Immigration

By Chris Huskins

Guest Worker Program A Good Start Toward Needed Reform

The cost of doing nothing is exceedingly high for our state. Credible estimates of the drain on the state treasury range from a low of $4 billion all the way up to $8 billion per year. These expenses are broken down into four major categories; health care, education, welfare, and criminal justice. Health care and education make up the bulk of the costs. Los Angeles County alone ran a $360 million health care deficit in 2002 due entirely to the costs of treating illegal immigrants. The state spent $1.6 billion in health care costs for illegal immigrants that same year. It costs approximately $7,000 per year to educate one child in the public schools and there are some 400,000 children in our California K-12 system here as a result of illegal entry. While these numbers are staggering, ten years from now they will seem miniscule if unchecked immigration is allowed to continue unabated in this decade as it did in the last. According to the US Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, in the year 2000 there were 2.2 million people in California illegally, up 40% from the 1990 figure. This represents 6.5% of the state's population. If current trends continue, by 2010, we will have over 3 million illegal residents and probably will have passed the tipping point beyond which we can never rectify the problem. We will have codified by inaction an apartheid society where a permanent underclass is trapped in a system in which they are seen but largely unheard. We will also be stuck with a criminal class of thieves, bandits and murderers who prey upon this separate and unequal underclass.

What can be done to prevent our disastrous policy of doing nothing from spinning permanently out of control? The proposed guest worker program is a good start. It allows for proper documentation of who is here and what they are doing. The accompanying fee (fine) of $1,500 per worker will ameliorate the costs associated with administering the process. Workers will no longer have to fear exploitation by unscrupulous employers or the ruthless criminals who traffic in their misery. It will also facilitate the immigrants' return to their home country whenever they decide to go back. More has to be done in Mexico as well. The systemic corruption at all levels of government must be reformed. The leverage we will gain by instituting a guest worker program can be employed on the Mexican government. State run corporations should be privatized and collective bargaining instituted under the auspices of the AFL-CIO. Oil and factory workers with union benefits and representation have no need to travel north in search of a better life. NAFTA should be re-worked to ensure that the poorest regions of the country also benefit from expanded trade policies.

Contrary to much of public opinion, the President did not call for amnesty for illegal immigrants. He is charting a new course for dealing with our increasingly dysfunctional immigration policies. President Bush sees the world as it is. This ability separates him from the majority of politicians in either party. He knows that US citizens and corporations are the ones doing the (illegal) hiring of the workers. Having been the governor of a large border state, he is intimately familiar with both the costs and benefits of immigration. The issue could have easily been avoided by this President, yet he has chosen to act. It would have been easier to leave this for his successor. We are lucky that he has chosen not to kick this can down the road but engage in a big debate about a big idea whose time has come. The problem and the associated costs will not go away unless and until we confront them honestly. Now is the time.