When I interviewed Chris Simcox on my radio program, an Oregon farmer called. He said, "Some of the people who are employing these so-called illegal immigrants get a real bad rap like . . . 'you're providing these people with jobs that other Americans should have and need.' But I'm tellin' ya, as a farmer . . . we don't have any other alternatives than to bring those people in. . . . Why should an employer turn a deaf ear to people who are willing to come here and willing to work and do the job that no American will do?"
Simcox replied, "I agree. No one can deny that there are jobs in this country that are available, jobs other people won't take. . . . We're not talking about preventing people from coming to work. We're talking about people entering the country illegally. We need to know who is coming into this country, where they're going, and their intentions. If their intentions are to work, then, by all means, we should welcome them. My plan would be that we have a way to expedite workers coming in."
Americans, our neighbors and friends, employ them. Nearly 11 million people, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, live illegally in America. Dealing with illegal immigration requires a combination -- more Border Patrol agents, beefing up the INS, allowing local police to inquire about the immigration status of criminals they suspect were previously deported who have returned.
Experts differ on whether illegal immigration adds to or detracts from our economy when one considers all costs. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, U.S. households headed by illegal aliens used $26.3 billion in government services during 2002, but paid only $16 billion in taxes, an annual net cost to taxpayers of $10 billion.
But according to a CATO Institute Trade Policy Analysis on illegal migration, "Economists generally agree that immigration benefits the United States. . . . Immigration does lower the wages of the relatively small segment of the workforce that competes directly with immigrants, but those losses are exceeded by the higher return to owners of capital and the lower prices that all workers pay for the goods produced by immigrants. In one of the most comprehensive economic studies ever done on the impact of immigration on the U.S. economy, the National Research Council concluded in a 1997 report that immigration delivers a 'significant positive gain' of $1 billion to $10 billion a year to native Americans. The President's Council of Economic Advisers, in its February 2002 Economic Report . . . estimated that immigrants raise the income of Americans by $1 billion to $14 billion a year. Those sums may seem trivial in a $10 trillion economy, but the gains from immigration are positive and real and recur year after year."
In either case, national security requires us to do a better job of tracking those who enter the country. But let us acknowledge that there are jobs Americans will not do.