A Special Report
Articles:
The Other Face of Immigration
Soluton Minded
The Border Film Project
Divided Lives
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The University of Arizona Alumnus — Fall 2006
The Other Face of Immigration By day, the San Rafael Valley spreads broad and serene across southern Arizona, its lush, grassy pastures peppered with cattle and low-flying birds. But by night, this bucolic setting gives way to a chaotic war zone; impertinent helicopters fill the skies, mysterious vehicles rumble through the darkness, and weary trails absorb the footsteps of a steady, northbound cortège. Ask anyone in these parts, and they say that’s just the way it is on the U.S.-Mexico line, where binational jurisdiction is more a blur than a precise demarcation.
A World-Wide Phenomenon
UN estimates 190 to 200 million immigrants — 3.3% of the World’s population • 30% in the Americas (Canada and the U.S.), approximately 42 milion immigrants • 20% in Europe • Remaining 50% around the world with the largest share in Asia Cause and consequence of global economic integration and in everything except labor • Global remittances estimated at $150 billion per year Source: Papademetriou, Demetrios G., The Global Struggle with Illegal Immigration: No End in Sight, Washington DC: Migration Policy Institute, September 1, 2005. More than one million illegal immigrants are apprehended along this boundary each year, including more than 400,000 in the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector alone. But what happens here also reverberates across the nation — and lies at the heart of our rancorous debate over America’s foreign-born population. Not surprisingly, such policy wrangling is dominated by partisan rhetoric that often twists the truth and confuses the public. To researchers such as Judith Gans, however, scratching out veracity beneath that veneer of spin is a full-time job. Gans runs the immigration program at The University of Arizona’s Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy. And she says that facts routinely become hostage to fierce immigration politics. “Certainly, with the tenor of the debate so heated, there is so much misinformation flying around.” Instead, she counters with compact doses of reality such as this: immigrant workers actually boost the national economy rather than drain it, and even help raise wages in some industries. Or this: today’s newcomers arrive with education levels not much different than native-born Americans, and certainly no lower than past immigrants. Or this: the current immigration wave is hardly a fresh phenomenon. “This didn’t happen overnight,” says Gans. “But suddenly it got on the radar screen. Now there’s a feeling that we’re being overrun and the system is out of control. But it’s nothing new.” However, current trends do loom large. Officials estimate that the United States now is home to an estimated 35 million immigrants. In turn, we’re only part of a larger, global pattern involving some 175 million immigrants worldwide, impacting nations from Australia to Costa Rica. Here at home, census data reveals a 16 percent jump in the number of immigrant households over the past five years. They now comprise 12.4 percent of America’s population, and a majority — 11 million — come from Mexico. These newcomers also are on the move, fanning from the traditionally immigrant-heavy Southwest into states such as Indiana, Missouri, South Dakota, and Delaware. Predictably, this flux has sparked fierce election-year battles. In December 2005, for example, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill cracking down on illegal immigration and tightening border security. But six months later, the Senate passed a more moderate measure that would create a guest worker program, and a process towards citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally. House conservatives criticized that plan as an amnesty, however, and common ground had not been reached by summer recess. But as the battle rages, researchers such as Gans are adding crucial perspective. Indeed, they’ve had plenty of time to prepare. “This problem has been building for years,” she says. “You can draw a (starting) line in history anywhere you want to draw it. But certainly in the modern era, it begins with the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.” Millions of predominantly Mexican illegal immigrants were given amnesty under that measure, which also promised to pursue employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers — a provision that has received only spotty enforcement. Since then, the number of immigrants in this country has risen to around 35 million. But if that seems alarming, says Gans, consider that as a percentage of our population, they’ve actually dropped to 12 percent, compared to roughly 15 percent in other high immigration periods of the 19th and early 20th centuries. At the same time, up to 98 percent of the world’s population growth occurs in developing nations, while developed nations — including the United States — are seeing their populations grow steadily older. That means economies such as ours need immigrants, she says. “It’s not just about bringing in cheap labor to do jobs that Americans won’t do. I think of it as immigrants doing jobs that Americans aren’t able to do. And with the baby boomers aging, those demographic pressures are just going to get worse.”
Udall Center
Immigration Policy About the Program The Udall Center ‘s immigration initiative aims to illuminate the complexities of immigration in a global economy. By working at the intersection of academic research and public policy, the program’s primary goal is to promote reasoned dialogue on immigration that avoids simplistic formulations and examines immigration to the United States in the context of current law and global political and economic realities. Because an enforceable immigration policy must balance complex social, political, economic, and national security interests, the program’s secondary objective is to foster a deeper understanding of the tradeoffs involved in formulating immigration policy so that the key elements of an enforceable system are identified. These objectives are accomplished by providing credible, independent information on immigration and by bringing together stakeholders, expert researchers, and policymakers in a structured, interactive setting designed to illuminate issues, identify common ground, and explore solutions to the problems facing the immigration system. Still, that leads to clashes with labor unions struggling to protect American workers from immigrant competition. And those unions carry clout. “They are legitimately wired into the political processes, and their voices get heard,” Gans says. “Politicians get really nervous at being accused of allowing open borders, and allowing foreign labor to come in. “But American workers really can’t be protected from competition with foreign workers. They’re competing in international labor markets every day, because it’s never been easier for capital to go to labor if labor can’t come here.” The numbers bear her out. Today, one of about every eight workers in this country are foreign-born. And they are particularly vital to certain American industries such as construction, where immigrants comprise about 20 percent of the workforce, or to farming, where that number approaches 35 percent. Of course, those statistics belie a complex economic and social impact, Gans says. For example, immigration foes complain that immigrant labor depresses wages. However, cheap labor can also keep businesses from relocating abroad. Consider a southern Arizona farmer who uses immigrant workers. What would happen if that farmer suddenly lost his imported farmhands? “Could he get plenty of Americans willing to pick crops if he paid $20 an hour?” she asks. Perhaps. “But I don’t think the southern Arizona farmer is going to pay those kinds of wages. I think the farmer would move across the border to Sonora, Mexico.” (That also illustrates why “agriculture is one of the most globally competitive businesses there is,” she says. “Just consider the fact that we can eat grapes year-round because they can either be grown in Chile or the United States.”) Here at home, meanwhile, immigrants can actually help bolster wages. “Immigrant labor does depress or lower wages of workers with whom immigrants directly compete,” she says. “But it also raises wages of workers who are complementary to immigrant skills.” Case-in-point: “If you’re running a construction firm, you need an array of skills — drywall people, electricians, plasterers, plumbers, framers, construction managers, finish carpenters, the whole thing.” In turn, the availability of low-paid immigrants to cover menial tasks makes more money available for other projects and for attracting higher-skilled employees. “You do get very real income distribution impacts because of these kinds of shifts,” Gans says. “But the economy as a whole is clearly better off.” Impact upon government is similarly mixed. “The federal government benefits at the expense of state and local governments,” she says. “Immigrants tend to use less benefits than they pay (in withholdings) at the federal level. But the inverse is true at state and local levels, where those governments are up-in-arms about effects on schools and other direct fiscal costs.” But this dynamic is more about class than citizenship. “Any low-skilled worker uses more services than they pay in taxes,” she says. “Again, this gets to the direct and indirect impacts, if you include the impacts of higher wages paid to the construction manager, or higher returns to a bank, or higher wages for the more skilled workers.” In other words, because those workers and financial institutions make more money, they contribute more in taxes. That helps counteract the revenue impact of low-skilled workers, including immigrants. However, “that typically isn’t counted in the fiscal equation,” she says. “It’s a common problem in economics, when you have easily identifiable costs and diffuse benefits. The costs are easily identifiable, with immigrants being easy to point to.” But the benefits provided by immigrants are less direct. Here’s another irony: The very forces drawing Mexicans into our labor pool actually drain jobs from their country. “With China and India coming into the global economy,” Gans says, “all of sudden there’s this huge influx of low-skilled workers.” As a result, “workers in Mexico are, in very real ways, competing with workers in China. All of a sudden (companies) could choose whether to relocate in Mexico or China. And guess what? Mexican workers are expensive compared to Chinese workers, so they’re going to China.” It seems the farther you travel from the San Rafael Valley and its all-too-familiar border conflicts, the more complicated an issue it becomes. But to Judith Gans, this is just the latest twist in America’s melting-pot saga. “The stark picture that some people paint, that these are profoundly different people who aren’t dedicated to bettering themselves, I just don’t see it,” she says. “I don’t feel pessimistic about this issue, when you look at how hard so many of these immigrants work, and usually at multiple jobs. It’s hard to believe that we’re not seeing a repeat of the story that made this country what it is.”
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