HOW TO STOP ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION Julian L. Simon Last week House Majority Leader Dick Armey called for a "real debate" on immigration. He distinguishes between legal immigration and illegal immigration, says the flow of illegals should "be controlled". And President Clinton's Report to Congress on Immigration says that "The Administration's immigration goal is to stop illegal immigrants, welcome legal immigrants, and protect refugees from harm." Here follows a conflict-reducing, money-saving, problem- free, well-tested method for both the Democrats and Republicans to attain their common goal of reducing border-jumping illegals. A guestworker program that matches U. S. employers and foreign workers will serve the needs of the economy, drastically lower the demand for low-skill illegal workers, and get rid of the lawlessness that everyone deplores. Proof that a guestworker program can work is seen in the data from the "bracero" program in operation four decades ago. When the program was at its height from 1956 to 1963, illegal entry (as measured by apprehensions) fell from about half a million a year (and a crash-program spike of over a million apprehensions in 1954) to well under 100,000 from 1956 to 1964. This is one of the most conclusive quasi-experiments in social policy that has ever been conducted. The astonishing inverse correlation between apprehensions and guest workers makes perfect sense. Why hire an illegal who might be found out and removed summarily from the job by the INS, leaving you in the lurch, if you can hire a legal resident? For the same reason, a guestworker program might diminish the present population of illegals. A few employers may prefer illegals because one has more power over them, and can pay them less. But the evidence in the data cited above argues powerfully that the number of employers who prefer illegals is small. The long-time positive European experience with guestworker programs - especially in Germany and Switzerland - argues for such a policy. And the experience of the bracero program shows that a guestworker program is politically feasible in the United States. Unions worry that guestworkers would take jobs from native workers. But there now exists a large and careful body of re- search, using a variety of data sources and methods, showing that immigrants do not increase the rate of native unemployment sig- nificantly, if at all. There is total consensus among econome- tricians that the effect on unemployment is either small or non- existent even among low-income and minority natives. Here is one summary among many, chosen because it is by George Borjas, an economist whose work is often cited favorably by anti-immigration groups: "The empirical evidence indicates that immigrants only have a minor effect on the earnings and employment opportunities of natives." About illegals in particu- lar he writes: "There is no evidence... that illegal immigration had a significant adverse effect on the earnings opportunities of any native group, including blacks." Of course this finding is counter-intuitive, even astounding, but economics and other science is only valuable when it teaches us what we would not know otherwise. The number of guestworkers is not likely to be greater than the present number of illegal workers. Immigrants only enter when there are jobs to be had. That is the main constraint on the rate of illegal immigration now, and it explains why many more immigrants left the U. S. in the 1930s than came here. So the number of guestworkers would automatically be limited by the ability of the U. S. economy to produce jobs. In any case, the number of temporary workers would be fixed by Congress. Unions will continue to object to immigrants, legal or ille- gal. But there will be competition from foreign workers one way or another: From the unions' point of view, it might just as well be legal regulated competition as competition from illegals. There are many side-benefits from having a stock of legal rather than illegal foreign workers. Because they would be registered legally, there would surely be less crime (though crime by immigrants happens to be lower than crime by natives, as shown in study after study in country after country in era after era). Another benefit is that a legal program would reduce the amount of bad feeling toward Hispanics and toward legal immi- grants. Administering a legal program also is cheaper and more humane than having the Immigration and Naturalization Service chase illegals. A recent headline said, "$1 Billion Rise Pro- posed for Enforcement" to "crack down on illegal immigration..." A guestworker program would enable a large reduction in policing costs rather than an increase. A guestworker program might also prevent the influx of some of the illegal immigrants who do not jump the border but instead come legally as tourists, students, or temporary workers, and then overstay their visas. This group is much larger than is commonly supposed, being about half of the total net flow of illegals. No conceivable administrative action can greatly reduce this flow without badly damaging our tourist industry. Expensive grandstanding gestures of spending more for border police will have zero impact, and a national identity card proba- bly would make only a small dent. Only a guestworker program has a chance to diminish the number of visa overstayers. Importantly, a guestworker program would eliminate the lawlessness that attaches to the existence of illegal immigrants. As the 1980s Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy put it, "Illegality breeds illegality... As long as undocumented migration flouts U. S. immigration law, its most devastating impact may be the disregard it breeds for other U. S. laws." An orderly legal guestworker program brings the participants within the law. A guestworker program also is fair to all comers. Those who would take the law into their own hands are hindered from getting ahead of those who respect the law. This contributes to an orderly, lawful outlook. Present illegal residents might be offered special opportunity to go to the head of the line of guestworker applicants. Though this may be seen as rewarding their previous illegality, it would be a lesser reward than the permanent amnesty for illegals that took place at the beginning of the 1990s. The practical difficulties of a guestworker program can be surmounted. If we worry that the illegals will not go home when their term expires - an unnecessary worry in most cases - we can require that a portion of their pay be deducted along with income taxes, and held in escrow to be returned to them when they exit. And guaranteeing them decent working conditions is not more difficult in principle than it is for native workers, as long as the immigrants are legal. The main difficulty is that a guestworker program lacks a political constituency. As agriculture shrinks as a proportion of the U. S. economy, so does the relative size of the lobby for potential employers of farm labor. And restaurant owners and employers of domestic servants will not exert political force in this matter. Should not a temporary worker program at least be the subject of national debate before the nation is embroiled in more divisive and poisonous struggles such as surrounded Proposition 187 in California in November, 1994? page 1 /article4 immelle2/May 30, 1995 Julian L. Simon teaches business administration at the University of Maryland and is the author of The Economic Consequences of Immigration. 301-951-0922, fax 301-951-8468, 110 Primrose St., Chevy Chase, Md. page 2 /article4 immelle2/May 30, 1995