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 Editorials | At Issue | November 2005 
It's the Same Old Business When It Comes to Immigrants
 Yolanda Chavez Leyva - Progressive Media Project
| | Former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm testifies before a Republican committee at the Capitol in Denver on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005, on illegal immigration. Republicans seeking a crackdown on illegal immigrants convened an informal hearing Wednesday, urging lawmakers to stop what they call a 'silent invasion' of the United States. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski) |
President Bush is bowing to conservatives again, this time on immigration.
On Oct. 18, Bush signed the fiscal 2006 Homeland Security Appropriations Act. The budget earmarks $7.5 billion for immigration and customs enforcement in order to "find and return the illegal immigrants who are here," according to the president. Funding will allow hiring an additional 1,000 Border Patrol agents and millions more in funding to build more prisons to house undocumented migrants.
But the president is going slowly on his flawed guest worker proposal.
It would provide three-year work visas to immigrants. "If an employer has a job that no American is willing to take, we need to find a way to fill that demand," Bush said. The visa could be renewed for another three years, but at the end of six years, immigrants would have to return to their country and reapply.
It would not provide a way for longtime residents to become citizens.
This combination of increased border enforcement along with using Mexican labor is nothing new. U.S. business began heavily investing in Mexico more than a hundred years ago, while at the same time recruiting Mexican workers to perform low-wage labor in our expanding economy.
After our entry into World War I in 1917, employers complained about a lack of workers, and the federal government created a guest worker program that lasted several years beyond the end of the Great War.
During World War II, the government created the bracero program when employers again grumbled about a labor shortage resulting from the war. The bracero program lasted two decades, coming to an end in 1964.
Both programs show the power of big business in influencing policy.
These government-sponsored programs helped formalize the migration of Mexican workers -- with and without papers -- to the United States, and U.S. business profited greatly from their presence.
Bush's strategies -- to bolster border enforcement while bringing in Mexican workers whose low-paid labor is desired by U.S. employers -- is an old combination that has proved disastrous.
Since 1998, more than 2,500 migrants have died crossing the border -- victims of policies that seek to deter migration by pushing people into dangerous areas of the border. Human smuggling has become a lucrative business that exploits immigrants and often puts them in grave peril.
Instead of cracking down on immigrants, our leaders should create humane immigration policies that recognize the new realities of a global economy.
Yolanda Chavez Leyva is a historian specializing in border and Mexican-American history. She wrote this for the Progressive Media Project. 409 E. Main St., Madison, Wis. 53703 pmproj@progressive.org |
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