[Mb-civic] Compassion That Hurts By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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April 9, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Compassion That Hurts
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

In 1951 America welcomed an East European refugee who spoke no English. His
first job in the U.S. was at a logging camp in Oregon, and I suppose that if
that job hadn't gone to my father, it would have gone to an American.

That's the nub of the problem: it's hypocritical of us to close the doors
behind us (unless you're a pure Navajo), yet there's a genuine problem with
the impact of immigration on the poorest Americans.

I used to favor a program to allow in guest workers, thinking it would be
good for them and also great for America by providing a source of low-cost
labor ‹ just as it was good for America to admit our own ancestors. And
illegal immigrants overwhelmingly are hard-working people who keep the
economy humming, so they deserve respect rather than xenophobic resentment
and a marginalized life in the shadows.

But I've changed my mind on a guest worker program, because of growing
evidence that low-wage immigration hurts America's own poor.

The most careful study of this issue, done by George Borjas and Lawrence
Katz and published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that
the surge of immigration in the 1980's and 1990's lowered the wages of
America's own high school dropouts by 8.2 percent. "The large growth and
predominantly low-skilled nature of Mexican immigration to the United States
over the past two decades appears to have played a modest role in the
widening of the U.S. wage structure," the study concluded.

Another study, by Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies,
reached similar conclusions. Between 2000 and 2005, he found, immigrant
workers with a high school degree or less rose by 1.5 million, while
employment of native workers at that education level fell by 3.2 million.

It's often said that immigrants take jobs that Americans won't take. But
look at employment statistics, and you see that even among maids and
agricultural workers, only four out of 10 people are immigrants.

I can't write about this issue without thinking of Elmer, a neighbor when I
was growing up. He's a high school dropout now in his 50's, but when I met
him in 1971, he was earning $26 an hour in a union job. He's very
hard-working, but for the last decade he's been reduced to janitorial jobs
paying not much over minimum wage. People like Elmer haven't been heard from
in the immigration debate, but they have the most at stake.

The 1986 immigration amnesty ended up bringing in waves of unskilled
workers. They care for our children and mow our lawns. But as they raise
living standards for many of us, they lower the living standards of
Americans like Elmer.

That's a trade-off we need to face squarely. The impulse behind immigration
reforms is a generosity that I admire. But the cold reality is that
admitting poor immigrants often means hurting poor Americans. We can salve
the pain with job programs for displaced Americans, but the fundamental
trade-off is unavoidable.

Children are hit particularly hard, because they are disproportionately
likely to be poor. Nearly half of American children depend on a worker with
a high school education or less.

The broader problem is that our immigration program is structured so as to
bring in cheap laborers more than brilliant minds. At last count, only 16
percent of admissions for permanent residence went to those with employment
qualifications, while the great majority went to applicants on the basis of
family ties.

When I lived in China, American diplomats complained that under the law they
had to deny visas to brilliant physicists while granting immigrant visas to
elementary-school dropouts who had a relative in Chicago.

So let's go ahead and regularize longtime illegals, rather than leaving them
forever in the shadows. But instead of bringing in a new flood of guest
workers, let's recast our generosity more toward biologists and computer
programmers. The H1-B visa program enriches America by bringing in high-tech
workers, but the nominal ceiling on these visas has dropped to 65,000, after
temporarily rising to 195,000 in the 1990's. That's the immigration flow to
expand.

In contrast, bringing in 325,000 or more guest workers annually (as various
versions of the current Senate bills provide) would be particularly tough on
America's poor at this time. They are reeling from Bush program cuts and the
fraying of medical safety nets. An influx of hundreds of thousands more
unskilled laborers would impoverish them further ‹ and to me, that does not
feel like compassion.

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