Except for Joseph Lieberman, nobody, in the recent Iowa debate, was prepared to say: "There are advantages to Americans in economic mobility." In the '90s, we had economic gain coupled with high employment. This was owing substantially to the free movement of capital and manufacturing. But in political forums on such subjects, one sees only the plant that shut down and was restarted in Siam. That was a devastating backdrop, and free-trade laws tend to disappear as visionary imposters.
We have had all of those divisions before, since the beginning of the Union. And those who plead for free trade have to take into account that a ruthless implementation of its dictates is otherworldly, as if a nation resolved to enforce the marriage vow. Extra-economic measures are going to be taken to protect American jobs. The challenge is to invoke these with eyes wide open on the broader perspective: The free movement of capital in fact benefits the American consumer, who in turn employs the American worker.
The Bush immigration plan is so complicated, so heavily dependent on enforcement agencies we don't have and don't really want, that it's impossible to say what lies immediately ahead for the proposed bill. Probably it won't be passed by this Congress. Certainly campaign issues will center on it. There is a great deal we could be grateful for if it could be done free of politics. But then nothing really is.