By Lawrence Krause, PhD
ENCINITAS, California — “What’s On Your Mind” is a discussion group that meets twice a month at Seacrest Village Retirement Communities. Its purpose is to let residents get to know each other better and also to promote critical thinking (average age of residents in independent living is eighty-nine). Rather than just repeating stories heard on Fox News and MSNBC, residents are pushed to add their own analyses and to propose solutions to a problem. Issues that generate most interest are the ones that strike close to home. Hence the evolving drama of asylum seekers besieging our nearby Mexican border generated real excitement.The fact that most residents were at most one generation away from being immigrants themselves also played a role.
The ever rising number of asylum seekers, many with children, really does constitute a crisis for the United States. Neither the President’s proposals, nor those of his critics, come even close to being a real solution. A draconian response is called for which means new legislation from the Congress. That’s only possible with a bipartisan effort. Before you respond with ‘Lots of Luck,’ remember that every crisis presents an opportunity for great things. This one could be used to solve our immigration dilemma that has frustrated a whole generation of politicians.
Comprehensive legislation to deal with immigration would have to address four issues: how to deal with asylum seekers; how to regulate legal immigration; what to do with longtime residents of the United States who entered illegally; and how to deal with people who recently entered the country illegally.
Needless to say, each of these issues generates strong emotion in the country. Presidential elections have been fought over them. That’s reason enough to legislate, and put them to rest for awhile. A solution will require compromise from all sides. The asylum crisis gives us the opportunity to make gains. We should not let it elude us.
The most pressing issue is the asylum crisis. What to do with the ever increasing numbers of people in wretched circumstances showing up at our borders. A few are actually escaping unwarranted persecution by their own governments — the original purpose of asylum. Others are trying to avoid violence at home. Many others are trying to emerge from poverty and find gainful employment here. Once they gain entry at a port-of-entry, the game is over. They disappear and rarely identify themselves as asylum seekers. Even if a judge ultimately determines that the asylum claim cannot be established, they can’t be found for deportation.
To be effective, denial of asylum must be done at the port of entry. Of course there are people who we truly should provide for. How to identify them? They could present themselves to an American embassy or consulate in their own or other country. If their case has a reasonable chance of being upheld, then they could be issued a ‘presumption document’ which would permit them to enter the United States and be put on the docket of an immigration court. Without the document, they would be denied entry. This is an extreme solution, but it would stem the flow.
The United States has always welcomed legal immigrants. Our continued prosperity depends on them. But how many? In earlier periods when our economy was growing about 3.5% a year, we were absorbing new workers at a rate of about 2% of the workforce. Now with a slower growing population, new entrants number only about 1% and economic growth has been smaller. We could easily absorb another 1%. Hence an immigration goal of 1% of the labor force which now amounts to 1.5 million workers plus family is a reasonable number for legal immigration each year.
What kind of people should we encourage to immigrate to the United States? If easy entry into the workforce is the goal, then choosing workers with necessary skills should be the selection criteria. That would include not only computer programmers and scientists, but also farm workers and gardeners when there is a shortage. However, we should also accept immigrants for family reunification, a long accepted goal for immigration policy. Possibly a fifty-fifty split would be reasonable.
And what about the eleven million or so people who entered this country illegally and have since been living conventional, legal lives? Amnesty has been granted in the past and is still appropriate. Anyone who has been living here for at least two years and has an unblemished record should qualify. This would not only include the ‘DACA’ [deferred action for childhood arrivals] children, but their parents as well. The society only looses when law-abiding people have to live in the shadows.
But illegal entry into the United States didn’t stop two years ago. It continues and would likely increase if asylum entry was greatly reduced. We not only have to protect our borders, we must also protect our legal system from being over-run to the point of paralysis by illegal-entry cases. This can be accomplished by immediately deporting any illegal entrant without any further legal proceedings.
Well, there it is– a comprehensive proposal to solve the current asylum crisis and much more. There is something in this proposal for everyone to like, and something to really hate. That is my definition of bipartisanship.
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Krause is a professor emeritus of international economics at UC San Diego. He received his doctorate from Harvard, taught at Johns Hopkins and Yale, researched and published under the aegis of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, and also served on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Council of Economic Advisers.