PRESIDENT BUSH SAYS: Congress should pass comprehensive immigration reform. But in the meantime, I am more strictly enforcing the existing law.

“America needs to secure our borders – and with your help my Administration is taking steps to do so… Yet we also need to acknowledge that we will never fully secure our border until we create a lawful way for foreign workers to come here and support our economy.”

DMI SAYS: President Bush is congratulated for recognizing that immigrants support the U.S. economy and need a legal way to work here. But the nation’s immigration system is broken. Millions of undocumented immigrants are inextricably a part of our economy and society. Yet the routine exploitation they face in the workplace threatens to drive down the wages and working conditions of current and aspiring middle-class Americans. Increasing enforcement of the current, dysfunctional immigration law is worse for the middle class than doing nothing at all because it drives undocumented immigrants further underground, increasing exploitation. At the same time, these ineffective enforcement efforts cost middle-class taxpayers money.

?       Middle-class Americans benefit from the economic contributions of undocumented immigrants. The labor of undocumented workers in restaurants, landscaping, hotels, childcare, and throughout the economy directly supports the middle class. In addition, undocumented immigrants are estimated to have contributed nearly $50 billion in federal taxes between 1996 and 2003. These tax contributions finance vital middle-class goods like public schools and Social Security. Immigrants – both authorized and undocumented – also stimulate the economy by starting small businesses and increasing consumer demand. Since the American middle class relies on the economic contributions of undocumented immigrants, trying to drive them out of the country is not in the interest of middle-class Americans.

?       At the same time, the vulnerability of undocumented immigrants in the workplace puts downward pressure on wages and working conditions for all workers, making it harder to achieve and hold onto a middle-class standard of living.   Many employers take advantage of immigrants’ precarious status to cut costs for wages, benefits, and workplace safety.  They may then be less willing to hire U.S.- born workers if they demand better wages and working conditions. U.S.-born workers are left to either accept the same poor conditions as immigrants living under the threat of deportation or be shut out of whole industries. If undocumented immigrants had the opportunity to attain legal status, they would no longer have to live in fear and would no longer be so vulnerable to exploitation at work.

?       The workplace raids, flawed employment verification systems, and detention facilities capable of holding tens of thousands that President Bush champions may succeed in driving some people out of the country, but they will not induce millions of others who risked their lives to come and work in the United States to leave. Instead, these workers will be driven further underground, deepening exploitation. During the economic downturn, employers will find this cheap and desperate labor even more appealing, and the wages of Americans aspiring to a middle-class standard of living will be further threatened.

?       Trying to enforce immigration laws that are fundamentally at odds with the nation’s economic reality is expensive and unworkable. Since the early 1990s, spending on border enforcement has tripled, yet the number of undocumented immigrants has also nearly tripled. We should fix immigration laws first and then work to enforce them.  

?      While it’s crucial that immigrant workers have an opportunity to work in the U.S legally, the temporary worker programs that President Bush has championed in the past are not the answer. Temporary worker programs institutionalize a permanent two-tiered labor market, formalizing some of the workplace exploitation that already exists informally. They also ensure that a continued stream of vulnerable workers will always be available, threatening to undermine middle-class wages and working conditions much as undocumented workers do now. It is plausible that many jobs will be transformed into “temporary worker jobs” at the cost of jobs that could provide the wages and benefits capable of providing a middle-class standard of living. Although some temporary worker proposals promise to enforce workplace rights for temporary workers, no matter what protections are in place the temporary status of these workers ensures that this class of workers will always remain more vulnerable and less secure than the mainstream of American workers. We should instead allow the workers the economy needs to immigrate to the U.S. permanently.

Relevant Statistics:

?       Percentage of the national workforce that undocumented workers constitute: 5.

?       Total number of immigrants living and working in the United States: 36 million.

?      Estimated number of undocumented immigrants living and working in the United States: 12 million.

?       Percent of the nation’s purchasing power represented by Hispanic and Asian-American consumer markets, to which immigration is a major contributor: 12. 

?       Cost to build and maintain a border fence, over 25 years: $60 billion.

?      Spending on border security in 1993: $480 million.

?       Spending on border security in 2005: $1.4 billion.

?       Estimated increase in the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. between 1993 and 2005: 7.2 million.

?       Estimated percentage of undocumented workers who enter the country legally: 40 – 50.

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DMI on the 2008 State of the Union