High Fence and Big Gate

High Fence and Big Gate
In my last writing, Immigration Posturing, I did not address border control as a part of immigration policy. Primarily I made the point that the illegal immigrates already in our country are here to stay and the sooner we provide a process for them to become legal, self sustaining citizens, our country will be the better for it in manifold ways. Of course border control has to be an integral part of an effective immigration policy, and there must be a realistic “specific point and time” set by which an effective law can begin a new day for immigration rules to take place, for those that would enter illegally henceforth. That will be the rule of law that our justice system intends to uphold and our congress commits to provide means for its implementation.
Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, last week in his Op-Ed, “High Fence and Big Gate”, offered what I believe a most sensible basis for immigration reform. Recognizing that immigrants are important for our country continuing as a world economic leader, Friedman suggests a wide gate for entry, but importantly a high fence to control our borders. The high fence is not necessarily a literal structure but possibly a screening of illegals by a tamperproof national ID card. Friedman’s criteria: "Does it offer a real fence? Does it offer a real gate?" I believe Friedman is giving us a realistic vision – one that our politicians will not forthrightly convey --- a policy to meet the inevitability of economic globalization. You may read Friedman’s full perspective below. Note: Friedman refers to CNN’s “dumbing down the immigration debate”. He’s referring to Lou Dobbs, CNN’s financial and business reporter who has become the standard-bearer constructionist on illegal immigration and outsourcing. To be fair Dobbs has allowed a balanced opinionated panel to debate the issues.
My immigration topic stirred considerable strong feelings. Included herein are some excerpts (read full responses at end of the blog posting http://criticalactions-what-isyour-opinion.blogspot.com/2006/03/immigration-posturing.html).


Whisnant: “My ancestors were tortured, and their childrentaken away if they spoke their native language. And now we are givingaway this country. And I deeply resent it.”

Lee: “They are doing jobs that are undesirable to the "unemployed" worker because their pay is not 3 times the minimum wage rate. And our unemployment is at a near record low so the labor force needs their numbers.” “The point is our borders are open. Maybe not at the airport or interstate highway check points where cameras, dogs, police, and machines are busy looking for something but not in the middle of Montana or the Dakota border. There isn't enough wire or concrete to "fence" our borders. And look at the Berlin Wall.....how many ways were those fences breached and the numbers of guards that still didn't stop the determined. Look at the Vietnamese and their desire to escape their county.....they endured until they arrived in these states.”

Smalley: “As you know I live in South Florida where we are absolutely overrun with persons from our south. It has become necessary to employ at least one bilingual person in each office to communicate with the rapidly growing number of consumers (to whom we may not legally refuse service) who do not speak English. If this were an occasional issue my feelings would not be so strong. Unfortunately it is a daily occurrence. To say that these people fill a need that cannot/will not be filled by American workers is simply outrageous! AS LONG AS THERE ARE ABLEBODIED AMERICAN CITIZENS WHO ARE UNEMPLOYED, HOMELESS OR DRAWING MONEY FROM PUBLIC ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS, THERE IS NO NEED FOR GUEST WORKERS. If American greed is fueling the demand for illegal workers, the “illegal employers” (those who chose to turn a blind eye to our Nation’s immigration crisis in order to increase their profits) should be charged with a felony count of aiding and abetting.”

Stern: “It is a specious argument that native born Americans will not do "jobs beneath them" is a fallacy. It is astounding that the labor unions of the U.S.A. are not howling to enroll citizens, not merely 'guest workers' in an effort to get these jobs away from those willing to work for survival wages. When presented for bearable working conditions at a decent wage, those that have not climbed the ladder of corporate success and are determined not to advance skills will take on this kind of work.”

April 5, 2006
New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST
High Fence and Big Gate
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
America today is struggling to find the right balance of policies on immigration. Personally, I favor a very high fence, with a very big gate.
So far, neither President Bush's proposal to allow the nation's millions of illegal immigrants to stay temporarily on work visas, nor the most hard-line G.O.P. counterproposal, which focuses only on border security, leaves me satisfied. We need a better blend of the two — a blend that will keep America the world's greatest magnet for immigrants. Why?
First, the world is flattening, and as a result more and more people around the globe have access to the same technological tools for innovation and entrepreneurship. In such a world, where innovation is concentrated really matters — because that is where the best management, research and sales jobs will be located for any company.
Because of its deeply rooted culture of immigration, the U.S. has a huge advantage in such a world. If we are smart, we can still cream off the most first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world — more than any other country — and bring that talent to our shores to start companies and work in others.
We have gone from the Iron Age to the Industrial Age to the Information Age to the Talent Age, and countries that make it easy to draw in human talent will have a distinct advantage today.
Anybody out there try to become a Swiss citizen lately? It's not so easy — and it's also not an accident that Switzerland's most famous product is the cuckoo clock.
Second, a steady flow of immigrants keeps a society flexible and competitive. In this flat world, more people than ever can leverage technology. So whatever can be done — whatever today's technologies enable and empower — will be done by someone, somewhere. The only question is whether it will be done by you or to you. The more open your society is to new people and ideas, the more things will be done by you, not to you.
We shouldn't just welcome educated immigrants, but laborers as well — not only because we need manual laborers, but also because they bring an important energy. As the Indian-American entrepreneur Vivek Paul likes to say: "The very act of leaving behind your own society is an intense motivator. ... Whether you are a doctor or a gardener, you are intensely motivated to succeed."
We need that steady energy flow, especially with India and China exploding onto the world stage with huge pent-up aspirations. If you want to know what China and India feel like today, just take out a Champagne bottle, shake it for 10 minutes and then take off the cork. Don't get in the way of that cork. Immigrants keep that kind of energy flowing in America's veins.
An amnesty for the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants already here is hardly ideal. It would reward illegal behavior. But since we are not going to deport them all, some version of the Arlen Specter bill seems like the right way to go: Illegal immigrants who were in the U.S. before Jan. 7, 2004, could apply for three-year guest-worker visas, each renewable one time if the applicant paid a $1,000 fine and passed a background check. After six years, if the immigrant learned sufficient English and paid another $1,000 fine and back taxes, he or she could start to apply for citizenship.
But because I strongly favor immigration, I also favor a high fence — if not a physical one, then at least a tamperproof national ID card for every American, without which you could not get a legal job or access to government services. We will not sustain a majority in favor of flexible immigration if we can't control our borders.
Good fences make good immigration policy. Fences make people more secure and able to think through this issue more calmly. Porous borders empower only anti-immigrant demagogues, like the shameful CNN, which dumbs down the whole debate.
We also need to control the influx of immigrants because one byproduct of the flattening of the world is that many decent low-end factory jobs previously open to someone with only a high school degree or less are now disappearing. As Dan Pink notes in his book, "A Whole New Mind," many of those jobs can now be done faster by a computer or cheaper by a Chinese worker. Therefore, we can't just endlessly expand our pool of manual labor without condemning people at that low end, particularly black men, to a future of declining wages or unemployment. That will have terrible social consequences.
For all these reasons, I weigh each immigration proposal with two questions: "Does it offer a real fence? Does it offer a real gate?"