Fixing a Broken Immigration System
Immigration is a major issue on agendas around the world, in "sending" as well as "receiving" countries. Recent Wilson Center events highlighted debates in the United States, Mexico, and Russia.
Immigration is a major issue on agendas around the world, in "sending" as well as "receiving" countries. Recent Wilson Center events highlighted debates in the United States, Mexico, and Russia.
At an October 22–23 United States Studies conference, co-sponsored by Columbia, Vanderbilt, and the University of Southern California with support from the Carnegie Corporation, Columbia University historian Mae Ngai reported that an estimated 12 million people, or one third of the total foreign-born population, currently lack legal documentation. She attributed this problem to the "paradox" of the U.S. immigration system embodied in the 1965 Hart-Celler Act. Ngai said the ostensibly egalitarian approach of setting equal quotas for all countries has resulted in large numbers of undocumented immigrants from countries where the demand for U.S. entry overwhelmingly exceeds legal limits.
Attempts at reform since Hart-Celler have proven inadequate, noted Marc Rosenblum, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) left out necessary provisions, such as establishing a reliable verification system. Instead, he said, after IRCA, the focus has shifted to guest-worker programs and border enforcement, measures that fail to alleviate the growing influx of undocumented workers or the abuses they face.
Ruth Milkman, a sociologist at the City University of New York Graduate Center and at UCLA, said parallel developments have exacerbated the plight of undocumented workers, including labor deregulation and de-unionization. She linked these problems to degraded working conditions and wage theft.
A central tenet of U.S. immigration policy is the legacy of guest-worker programs, such as the Bracero program, created during World War II to ease labor shortages. The program brought in several million Mexican workers to work in agriculture on temporary labor contracts at farms in 28 states. George Sanchez, a historian at the University of Southern California, lauded this policy for legalizing the flow of workers from Mexico to the United States, something current policy restricts.
Mexican Braceros and Latino Immigration
The Bracero program [bracero is Spanish for "farmhand,"] lasted 22 years and became the largest guest-worker program in U.S. history. At a Mexico Institute event in partnership with the National Museum of American History, U.S. Representative Raúl Grijalva, D-AZ, and Jorge Castañeda, former foreign minister of Mexico and a professor at New York University, discussed the program as it relates to the current immigration debate.
They concluded that a guest-worker program can boost the U.S. economy by providing businesses with the short-term work force they require, without permanently relocating some of the most entrepreneurial citizens from sending countries and breaking up families. The challenge, they said, is to overcome the recognized problems of the Bracero program by ensuring that strong labor rights and pathways to citizenship are parts of any future program.
At the U.S. Studies conference, Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said gaining a political voice is key to reform. U.S. Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) concurred, while expressing frustration that comprehensive immigration reform still has not materialized for Latinos. As a member of the Congressional Latino caucus, he is pressing the White House to give more support to current efforts in Congress.
For further reading, the Latin American Program and Mexico Institute have worked with partner organizations in nine U.S. cities to analyze the civic and political participation of Latin American immigrants. Local Goes National chronicles the insertion of Latino communities in the civic fabric of the Washington, DC area. Other publications cover similar issues in Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Omaha, Fresno, San Jose, and Tucson.
Labor and Integration Issues
How do immigrants become integrated into their host society? Vanderbilt University historian Gary Gerstle said the burden of adaptation should not rest entirely on immigrants. Incorporation, he said, "is rarely a one-way process. It requires changes from immigrants but changes from America, too."
Dowell Myers, who teaches urban planning at the University of Southern California, argued that immigrants can help avert the demographic crisis taking place in the United States, as retiring baby boomers are coming to outnumber the working-age population. But proper investment is needed now to train and educate immigrants, to help them integrate and contribute more effectively to the economy.
Discussing the history of guest-worker programs, Cindy Hahamovitch, a historian at the College of William & Mary, traced them to 19th century Central Europe, when they were a "state-brokered compromise between employers who want[ed] low-wage labor and nativists who [didn't] want immigrants at all." Rarely figuring into the equation are the interests of the guest workers themselves who, she said, have suffered depressed wages and inadequate protections.
David Bacon, a senior fellow at the Oakland Institute, advocated equality for immigrant workers. The current system, he said, favors employers by supplying cheap labor with little accountability. Tamar Jacoby, CEO of ImmigrationWorks USA, countered this dim view of employers by citing evidence from the Social Security Administration that 75 percent of employers hire legal immigrants. She expressed doubt about whether further regulation is the answer to the problem of exploitation. Jennifer Gordon, who teaches at Fordham Law School, outlined a vision for a "transnational labor visa," a new framework for worker protections based on partnerships between sending and receiving countries, with workers' associations advocating for individuals in both countries.
Migration in Russia and the United States
On October 21, the Kennan Institute and the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation (INDEMCO) co-sponsored a conference with Russian and American migration specialists.
Zhanna Zayonchkovskaya, chief researcher at the Institute for Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), said while xenophobia, and particularly the fear of immigrants, is prevalent in Russia, a significant percentage of the Russian population has a neutral attitude towards immigrants. Rather, she said, it is "the imperfect Russian migration policies [that] are a significant obstacle to the integration of immigrants."
Vladimir Mukomel, department chair at the Institute of Sociology at RAS, underscored the need for a more developed civil society and more institutional reforms in Russia before an effective migration policy can be created. "Copying institutions [from abroad] is doomed to fail without first transforming the social environment," he concluded.
Looking at U.S. migration, the Migration Policy Institute's Marc Rosenblum said, despite a significant increase in enforcement tools, the United States still lacks an effective policy to prevent illegal workers. J. Walter Tejada, a member of the Arlington County Board in Virginia, said education must be a key aspect of any efforts toward integration.
At the U.S. Studies conference, Christian Joppke, a political scientist at the American University of Paris, pointed to the unique place the distinction between "illegal" vs. "legal" immigration holds in American discourse. Elena Letona, associate director of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, argued the use of the word "illegal" when applied to immigrants is inappropriate, especially given the extent to which the legal immigration system is broken.
Richard Foltin, director of national and legislative affairs at the American Jewish Committee, focused on the national security angle. He said "the challenges of border control and the enforcement side are only made more difficult by the existence of a sea of undocumented immigrants in which those who seek to do us harm potentially can swim." He recommended better verification and more vigilant policing of the border, while ensuring the human rights of detainees are protected.
Rhacel Parreñas, who teaches American civilization at Brown University, called attention to the forcible separation of families, which still occurs despite U.S. family unification policies. She cited examples of domestic workers who face long backlogs while they await legal status, during which time they are separated from their families. Humanitarian rights must be taken into account, she said, along with labor needs in drafting a reformed immigration policy.
