Point/Counterpoint: Real Reform Can Fix Immigration

Oct. 2, 2007 -- We can't close our eyes and hope illegal immigration goes away. Nor can we simply throw money at the same enforcement programs that have failed to fix the problem for more than 20 years. To solve this vexing problem, we need to reform our immigration system in a way that recognizes economic reality, guards our security and reduces the incentives for illegal immigration.

Low-skilled immigrants come here for the same reasons our forebears came: family ties and economic opportunity. Our economy continues to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs each year for lower-skilled workers in such important sectors as retail, hospitality, cleaning, landscaping, food preparation, light manufacturing and agriculture. At the same time the number of Americans who have traditionally filled such jobs — those without a high school diploma — continues to shrink.

Yet our immigration system offers no legal channel for peaceful, hardworking immigrants to enter the United States legally to fill even those jobs that fewer and fewer Americans want.

Efforts to enforce the current law have failed miserably. For the past two decades, we have dramatically increased spending on border enforcement, built walls for miles into the desert and raided restaurants and chicken-processing plants from coast to coast. Despite ramped-up enforcement, the number of people living in the United States without legal documents continues to grow.

Our border enforcement has only pushed migrants into more remote regions of the desert, driving up fees for smuggling and the number of deaths on the border. Since Operation Gatekeeper began in 1994, 4,500 people have died horrible deaths from heat or dehydration for the "crime" of wanting a better job.

The answer is not to merely spend more to enforce the existing, dysfunctional law, but to change it. Immigration reform must include an expanded visa program so that willing workers from Mexico and elsewhere can enter the United States legally to help us build a more vibrant economy, and reform must offer a path to legal status for workers already here.

Daniel Griswold is the director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington. This opinion piece is part of a live public policy debate series called Intelligence Squared U.S., which is an initiative of The Rosenkranz Foundation. For more information about the debate series live in New York, go to www.iq2US.org.