This Saturday (19th January) and next (26th), South Carolina will become the first southern state to vote in the 2008 Republican and Democratic primary elections respectively. For the Republicans, illegal immigration is likely to overtake the economy and Iraq as the focus of the debate. It has become their hot topic in many states.
Four years ago the subject was barely mentioned in the televised debates between John Kerry and George W Bush. But by the time of the 2006 midterms, the Republicans had made reducing illegal immigration, and specifically the flow of Mexicans entering the country over the southern border, a key policy. Lou Dobbs, a populist CNN anchorman, has ramped up tensions with special reports on his nightly show "Broken Borders."
Republican presidential candidates are in a race to appear toughest on immigration and border control. Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani—both of whom pursued liberal immigration policies as governor of Arkansas and mayor of New York respectively—have been forced to take hard stances more in line with the wishes of the Republican base. Huckabee now says he favours completing a border fence with Mexico by July 2010, while Giuliani wants "a larger, better-trained border patrol." Mitt Romney—former Republican governor in the liberal, predominantly Democratic state of Massachusetts—has proposed mandatory biometric documentation.
For John McCain, the dilemma is even more acute. Last year, along with Democratic senator Edward Kennedy, he drafted legislation to provide a path to citizenship for existing illegal immigrants, referred to by critics as an "amnesty." But his website now focuses on border security: "I have always believed that our border must be secure and that the federal government has utterly failed in its responsibility to ensure that it is secure."
The issue is also causing trouble for the Democrats. Hillary Clinton's biggest wobble so far came when she appeared to "flip-flop" on a plan by Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York to grant driving licences to illegal immigrants. A December 2007 strategy paper by James Carville, architect of Bill Clinton's two victories in the 1990s, urges Democratic candidates to show voters that they appreciate the importance of the immigration issue and convey an understanding that "illegal immigration is out of control."
But is it? There are an estimated 11-18m illegal and undocumented immigrants in the US, and at least 200,000 join this number every year. Research by Jeff Passel, an expert on America's growing Latino community, shows that inflows of both legal and illegal immigrants from Mexico closely correlate with the availability of jobs. It is often argued that major economic centres like New York would grind to a halt without the availability of cheap labour provided by immigrants. Yet indigenous unskilled workers in the US—as in many other developed countries—are concerned about threats to their job security rather than the macroeconomic benefits of immigration.
Last year's McCain-Kennedy draft legislation brought together a coalition including chambers of commerce, service sector unions and the Catholic church. In addition to a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, the bill proposed a mechanism to meet future demand for cheap labour and tighter border security. President Bush put his weight behind the bill, and a series of opinion polls showed popular support of 60-70 per cent for it. But as the inevitable compromises were struck on Capitol Hill, the coalition evaporated and the bill was never passed.
The most controversial reform was the plan to provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Yet there are moral and practical reasons for such an amnesty. Many illegal immigrants have been in the US for decades and have children born as US citizens. But they are prevented from having proper access to healthcare, social housing and labour rights such as the minimum wage. Meanwhile, the government misses out on a large stream of tax revenue, as the workers remain in the black economy.
Criticism of the citizenship proposal, however, came from both right and left. Conservatives condemn any rewards for "criminals." Meanwhile, everyone from academics to businesspeople question whether the concessions made to win over reluctant Republican senators would have made the process so complicated that no one would have actually applied for citizenship. For example, the bill included measures requiring illegal immigrants to learn English, pay years of back taxes and temporarily return to their home country to file applications. But the bill's supporters disagree. An aide to Senator Kennedy told me they expected at least half of the illegal population to apply.
The second part of the package was a temporary guest worker programme similar to the Australian and British points-based systems. Stories abound of labour shortages with unpicked fruit rotting in Californian orchards. Jeff Passel points to unemployment levels of 2 to 3 per cent in areas where illegal immigrants work. "When you have extremely low unemployment, that's some kind of labour shortage," he says. But Steve Camarota at the Centre for Immigration Studies, a think tank proposing immigration restrictions, says he can't find "one scrap, nada, zip of any kind of labour shortage in the US."
Criticism also comes from the Democratic base. Bloggers on the Daily Kos, a popular liberal website, criticised the mooted guest worker programme for denying "any path to permanent residency or citizenship," thus creating a tier of second-class residents. But Simon Rosenberg, a leading voice on immigration reform, explains that a few new immigrants without a right to citizenship in exchange for a huge amnesty is a good deal. "The trade-off," he says, "is that we would accept 200,000 new immigrants for getting 11-12m under the protection of the law."
The prospects for reform look bleak while Bush stays in the White House. "[Senator] Kennedy made enormous concessions to the Republicans," says Rosenberg, "but [Bush] could only deliver 12 Senate votes" (they needed 20). Yet there is also hope that, in a country where Hispanics will make up a quarter of the population by 2050, Republicans will have to help with reform to "avoid being relegated to a minority party for a very long time," as Rosenberg says.
Whoever gets the keys to the White House next January is bound to have to return to this issue. A reactionary approach, such as throwing money at border security is likely to fail, since the economic incentives for immigrants are so strong that they will surely find a way through. Yet a well-meaning coalition of progressives will not hold either if the inevitable backroom deals mean that the mechanics of any new proposals are flawed. Such is the complicated nature of the issue that policymakers must take a step back before taking on those who believe that the only answer is locking the door and hoping for the best.
