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By John Thompson

The present debate over a bill (H.3012/S.2061) authorizing driver’s licenses for illegal aliens¹ reveals that progressive politicians and opinion leaders have disowned the recommendations concerning workplace enforcement and border security of the Commission chaired by civil rights leader and Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Jordan in 1997.

Many politicians, particularly those of a progressive bent, lament the stagnating incomes, lack of social mobility, income inequality and the decline of the middle class plaguing the country. It is hard to take this posturing seriously, though, so long as politicians are unwilling to acknowledge the role of immigration in this undesirable social outcome. In the debate over drivers’ licenses, all pretense of preventing employers from hiring unauthorized workers has been dropped. The bill is titled “An Act relative to work…”

Observing that the country had lost control over its border, President Clinton appointed the Jordan Commission which concluded that future policy should be guided by “a simple yardstick: people who should get in do get in; people who should not get in are kept out; and people who are judged deportable are required to leave…. Pres. Clinton and virtually every other major politician of both parties endorsed the report. The New York Times produced editorials stressing the urgency of ending illegal immigration.

The Commission understood that the root of the problem was employers hiring unlawful workers at substandard wages and working conditions. It therefore proposed measures to eliminate the “jobs magnet”, including a mandatory computerized system to verify eligibility and penalties on employers. In the same spirit, the Massachusetts legislature enacted legislation [Chapter 149 Section 19C of the General Law] imposing fines for hiring unauthorized aliens. That law is still in effect.

As everybody knows, efforts to secure the border have failed. Some 11-12 million persons are illegally in the country, 300,000 in the Commonwealth. The reason why is quite simple: many American businesses have recruited an army of lobbyists to block enforcement. The technology to prevent hiring of unauthorized workers is cheap and reliable, but employers are not required to use it.

An indispensable art of the illegal labor infrastructure consists of gangs that transport would-be border crossers, paying off government officials and the drug cartels that control the territory where they pass. Once in the United States, these gangs link up with employers seeking cheap workers and provide fake documents. As enforcement expert Jerry Kammer said, “A counterfeit-documents industry arose, enabling workers to pretend to be legal and employers to pretend to believe them.”

The cheap labor lobby has found a convenient ally in a coalition of liberal politicians and media, self-styled ethnic advocacy groups, religious groups and civil rights organizations, which frame illegal immigration as a moral issue, dividing the enlightened part of humanity (themselves) from the primitives and deplorables. The “immigrant advocates” may not see it that way, but objectively they provide a respectable face for a multi-billion-dollar business based upon the exploitation of very vulnerable people – unlawful workers and low-paid natives.

Defenders of the bill say that unauthorized workers somehow “contribute to the economy” and/or pay lots in taxes. The assertion about taxes is patently false. The pro-immigration media present a picture of persons with low education, menial jobs and inadequate social insurance. Data from the Pew Center show this picture to be accurate: among illegal aliens age 25-64, 47% had less than a high school education – compared to 8% of natives. The median household income of unlawful migrants was about 40% below that of natives. One third of the children of illegal aliens, and one fifth of adult unlawful migrants, live in poverty (against 10% of natives.) Owing to their low-paying jobs, illegal aliens pay little in taxes and are heavy net users of welfare. Expenditures attributable to illegal immigration cost U.S. taxpayers about $113 billion a year at the federal, state, and local levels. At the federal level, only 1/3 of outlays for illegal aliens are matched by tax collections

Most of the costs ($84 billion) fall on state and local governments, mainly for education. At the state and local level, an average of less than 5% of the public costs associated with illegal immigration is recouped through taxes. The average illegal alien in Massachusetts costs the taxpayers of the state $4,500 and each taxpaying household pays an additional $1,500 on average due to illegal immigration.

Do illegal aliens benefit the economy? Business owners who employ them certainly think so. Conversely, the group most adversely affected by their presence are the group that compete most directly with them¸ low -paid natives. Which side deserves our sympathy?

Throughout the country, medium-skilled workers have been experiencing stagnation of real wages for a generation while low-skilled workers experienced actual declines. Massachusetts and its politicians pride themselves on their progressivism. Yet, data from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-of-center think tank, show that in the last 10 years, Massachusetts has had the largest increase in the number of illegal aliens – and not coincidentally the sharpest decline in wages for unskilled workers – in the nation.

Inevitably, any country will have a certain member of persons with low skills and low earning capability. Our society has developed a consensus spanning more than a century that we should have a “social safety net” and programs to enable low skilled persons to improve their earning potential. This system cannot function, however, if the country creates incentives for large numbers of unskilled and badly paid individuals to overwhelm the system of social benefits and devastate the labor market for unskilled workers.

A fitting way to conclude is with another quote from the Jordan Commission: “We disagree with those who would label efforts to control immigration as being inherently anti-immigrant. Rather, it is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest.”

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¹ “Illegal alien” is the official term used by the US Department of Justice to refer to a person who is in this country illegally. [United States Code, Title 8, §1365(b).]