Commentary

Markets Dictate Liberalization
Of Immigration Law

By Michael Barone. Mr. Barone, a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report, is the author of "The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again" (Regnery, 2001).

Who would have thought a few years ago, when Patrick Buchanan was being treated as a serious Republican candidate for president, that a Republican president would seriously consider proposing an amnesty and the granting of permanent resident status to more than a million illegal Mexican immigrants? Yet that is the recommendation of a working group headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The instant reaction of some Republicans, like Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, was to oppose any amnesty, and as George W. Bush completed his trip to Europe, a White House spokesman said no decision had been made. But an amnesty, or a guest-worker program that legalizes some currently illegal immigrants, is a realistic possibility; indeed, Mr. Gramm himself favors one form of guest-worker program.

There is, of course, a serious argument that an amnesty would reward those who flouted our nation's laws, and that we should limit the number of immigrants to those allowed under existing law. But there are also reasons to think that amnesty might be a good idea -- and that the White House should start making the case for it.

The first thing to say is that an amnesty for illegal immigrants is not a new idea. It's been part of every major change in the immigration laws since 1965. Legalizing the residency status of people who have lived, worked, paid taxes and obeyed laws in the U.S. for a certain number of years is a recognition that they behave as we would like immigrants to behave. "The government of the United States," as George Washington wrote to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I., "requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support." Except for violating the immigration laws, immigrants eligible for amnesty have done that.

As a general proposition, it is not a good idea to have large numbers of people -- a caste of noncitizens -- living in the country outside the law. It leaves them prey to exploitation by employers and criminals, and prevents them from returning to their homelands for fear they could not get back. There is an argument for giving such people legal status if we are unable to prevent them from getting here, and staying here -- an argument that applies as well to illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico. Border enforcement has become more effective over the past decade. But it has not been able to stop all illegal aliens, and it is hard to imagine policies that could do so while still being acceptable to the American people.

Immigration restriction is a statist policy. It is significant that the restrictive laws of 1921 and 1924 were passed and signed only after World War I, in which the government seized the railroads, controlled war production and arrested those who protested the conduct of the war. The war had given new powers and heft to the state, and restrictionists used them to block immigration.

At a time when European immigrants came mostly by steamship and immigration from Latin America was by today's standards minimal, restriction was mostly effective and remained so as government's powers grew during the New Deal and World War II. But in today's freer, less regimented America, borders are inevitably more porous. Recent attempts to require more documentation of those crossing the U.S.-Canadian border fell victim to members of Congress, worried about traffic tie-ups in Detroit and Niagara Falls.

Attempts to prevent migrants from overstaying temporary visas are bound to fail. Stopping "Latino-looking" people and demanding documentation is not a realistic option when most of those stopped would likely be U.S. citizens or immigrants with legal resident status. What makes more sense is to adjust our immigration laws to the demands of the labor market. Mexicans are willing to cross the Arizona border in 114-degree heat because they know that there are jobs open in Phoenix that they can fill and that would provide them with a much better living than in Mexico. Why is it in our national interest to prevent them from coming, or to deny them legal status when they do?

In considering an amnesty, Mr. Bush is responding to Mexican President Vicente Fox's proposal for European Union-like open borders. This is part of a larger vision. Mr. Fox hopes that economic growth and governmental reform will create jobs and make Mexico more attractive for people like those who are going to the U.S. today. A 1997 law allows Mexicans who become U.S. citizens to remain Mexican citizens. Some Americans, not unreasonably, see in this a danger of dual loyalties. But one can also see it as setting up a benign competition between the two countries, over the next decades, for these Mexican-American workers.

Mexico's population growth has slowed sharply: It will probably not need a big increase in the number of jobs and probably not generate such a large percentage of immigrants to the U.S. in the 2010s as it did in the 1990s. It is possible that the flows of people across the border will in time be in equilibrium, as the flow of people from Puerto Rico to the mainland U.S. has been since 1961.

To opponents, an amnesty looks like a reward for lawbreaking and an encouragement of an increasing flow of immigrants from Mexico. But in the longer run, an amnesty or a guest-worker program -- legalizing many workers, some of whom will stay permanently -- may prove to be just another adjustment of immigration law to meet the needs of what is increasingly a single economic market, one that includes 281 million people in the U.S., 99 million in Mexico and 31 million in Canada.

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