Immigration
The Problem
This area poses problems, but also opportunities that have so far been ignored.
To begin with, without borders that are enforced you do not have country. There is no other way to control who comes into the United States.
And then there are the people already here. Which, by some estimates, could be as many as 20,000,000 people (including illegal migrants and asylum seekers) who are effectively off the grid. They came for a better life. Once here, these illegal migrants often don’t leave because the danger and cost of re-entering the United States is too high.
This population benefits the larger US economy, but it also imposes substantial costs on individual communities (e.g., housing for asylum seekers, schools for migrant children, etc.). Moreover, many first-generation legal immigrants resent illegal migrants who are “skipping” the hurdles they themselves cleared. And since a pathway to citizenship for one opens the door for one’s family, 10,000,000 legalizations could lead to 50,000,000 new arrivals.
There are also important moral aspects posed here – particularly by children of illegal migrants, who, having been born on US soil, are US citizens.
Though now obscured by ugly, purposeful hysteria, this situation poses serious and largely unaddressed problems for illegal migrants and for many communities.
A Pathway Forward
A pathway to work visas instead of a pathway to citizenship – coupled with improved border security – would go a long way towards ending most illegal border crossings in the future, while materially decreasing the burdens, and increasing the benefits, presented by migrants already unlawfully here. Under it, currently illegal and future migrants could meet their core economic goals while minimizing societal costs and (possibly) enhancing our fiscal solvency; the operative principle being that work visas are temporary, and do not convey the rights or responsibilities of citizenship. They do, however, give illegal migrants a choice. Seek a visa and stay, or don’t and be deported.
On the merits – if a migrant can cross the border legally, then there is little reason to pay a coyote and brave the hazards of the open desert to cross into the country illegally. Work visas would also take current migrants out of the shadows, reduce opportunities for their exploitation and eliminate the fear of deportation. Enabling travel in and out of the US – besides being more humane – will also likely enhance visa compliance and diminish the need for and, consequently, the number, of contrived asylum claims.
This approach could also raise more income tax revenue and strengthen the existing social safety net for US citizens – without imposing any new taxes on anyone.
As to the latter, temporary work visas contemplate that participating migrants would not retire in the US. Once on the books, migrants’ share of Social Security and Medicare payments, now already due from all employees, could instead be held in escrow until the migrant’s visa has expired and then released to migrants as they are physically leaving the United States. The employers’ share of Social Security and Medicare taxes, which they must now pay for all W-2 employees, would continue to be paid into each program’s general fund as, in effect, additional unencumbered revenue.
Importantly, allowing migrants to conditionally remain in the US through work visas would also substantially reduce family separations and render those that nevertheless do occur a knowing choice – not a government diktat. While substantially undercutting the rationale for sanctuary cities.
Regarding electability, these parameters are broadly in accord with basic fairness. Those who come here from another country outside the normal naturalization process seeking economic opportunity should earn that opportunity by benefitting citizens of the host country. And there should be a real consequence for those who won’t.
Work visas provide migrants with the opportunity to help themselves and this nation. Only those who reject that opportunity or do not comply with its’ conditions (e.g., failure to participate, failure to timely leave, conviction of a crime (and not lesser offenses), applying for any social welfare program, and failure to pay all taxes when due) would be deported.
