Immigration and the economy …

I APPRECIATE Rick Ufford-Chase's thoughtful reminder that illegal immigration drains the brains, the brawn and the change agents from needy communities, leaving them as hopeless ghost towns ("Dying to get in," Aug. 10).

But Ufford-Chase's approach to handling the illegal immigration problem in this country displays the huge blind-side that most mainline church leaders have on the immigration issue: he promotes the idea that illegal immigration is a victimless crime.

While focusing on poor people in other countries who wish to break the law to get into this one, he ignores poor people and lower-middle-class people in this country for whom immigration laws are most clearly designed. He notes the issue of wage depression and speaks admiringly of the suggestions of Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, that we should have high immigration in order to hold down wages. I frankly am amazed that Ufford-Chase thinks that is a worthy aim.

In fact, study after study of the past 160 years of U.S. economic history has found that high immigration nearly always is accompanied by wage depression and increased gaps of inequality. It is true that most foreign workers--legal and illegal--improve their own economic situation by moving to the U.S. But does the church not have any feelings of responsibility toward the American workers whose full-time wages don't break the poverty barrier or aren't enough above it to provide for lives of middle class dignity?

Until the early 1980s meatpacking jobs were safe and among the best-paid lower-skilled jobs in America, providing solid middle-class lives. Because of the ready availability of legal and illegal foreign labor, those jobs now have the highest accident rate of any occupation, and pay so little that many of the meatpacking families qualify for welfare. The same has happened with janitorial jobs in many cities.

This economic calamity has occurred under the curt cut immigration system, which many national church leaders claim is far too restrictive, just think of the economic suffering that would follow if the borders were further opened.

Boy Beck

Arlington, Va.

Rick Ufford-Chase replies:

I appreciate Roy Beck's thoughtful response to my article, though it is clear that we have fundamental disagreements about the impact of immigration on the global economy.

If our government were truly concerned about the jobs of the poor and middle class that Beck focuses on, we would not be signing trade agreements that actively encourage corporations based in the U.S. to outsource those jobs to China, India, the Caribbean or Latin America. My suggestion is simply that in a capitalist enterprise, we can't have it both ways. Either we stop pressuring countries across the two-thirds world to drop all protectionist policies in the interests of "free trade." or we admit that we want a global economy and we develop immigration policies that will allow the free movement of workers along with the free movement of goods and capital.

The cause and effect seem circular to me: good jobs are lost here in the U.S. as they are sent to Mexico and beyond. Those jobs don't pay enough to support a family in those communities (a worker with a good job in Nogales, Sonora, takes home about a dollar an hour, and a gallon of milk costs almost $3.50). When workers there can't make ends meet and they head north, they're accused of competing with workers in the U.S. for minimum-wage jobs that can't support a family here either.

Here's a simple suggestion that might respond to Beck's concern: Why not insist that our government not sign a trade agreement with any country until we are willing to simultaneously create immigration legislation that will allow the free movement of workers between our countries? My guess is that would slow down the negotiations until the economic incentive is high enough for governments and business to invest enough in those countries so that most workers there would choose to stay where they are. In the meantime, it would also slow the loss of jobs here in the U.S.--a concern that Beck and I share.

As church members, we have a special responsibility to uphold the biblical values of economic fairness, to care for those on the margins of our society, and to protect immigrants who have made the difficult decision to abandon their communities of origin in order to survive. As Christians, we must challenge the seductive rhetoric that pits us against others around the world and insists that our primary allegiance be to our country. Corporations gave up on such distinctions long ago, and government uses them only when it wants to. It's time for the church to catch up if it is to be the church of Jesus Christ.

COPYRIGHT 2004 The Christian Century Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning