Channel Mike

America seems intent to lose out at the bottom of our economy and at the top. What I mean by this is that our immigration attitudes are not only keeping poor foreigners out of our low-end labor jobs, but also our great universities. We want to keep our labor jobs for ourselves; and we want to keep our university educations for ourselves, too. This would be fine if we wanted to actually compete our way into the jobs and educations, but we seem less willing to do that as time goes on. My attitudes to immigration are pretty liberal. I'm frustrated that conservatives like to paint immigration as trafficking in criminals. I concede that by entering the United States, illegal aliens are committing a crime. But using that as a main argument is avoiding the real debate and the real questions.

The real debate needs to ask the question, should immigration be illegal? Even the most liberal among us wouldn't go that far, but lets go that far now, if just for the thought exercise. If we utilize our heads and think about possibilities, we can imagine what might happen if immigration were simply not illegal. What if we just handed out citizenship and social security cards to everyone who wanted them? Don't send me death threats. Think about it. From the perspective of America's economy, we'd have more workers contributing to our output and GDP. That's a positive. Since they would all be legal citizens, they'd have taxes deducted from their wages. That's a positive. They wouldn't have to hide from officials. That's a positive. We wouldn't have to police the whole thing. Another positive. Maybe they would create demand for all those extra houses sitting out there right now, even at the bottom end of the market. That's a great thing. But there would be negatives, too. The language gap would create inefficiencies. That's bad, but it exists already. There would be a huge supply of labor, driving wages for that labor down. That's a bad thing for Americans without skills. It is actually good for the economy overall, however. It would create a huge Hispanic underclass for a while until many of the Hispanics branched out and were assimilated into American society. That could take generations. And, again, the underclass exists already. The greatest thing it would do is create a real competition for labor. This would drive up the quality of work done in this country as people had to compete for the jobs.

I can certainly understand why the American laborers who would compete directly for jobs with an influx of immigrants would fear a tide of immigration. But the only reason anyone else should be concerned is a xenophobic fear of a blending of cultures. We have to admit that the biggest reason for anger and resentment is that the current crop of immigrants at the bottom is different from us in race and culture. We can easily label them and think ourselves superior to them. This is actually a very normal human response. All humans have evolved ingroup and outgroup psychology and it's playing a role here.

For the immigration at the bottom of the payscales, I would recommend that we do three things. First, take anybody who can demonstrate a work ethic and/or skillset and allow our economy to surge as they start to contribute. It would be pretty easy, as long as we allowed them legal status, even as temporary workers, to require they check in regularly and demonstrate that they're gainfully employed and staying out of trouble. And having legal status would make it so much easier for them to stay out of trouble and to maintain employment. This is a great compromise between ignorantly building a fence, and lazily ignoring the issue. Second, we'd have to take care of our own by providing access to job training for better careers for those displaced by an immigrant influx. Third, we can't seriously just take anybody willing to stand in line and make them American citizens. We would need a program in place to monitor a few things. It would be nice if they could speak English, making their transition easier and ours, too. We ought to have some constraints to their employment, just like current foreign workers have. They would have to be gainfully employed in taxable work. If they were to commit a crime or quit work, we'd have no need for them, and they could go home without their new citizenship.

At the top of the ladder, we have similar problems. Partially as a result of Bush's contempt for science and reality, and partially as a result of his politics of fear, intelligent scientists and mathematicians are having a lot of trouble entering our universities. The United States has been cracking down on immigration of any sort since 2001 because of our fear than anyone coming into America from outside may be a terrorist. This is hurting our country in ways that could have more impact than a terrorist attack. China and India are developing universities and training centers to compete with America's dominance. America's dominance is slipping and other countries are taking up that slack.

As Americans, as America's middle class, we need to realize that having people willing to work for less here at home will allow our economy to surge. We need to understand that having the best and the brightest from all over the world will allow our economy to surge. We need the labor and we need the innovations and engineering. They are important for all of us. Is the false comfort of seeing a traditional American founding the latest new American company worth the cost of seeing a new Chinese company outperform and outinnovate it? Is the false comfort of seeing only your traditional American buddies at work worth the price of seeing the whole factory get outsourced? We need these people to compete, and we are in a window where America is still one of the most desirable places for foreigners to go. It may not be too long before America is lagging behind. We will be forced by financial pressures to import commodities, and farming jobs could be lost. We will be forced by our own intellectual property laws to license technology from South Korea, Germany, and India rather than patent it here.

This is not a debate about wasting a bunch of money on a fence. This is a debate on whether we want America to succeed. Do we want good labor for less money? Yes! Do we want the best and the brightest working here in America? Yes! Do we want to be a beacon of inspiration for the rest of the world? Yes! We don't want to be the protectionist society that misses out on opportunities because of our fear and bigotry. Don't forget that the English prisoners and poor were dumped here in the 1600s. The Dutch sent their undesirables, too. Our nation was founded by people the world frowned on, and we outworked them all. Now, we are a fairly lazy society, watching our TV and feeling entitled to it all. We can work for it, and we can allow others to help us get it done, too. Bring them on! And I'm not talking about terrorists. If you want to work, innovate, produce, create, come to America!