By Peter A. Harkness

It’s likely that later this year, after pressing questions of how we better secure our borders from outside threats have been addressed, Congress’ attention will return to a matter at hand before September 11: liberalizing our immigration laws.

It continues to be a priority issue for the Bush administration. The president and Republican leaders made it clear shortly before the terrorist attacks that they supported a plan to legalize millions of the illegal immigrants already in the country. Bush has continued to assure pro-immigration groups that security concerns will only delay, but not deter, him from proposing a broad liberalization plan.

Politically, immigration is a very sticky issue. Every poll of the general public shows that the majority of people favor slowing it down. But that sentiment is unorganized and unfocused, while those in favor of liberalization are committed. In fact, they form a very unusual alliance: politicians from both parties seeking favor with the growing Hispanic vote, advocates for immigrant groups, free-market conservatives, libertarians, high-tech companies and other businesses that need skilled workers.

It’s pretty hard to argue that immigration hasn’t been good for the country in recent years. Our economy has needed both highly educated and unskilled workers, and immigrants have responded eagerly. They’ve also made many localities more interesting. My hometown, Washington, D.C., is a much yeastier place to live thanks to an influx of Hispanics, Asians and others.

But there are implications of increased immigration that we need to think about. If it continues to grow at the same pace as it has for the past 35 years, the population of the country will double by 2050, to half a billion people. (Without any immigration, the population actually would be slowly declining.) We already are experiencing problems with environmental degradation and resource scarcity, such as drinking water. If you think congestion on our roads and airways is bad now, ponder even a 30 percent increase in the next couple of decades.

What seems to me to be important is that any change in immigration policy be realistic and honest, so that we have reason to expect that the new statute will be obeyed. The last time Congress rewrote the law, in 1986, the trade-off was amnesty for illegals already in the country in exchange for penalties against employers who hired any new ones. It never was enforced.

We should decide how many of what kind of people (skilled, unskilled, etc.) we want immigrating into the country to work, to study and to become citizens. Those who can enter should be protected against abuse. Then we must issue electronically enabled identification cards designating a person’s status and enforce stiff sanctions against employers who disregard the law.

The question of how many can come will have to be answered in the political process. How the issue will play is hard to predict.

Peter A. Harkness is editor and publisher of Governing.

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The Receding Shock: the danger of creeping complacency (posted December 11, 2001)

The King of the Mayors: will Rudy bump Fiorello? (posted December 4, 2001)

Gaming the Busted Budget: a dubious outcome of the new unity (posted November 27, 2001)

The Bad-News Machine: Michael Bloomberg’s biggest challenge (posted November 19, 2001)

Complete index of previous columns

 
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