A Conservative Argues for Immigration Reform
New America Media, News feature, Marcelo Ballvé, Posted: Aug 06, 2008
Editor's Note: Conservative Republican Tamar Jacoby, who has become one of the nation's leading advocates of immigration reform, says everything ultimately comes down to the economy. Marcelo Ballvé is a New York-based writer with New America Media.
For a decade, Tamar Jacoby has been on the frontlines of this country's immigration wars.
At first she was more of an observer, editing a book and writing essays and newspaper op-eds on the topic at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group in New York. Jacoby, a Republican, was a senior fellow there from 1989 to 2007.
"The biggest concern in my intellectual life has been how we as a country can hold together given our differences," she says. "You can't do that without looking at immigration."
Last year, her interest grew into far more than an academic pursuit. When immigration reform legislation was making its way through Congress, Jacoby noticed a disconnect between American businesses' need for more workers and their relative inaction on the issue. She began to take a more engaged role, and reached out to business leaders in states including Texas, Colorado, Arizona and Georgia, helping jump-start employer coalitions that would advocate for immigration reform in Congress. For months, she participated in conference calls and meetings. She pressed individual business owners to state their case. In Senate offices, she argued that immigration reform would make the country "more prosperous, more vital, it's going to make us stronger."
In the end, the legislation was defeated by an anti immigrant groundswell in her own party's right wing.
Despite the bipartisan legislative push and business lobbying, the pro-reform side had trouble making its message resonate with the public.
For Jacoby, 53, and many others involved in the push for reform, the bill's death triggered a phase of retrenchment. "It was a painful and bitter defeat for all of us," she says in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., "and it sent us into a period of soul searching."
Jacoby was quickly back in the thick of the immigration battle with a new organization, ImmigrationWorks USA. Structured as a federation for pro-immigration business coalitions, ImmigrationWorks USA aims to bring to bear the views of a broad network of employers into the debate.
Linking immigration to prosperity could be the only argument to muster enough momentum to counteract immigration restrictionists.
"The economic argument will be the one that turns the American people around on this issue, which right now is so emotional and lacking in rational discussion," says Sergio Bendixen, Democratic pollster and president of Miami-based firm Bendixen & Associates.
In the last century of American public life, he says, issues that affect families' pocketbooks and quality of life have a proven track record of turning the tide on major issues. However, Bendixen believes it will take a sustained multimedia and public relations effort – on the order of Al Gore's crusade to raise awareness about global warming – for this message to sink in.
Businesses rely on immigrant workers for their existence as viable enterprises, argues Jacoby. It is nearly impossible to hire U.S. workers for many jobs (as farmhands, meatpackers, dishwashers, etc.). Unlike in 1960, when about half of all American men dropped out of high school, today nine in 10 graduate. Without a critical mass of unskilled U.S.-born workers, there's a labor shortage in many sectors of the economy.
In the introduction to her 2004 book, "Reinventing the Melting Pot: the New Immigrants and What It Means to Be American," Jacoby refers to this problem with the same unsentimental pragmatism that characterizes her general approach to the debate.
"Of course, however hard they work, many poor, ill-educated immigrants who start at the bottom of the ladder remain there throughout their lives," she writes. "This is not particularly surprising, and it may seem to vindicate those who claim that the United States today is importing a new lower class.
"But that's part of the point of our immigration policy: America no longer has this kind of working class, and it turns out that we need one." That's why Jacoby says employers are passionate about this. "Who's going to be telling their representative how to vote on this? The people who have a real stake in it, and that's small and mid-sized business."
Yet, as the current system works, American employers seem to be facing a choice between growing their business and obeying the law. According to Jacoby, the government issues about one million work visas a year, when the market's real need is probably closer to 1.5 million.
Her organization calls for tougher enforcement at the workplace and along the border. Jacoby is against the border wall, calling it "ridiculous" but adds, "I think we need a virtual wall, we need to know who's crossing the border."
The get-tough approach taken in recent years by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in which thousands of undocumented workers were arrested in a wave of high-profile workplace raids, have become familiar images: cuffed immigrants filed out of their workplace and into police vans, families separated, mass deportations.
Jacoby says enforcement is indispensable, but believes the country's unrealistic immigration law is responsible for the current situation, in which agencies like ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol must grapple with some eight million undocumented workers who fill the vacuum in the labor market. "We're trying to enforce an unenforceable law," she says, "and that by definition leads to draconian and inhumane actions."
This year, her organization helped rally business groups to push back against governors and state legislatures that are cracking down on employers with undocumented workers on their payrolls. At least 12 states have passed employer sanctions—measures requiring employers to verify workers' immigration status or penalizing businesses hiring undocumented workers, according to the National Restaurant Association. A June 10 ImmigrationWorks USA report calls the debates over these state proposals "the new immigration battleground." In Mississippi this year, for example, state lawmakers, brushing aside businesses' complaints, passed a law requiring all employers to verify workers' status using the federal government's error-riddled E-Verify system.
They also made it a felony for an unauthorized worker to take a job in the state, which reportedly provoked an exodus of immigrant workers. Despite Mississippi's hardline legislation, the report concluded that the overall trend nationwide was away from the strictest forms of employer-targeted legislation, in part because of businesses' new activism on the issue. In several states, including Indiana and Kentucky, legislation was rejected. In Arizona, a tough existing law was scaled back in response to the business community's outcry. As state-based business coalitions grapple with local lawmakers' efforts to clamp down on immigration, ImmigrationWorks helps business groups connect to the broader movement. "I'll come in and say, 'Other states have done this before you. You're not alone, you don't have to reinvent the wheel,'" Jacoby says.
Immigration battles at the state level, though, are also preparation for the inevitable face-off when federal immigration reform resurfaces as a possibility. Both presidential candidates, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama, have said they will prioritize it.
But supporters warn that, if one lesson is to be learned from last year's failed effort at reform, it's not to underestimate the intensity and outspokenness of those who vehemently oppose it. "Opposition—the over-my-dead-body opposition of the anti-immigrant right—was red hot," Jacoby wrote in The New York Daily News last year, shortly after immigration reform's death in the U.S. Senate. "Opponents were loud, angry, unrelenting—and terrifying to members of Congress, particularly those coming up soon for reelection."
The business-minded center-right has gushed over Jacoby, as when a column in The Economist called her "a beacon of light in a foggy debate." Moderates linked to both parties also laud her work.
Hispanic pollster Bendixen says, "I think Tamar Jacoby understands the immigration issue better than anyone else in the country."
Meanwhile, a blog post on Vdare.com, a Web site headed by immigration restrictionist Peter Brimelow, refers to her "an obnoxious robo-cheerleader for the big business open-borders side." What worries Jacoby about her opponents is not their rhetoric, but their proven ability to get their message into the media (where they tar every reform effort as "amnesty for illegals") as well as lawmakers' mailrooms, in-boxes, and phone banks. The immigration debate is transformed, Jacoby says, "when it becomes a two-sided debate in the center, which is where most Americans pay attention to politics."
Although very vocal, Jacoby estimates only 20 or 25 percent of the electorate is composed of those she describes as "Lou Dobbs voters"—a reference to the well-known CNN anchor who makes screeds on "broken borders" his hallmark and describes illegal immigration as an "invasion."
In her view, some 60 percent of voters—whom she calls the "silent middle"—are ambivalent about immigration, perhaps nervous about embarking on a solution, but aware the current system is untenable.
Jacoby thinks enough members of Congress realize the need for immigration reform and only require a friendly political climate to work out a new compromise and get it approved.
If local business owners speak out credibly, and with conviction, about a healthy economy's need for immigrants, this could have a ricochet on the ordinary voter, Jacoby says.
Articles by Marcelo Ballvé
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User Comments
Norski on Aug 07, 2008 at 10:18:15 said:
Walter Heller, Chief Economic Advisor to President Kennedy once joked that if you line up all the Economists in the world end to end they would all point in different directions. As I read Tamar Jacoby's opinions in this article I could not help but think of that saying.
So many lessons from history always go unlearned. A case in point is the recent meat packing raids. One side bemoans the fact that wages are now half what they used to be in the meat packing industry thanks to the hiring of Illegal Immigrants. The other side bemoans the impact on the Illegal Immigrant workers and their families when the Illegal Immigrants are caught and deported. And everyone acts like this is something new and the immigration system is broken because it happened. But that is not the case. It has happened before many times.
Years ago in my father’s home town there was an auto plant. It was staffed by proud, hardworking German Americans and Italian Americans. One day the Owner decided that he had to make more money and so he fired all those workers and hired a bunch of workers he had recruited and imported from Denmark. There was nothing wrong with the workers he laid off other than they were very educated in the ways of American whereas the Danes he brought to the U.S. were quite ignorant of such things as workers rights and how much the cost of living was in the U.S.
His Danish workers were so unskilled quality suffered. As a result, his customers received a poorer product for the same price, while he happily added to his personal fortune.
His move not only hurt his ex-workers who did nothing more than ask for a fair days wage, it hurt the community by reducing the amount of money workers had to spend at local businesses. And it also caused a great deal of hatred toward the Danish workers.
The Danes saw no reason why they shouldn’t come to town and take everyone’s jobs since they needed them, while the German American and Italian American workers saw the Danes as foreign “scab labor”. Who was right? If you are one of the fired workers you know that a gross injustice was just done to you. If you were one of the imported workers, you know that you were just granted a tremendous opportunity. Who was wrong? How can you tell somebody who just lost their job that they should welcome the person who took it from them into their community? Shouldn’t we all be mad at the business man? After all, look at all the heartache he caused in his community.
In economics there is no such thing as a "correct" price and there is no dictate that anything should be either less or more expensive. There is only a market force based balance between scarce and common resources. Common resources have low price while scarce resources have a high price. Unlimited immigration makes labor a common resource and thus drives the price into the cellar. Since labor represents a standard of living, making it less expensive devalues everyone's standard of living. It is a consensus that this is a bad thing since we expend such a great deal of effort with minimum wage laws to try to cut off oversupply depression of wages beyond a certain point.
In order to solve this dilemma of a falling standard of living due to unlimited immigration, Congress over the years clearly defined right and wrong. We have decided as a society that U.S. jobs are for U.S. Citizens and Legal Residents. By extension, we have decided to put an end to allowing employers to replace employees with lower paid unlimited Immigrant labor. If a job cannot be filled with a U.S. Citizen or Legal Resident, then there is a process by which somebody from outside the U.S. can be brought in to fill that position at a fair wage. One can say that Immigration law over the last 100 years has been an attempt to control labor markets so as to prevent labor from becoming a cheap commodity due to unlimited immigration.
Unfortunately, few people are bothering to enforce or abide by those laws so painstakingly developed. And we are becoming a nation filled with stories just like the one from my father’s home town of people exploiting Illegal Immigrants and ignoring the laws so they can save money on wages. This leaves us with just two choices, living with depressed wages due to an oversupply of labor or seeing people deported to restore the balance. And as we fight about that, those who profit from illegal immigration use Illegal Immigrants as human shields so they can continue to break the law.
In my mind the reason Tamar Jacoby misses the mark on Illegal Immigration is that Tamar Jacoby is a Free Marketer who does not realize that people can immigrate to a new place far faster that Capital can respond by creating new jobs. And in this case the devil is truly in the details. Over the last 20 years the U.S. has been able to create only 1.66 million new jobs per year on average. Meanwhile, our workforce actually expends by half a million each year because we have 3 million of our native born young people entering the workforce each year while we have only 2.5 million people retiring each year. Thus if we add more than 1.1 million new immigrant workers to the workforce the extra workers will tend to send an equal number of Citizens to the unemployment line. And history actually bears this out. Per a recent Social Security Administration estimate there are about 7.2 million working Illegal Immigrants versus 13.8 million unemployed Americans. Tamar Jacoby’s entire argument unfortunately rests too much on one detail that in reality does not hold up in the real world.
Richard A. on Aug 06, 2008 at 17:14:39 said:
The guest worker concept which Jacoby is pushing is very close to slavery.
Ransome on Aug 06, 2008 at 15:45:25 said:
The problem is that the elitist supporters of illegal immigration trapped in their intellectual and economic “Ivory Towers” share little with those Americans who needs are for security, food, shelter, and employment. To elitists, the issue is compassion for “God’s Children”. While they promote compassion and understanding of the illegal immigrant’s plight, far more than 25% of Americans view them as invaders who voluntarily crossed our borders and created their own plight. There is never a word about the tribulations facing our own working class who happens to be the source of our military people, some who daily face injury and death. While illegals take jobs from our working class, more will have to join the military and more will become embittered because nobody seems to care about them.
Illegal immigration support allows the insidious, evil, right wing forces, once beaten back to once again rear their racist, ugly head and spew the hatred that imperils all minorities. The KKK, Skin Heads, and others will be allowed to unleash their violence against foreign nationals. Like in Shenandoah, many will not care. With the increase in economic problem more of crimes will occur and people will only become more harden.
The number of illegal immigration opponents will only grow because violent crime is also immigrating. The killings in SF. Phoenix is the American kidnapping capital although it involves mostly illegal immigrants. Will American citizens be next? Mexican drug enforcement agents are requesting asylum as they flee the wrath of the drug cartels. But, will the border stop them from continuing the war and will American citizens be caught in the crossfire? In LA, a young sheriff has been gunned down by criminal elements. Has the attack on police that is so common in Mexico arrived in our cities? Who is more of a threat to “our” security, Iran, Mexico, or the traitors that propose amnesty, sanctuary cities, and open borders?
OpenThyEyes on Aug 06, 2008 at 15:13:03 said:
With a virtual wall as Jacoby and her business allies like to call it, we will be able to see the replacement illegal workers crossing the border. Business will smile as the new troublemakers (newly legalized) are sent packing to join the unemployed past legal workers. After all it is viable to get those that cannot demand safe working conditions, fair compensation, and health/life insurance.
John Cook on Aug 06, 2008 at 15:04:55 said:
Thank God for Nezzi! What a wonderful document. You have covered it in toto. You would make a great replacement for Pelosi. I agree with your position and support you 100 percent.
Matt from Texas on Aug 06, 2008 at 13:29:44 said:
Hey, Tamar. If it is so difficult to hire Americans for jobs like meatpacking, then why were legal American workers lined up around the block to work at the Swift meatpacking plants that were raided? Repeating a lie over and over doesn't make it true. Business that are not viable without illegal immigrant labor should not be in business in the first place.
Buzzm1 on Aug 06, 2008 at 10:23:16 said:
Keeping It Simple, Stupid
OUR ACCEPTABLE IMMIGRATION REFORM
#1. Secure the Border!!!
#2. Mandate E-Verify for ALL Employees!!!
#3. Mandate E-Verify for ANY Benefit!!!
#4. Stop the Underground Economy!!!
#5. End Birthright Citizenship for Illegals!!!
......and make it retroactive!!!
#6. End Chain Migration!!!
#7. Make English our Official Language!!!
#8. Cut Off Federal Funds to Sanctuary Cities!!
NOTHING MORE!!! NOTHING LESS!!!
Ali Alexander on Aug 06, 2008 at 10:19:09 said:
"Professionals are not afraid of losing their dish washing JOBS to poor migrants."
Yet, rougly 40 percent of illegal aliens came legally on nonimmigrant visas such as student visas which they then overstayed. These people because they often blend in in terms of language and education DO REPLACE AMERICANS in solid middle class jobs, as do the illegal alien children who are raised here. See, for example, the 23-year-old librarian who was recently detained as an illegal alien, or the white collar worker in Los Angeles a couple of years ago who had a $100,000 plus job with the city of Los Angeles.
nativessayno on Aug 06, 2008 at 08:58:29 said:
Yalie, Tamar Jacoby may be "conservative" but she is also clearly pro-amnesty and an Open Border advocate.
She may not realize that her blithe remarks such as: .."enforcement is indispensable, but believes the country's unrealistic immigration law is responsible for the current situation, in which agencies like ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol must grapple with some eight million undocumented workers who fill the vacuum in the labor market."
Fill a vacuum,...that's a good one!
She is clearly an amnesty shill. She can cite all kinds of spin and jargon. For evidence of a ridiculously burgeoning illegal population...I can simply walk outside, (in LA). So much for filling a vacuum. What an insult to our actual situation and what it means to citizens! She should take a 15 minute tour with me and I can show her the outrageous amount of good paying jobs that are newly "filled" by new arrivals. Makes me sad and frustrated to say the least!
The irony for me personally is that I am a life-long, very liberal dem and came to my awareness on my own. I have never watched or listened to Rush or Lou in my entire life!
Funny some Americans regardless of the direction of the "spin" want our borders protected and want ONLY legal immigration.
Kind of late though with 30M already here! I'm sure Tamar has it all figured out for us, what a consolation! Its like watching the Titanic sink in slow motion. Goodbye strong sovereignty, goodbye meaningful border......wish it really meant something to the people that care more about illegals and their "rights" than actual US American citizens rights and concerns.
Nezzie on Aug 06, 2008 at 08:13:02 said:
I totally disagree with what you just said Easy Rider. It appears to me that the United States has had migrant workers in the fields and on seafood farms for many years. It was not until big business started to get greedy and began to lay off rual and middle Americans in support for cheap labor from other countries. No one has ever proported that we should not allow immigration, but this illegal immigration that big business and Tamar is proposing is not how we do things in America. Big business is not paying for these illegal immigrants to be educated, hospitilized, housed, feed, or any of the other necessities that are needed for a person to survive in America. They are filling up our welfare roles, and our housing vouchers, at taxpayer expense, while drawing salaries that they don't pay taxes on and sending the money they make from these big business owner's back home while the American citizen taxpayer take care of them and the anchor babies they drop thinking that they are safe if they do that. Perhaps the big business owners should all move to Mexico and those business owners that are for America will stay here and we will bring in the workers we need, as we have in the past and they will go home when the season is over. We will not buy the products that are sent here from Mexico, (can you say tainted vegetables) just as we will not purchase the lead based toys from China. Let's see how long all of that will last for these business owners. No, we in America are sick to death of this tripple threat. We send millions of dollars to Mexico for aid to feed them and wepons to assist them with the issues they have. We then pay for them here, and they also as I said draw money from our coffiers to send back home. Just how much is an American citizens supposed to take? We now have no jobs for our kids and with the HB 1, 2, 3 visa's it is now hitting the middle class hard. No this ride is over, Tamar is just another pro-illegal immigrant guru pushing her agenda off ont he American people. Thank GOD for the Rush and Lou Dobbs in America, I did not even know of Lou Dobbs until the pro-illegal immigrants starting trying to silence him and others in America who tell it like it is, which allows the American citizens to do as we have always done, make our own decision about our country and our lives. GOD Bless America, GOD bless Rush, Lou, and anyone else who is trying to get the truth out to the ones that this illegal immigration is hurting the most, people like me! Please join any anti-illegal immigration group in your area, help us save our country, help us protect our Constitution, help us to rid the 14th Amendment of the the false premise that anyone born in the US is a US citizen, that is just plain wrong. Take back our Counry America, and while you are at it, please join HelpSaveMaryland.com. The Democrats and Republican's have lost their minds and we need to let them know that we know that. Pelosi needs to go along with anyone who is giving our country away and has been in office for more than 2 years! This is an unfortunate situation, not for American citizens but for the illegal immigrants who have invaded our country. HelpSaveMaryland.com. Join FAIR, and NumbersUSA.
Richard Cortez on Aug 06, 2008 at 07:54:42 said:
America must heal on the issue of immigration before we can start solving the challenges we currently face as a nation. No side to the issue can totally be right or wrong when so many are in opposite sides of the debate. Tamar brings reliable evidence that guides us on what chages to make to a national policy that isn't working. An enforcement policy only is not the solution and it is very costly. America is made up of diverse people...we need to learn to coexist. It will makes us a stronger nation.
Easy Rider on Aug 06, 2008 at 07:21:06 said:
Tamar is the only person I know who knows what she is saying and has more information in her lil pinky finger than most of those that are radio talk shows hosts, Rush & Lou Dobbs, who feed the need of empty words to fill the empty minds of their listeners. What a poor state of mind for these listeners who blame their own incompetencies on the poor dishwashers.
-->Professionals are not afraid of losing their dish washing JOBS to poor migrants.
I am not saying don't close the borders, I am saying START USING YOUR OWN BRIANS instead of empty crap from the tv and radio show hosts.