we should be asking our representatives in Congress to work on closing our borders. So why are we not doing that and when will the cry baby BS that constantly goes on in this forum stop?

[Bill Shelton]

Norski,

George Hassett just informed me that we now publish on the fifth Wednesday of the month, as well as the first four. So I'm in the process of writing a column. Please give me a day to respond.

William Hurst,

Yep, that was me.

[DISGRUNTLED SOMERVILLIAN]

This article is another poor attempt by those who sympathize and support illegal immigrants and try to change everyone's mind through idiotic articles. The Somerville Journal had a couple morons write in the opinion column in this fashion too.
The fact is that there is no getting around the fact that these people are here living everyday in violation of our immigration and employment laws. And any other law that they don't feel they should have to live under in this country. They seem to feel that it is OK to pick and choose which law they want to live under, while the rest of us are expected to live and abide by ALL the laws of this country. It is a disgrace.
There are a lot of reasons these so-called sympathizers of the illegals give as reasons to back them. All of the reasons have holes in them. One of them is that they pay taxes. If you ask about this it is interesting that they try to say they pay sales tax when they buy something in our stores, or they pay taxes when they pay rent. Doesn't everybody? That's no big deal and really not giving a big enough argument to say that the illegals are contributing their fair share and should be given legal status or cut any slack.
The thing that galls me is that the main argument about illegals paying taxes is that they pay employment taxes with a fraudulent Social Security Card. This in itself is a criminal offense. It is called defrauding the government and the IRS should be watching for taxes paid that are not filed, to catch and arrest these illegals that are committing a criminal and federal offense.
The illegal immigrant has no respect or regard for our laws. They demonstrate that every day they are here. This country and each state in it has failed to close the borders and to make things as difficult and uncomfortable for the illegal as possible, so they will not want to live here. This would also make it unattractive to other foreigners who want to cross our borders illegally and I doubt they would not want to come here if they thought they could not get work or housing, or if the INS was vigilant in their pursuit, arrests and deportation of illegals.
I am all for anyone who wants to come to our country and go through the proper channels, paperwork and red tape necessary to become a legal documented citizen through our immigration bureau. However, I do not feel it is appropriate to give illegals a blanketed amnesty and make it easy for them to get a blanketed amnesty in this country because they have evaded our laws and demand it. They have no right to demand anything; they have no rights and are not legal citizens to live or work here in this country.
I am sick to death of the people who are in support of illegal immigrants and wish this country would deport them with all the illegal immigrants in this country. They are traitors to this country and its laws by supporting illegals.

[DISGRUNTLED SOMERVILLIAN]

This article is another poor attempt by those who sympathize and support illegal immigrants and try to change everyone's mind through idiotic articles. The Somerville Journal had a couple morons write in the opinion column in this fashion too.

The fact is that there is no getting around the fact that these people are here living everyday in violation of our immigration and employment laws. And any other law that they don't feel they should have to live under in this country. They seem to feel that it is OK to pick and choose which law they want to live under, while the rest of us are expected to live and abide by ALL the laws of this country. It is a disgrace.

There are a lot of reasons these so-called sympathizers of the illegals give as reasons to back them. All of the reasons have holes in them. One of them is that they pay taxes. If you ask about this it is interesting that they try to say they pay sales tax when they buy something in our stores, or they pay taxes when they pay rent. Doesn't everybody? That's no big deal and really not giving a big enough argument to say that the illegals are contributing their fair share and should be given legal status or cut any slack.

The thing that galls me is that the main argument about illegals paying taxes is that they pay employment taxes with a fraudulent Social Security Card. This in itself is a criminal offense. It is called defrauding the government and the IRS should be watching for taxes paid that are not filed, to catch and arrest these illegals that are committing a criminal and federal offense.

The illegal immigrant has no respect or regard for our laws. They demonstrate that every day they are here. This country and each state in it has failed to close the borders and to make things as difficult and uncomfortable for the illegal as possible, so they will not want to live here.

This would also make it unattractive to other foreigners who want to cross our borders illegally and I doubt they would not want to come here if they thought they could not get work or housing, or if the INS was vigilant in their pursuit, arrests and deportation of illegals.

I am all for anyone who wants to come to our country and go through the proper channels, paperwork and red tape necessary to become a legal documented citizen through our immigration bureau. However, I do not feel it is appropriate to give illegals a blanketed amnesty and make it easy for them to get a blanketed amnesty in this country because they have evaded our laws and demand it. They have no right to demand anything; they have no rights and are not legal citizens to live or work here in this country.

I am sick to death of the people who are in support of illegal immigrants and wish this country would deport them with all the illegal immigrants in this country. They are traitors to this country and its laws by supporting illegals.