[below: What Immigration Brings California - San Francisco Chronicle 11dec2005]
WASHINGTON — For nearly 140 years, any child born on U.S. soil, even to an illegal immigrant, has been given American citizenship. Now, some conservatives in Congress are determined to change that.
A group of 92 lawmakers in the House will attempt next week to force a vote on legislation that would revoke the principle of "birthright citizenship," part of a broader effort to discourage illegal immigration.
The push to change the citizenship policy is backed by some conservative activists and academics. But it could cause problems for the White House and the Republican Party, which have been courting Latino voters. GOP officials fear the effort to eliminate birthright citizenship will alienate a key constituency, even if the legislation ultimately is rejected by Congress or the courts.
The principle at issue rests on the first sentence of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 to guarantee the rights of emancipated slaves: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."
Some lawmakers advocating tougher immigration laws contend that the amendment has been misinterpreted for decades. Conservatives maintain that although illegal immigrants are subject to criminal prosecution and are expected to abide by U.S. laws and regulations, they are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States in the full sense intended by the amendment's authors — and their children therefore fall outside the scope of its protection.
Those who want to change the interpretation acknowledge that illegal immigration is largely driven by the hunger for jobs at U.S. wages. But they also say that for some immigrants, automatic citizenship provides another compelling incentive to cross the border. They note that the United States is one of few major industrialized nations that grant birthright citizenship with no qualifications.
"Illegal immigrants are coming for many different reasons," said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), one of the lawmakers pushing for the House measure. "Some are coming for jobs. Some are coming to give birth. Some are coming to commit crimes. Addressing this problem is needed if we're going to try to combat illegal immigration on all fronts."
But the proposal may rankle Latino voters.
"This is about attempting to deal with a serious policy problem by going after people's babies…. It doesn't have to become law for this kind of proposal to offend people," said Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for policy of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group. "This one really hits a nerve."
The 92-member House Immigration Reform Caucus, headed by Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), wants to attach an amendment revoking birthright citizenship to a broader immigration bill scheduled to be taken up sometime next week. Although several revocation bills have been introduced in the House, the most likely one to move forward would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are not citizens or permanent resident aliens.
There is no official tally of the number of children born to illegal immigrants; unofficial estimates range from 100,000 to 350,000 a year. Smith and other critics of current immigration law say that 1 in 10 U.S. births — and 1 in 5 births in California — are to women who have entered the country illegally.
Upon reaching the age of 18, a U.S.-born child of illegal immigrants can petition to obtain permanent legal residency for his or her parents and siblings. Although it generally takes years for such requests to be approved or rejected, parents who receive visas then can begin the process of applying for full citizenship.
Because of the length of time involved, some immigration experts say that birthright citizenship is not a major incentive for the vast majority of illegal entrants.
"No, absolutely not," said Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. "It's something that a few middle-class professional people do. I have never met a poor person who has his wife walk across the desert at eight months pregnant so they can wait 21 years to be sponsored by their child."
Harry Pachon, executive director of USC's Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, said there were undoubtedly some immigrants for whom birthright citizenship was a significant incentive. "But is it in the hundreds of thousands? I don't think so, and there's no evidence to support that," Pachon said.
Still, opinion polls suggest that many Americans consider it a major problem. A November survey by independent pollster Scott Rasmussen found that 49% of those surveyed favored ending birthright citizenship, while 41% were opposed to any change.
Such sentiments appear to reflect growing ambivalence on the part of many Americans about the economic and social impact of immigration, which appears likely to become a major issue in many 2006 congressional races.
President Bush and many GOP lawmakers are pressing for a broad rewrite of U.S. immigration laws, including steps to crack down on illegal border crossings and to create a temporary guest worker program open to many of the 8 million to 11 million illegal immigrants in the country.
But some House conservatives, including those in Tancredo's caucus, want to vote before year's end on a bill that mainly contains tough enforcement measures. They are fighting to include revocation of birthright citizenship among its provisions.
Some opponents of birthright citizenship have assumed that revoking the right would require a constitutional amendment. But others argue that it could be revoked by passing legislation to delineate who is entitled to citizenship and who is not, while leaving the Constitution alone.
John C. Eastman, director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at Chapman University in Orange, told the House immigration panel in September that the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" suggests that the 14th Amendment does not apply to children of undocumented immigrants because their parents are living in the United States illegally.
In an interview, Eastman said that members of Congress who introduced the 14th Amendment made it clear in floor debate that they did not intend for it to apply to children of noncitizens temporarily residing in the United States. There were no illegal immigrants then, Eastman said, because there were no laws on the books addressing the issue.
"You didn't have a massive immigration of people who were retaining allegiance to another nation and maybe coming here temporarily and then going back," Eastman said. "In 1868, you didn't make that trip across the Atlantic twice."
Advocates for immigrants contend that the revocation debate is designed to pander to public anxiety about immigration, despite what they say is a lack of evidence that it would have a significant effect on illegal entries.
Some of them also say that if birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants were revoked, it could create a large population of "stateless" children whose futures had been compromised because of the actions of their parents. Their citizenship would be determined by their parents' countries of origin; some children might be required to petition another government to establish their legal status.
Supporters of birthright citizenship expressed hope that they could head off the revocation measure in the House, or failing that, on the other side of Capitol Hill.
"There is no support for the concept in the Senate," said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). "There are certain things that we have done as a nation for a long time that I don't think we're going to change. Rolling back the clock is not going to solve the problem of immigration."
Times staff writers Mary Curtius and Nicole Gaouette contributed to this report.
source: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-birthright10dec10,1,5682443.story?ctrack=1&cset=true 13dec2005
[Mindfully.org note: Be sure to read the complete background information just below this op-ed.]
When there are many willing workers, employers cut wages. That is simple supply and demand. Illegal immigrants who take low-skilled jobs reduce wages and take jobs from both citizens and legal immigrants.
A study by Harvard economist George Borjas shows that cheap immigrant labor has reduced by 7.4 percent the wages of American workers performing low-skilled jobs. A report by the Center for Immigration Studies concludes that "immigration may reduce the wages of the average native in a low-skilled occupation by... $1,915 per year." Illegal immigrants come here to find jobs. You cannot blame them when a typical Mexican worker, for example, earns one-tenth as much as their American counterpart and when American businesses are willing to hire them. One study estimates that illegal immigrants displace 730,000 American workers every year.
Contrary to the assertion that Americans will not take low-skilled jobs, Americans in fact do these jobs every day. Americans mow lawns, wait tables and work in virtually all other low-skilled job categories. A report by the Center for Immigration Studies shows that more citizens than non-citizens are employed in construction and maintenance, which are thought of as having mostly immigrant laborers.
Some claim that illegal immigrants are doing jobs that Americans will not do. But when an illegal immigrant finds a job here, that does not mean that no American will take the job. In fact, 79 percent of all service workers are native-born, as are 68 percent of all workers in jobs requiring no more than a high-school education.
Illegal immigrants make up only 17 percent of workers in building cleaning and maintenance occupations, 14 percent of private household workers, 13 percent of accommodation industry workers, 13 percent of food manufacturing industry workers, 12 percent of the workers in construction and extraction occupations, 11 percent of workers in food preparation and serving occupations and 8 percent of workers in production occupations.
We must put citizens and legal immigrants first. Americans need these jobs: 17 million adult citizens do not have a high-school degree; 1.3 million are unemployed; and 6.8 million have given up looking for jobs. The percentage of 16- to 19-year-olds holding jobs in the United States is now at its lowest point since 1948. American workers in building cleaning and maintenance have an 11 percent unemployment rate, as do 13 percent of those in construction and 9 percent of those in food preparation.
Despite these facts, many U.S. lawmakers and interest groups want to enact another foreign-worker program. The Borjas study concludes that proposals that increase the supply of low-skilled workers will only drive down wages further for Americans.
Past experience shows that a foreign-worker program is an invitation to fraud. Individuals would set up bogus "businesses" to petition for temporary-worker visas for friends, relatives or any other illegal immigrant willing to pay. Even terrorists could set up these fronts. Under the 1986 immigration law, up to two-thirds of the applications for Special Agricultural Worker status were fraudulent, and most were approved.
Those who are hurt by foreign-worker programs are low-skilled Americans — the most vulnerable in our society. This includes new legal immigrants, who have to compete with a large pool of unskilled illegal immigrants. It's not fair to them to fail to enforce current law and reward lawbreakers by letting them work here.
Americans do not want illegal immigrants to come here as workers and compete with Americans for scarce jobs. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll asked about President Bush's proposal for a foreign-worker program. Fifty-eight percent strongly or somewhat oppose the plan, and only 38 percent strongly or somewhat support it.
Virtually all studies show that competition from cheap foreign labor displaces American workers, including legal immigrants, or depresses their wages. Rather than legalize illegal immigrants, we should enforce the laws on the books. That will reduce illegal immigration, increase wages and make these low-skilled jobs more attractive to American workers.
The result of a large illegal-immigrant workforce is that the poorest Americans must compete with those illegal immigrants for jobs. Illegal immigrants deprive American citizens and legal immigrants of the same American dream. That is wrong and regrettable.
source: http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20051201-081528-7276r.htm 14dec2005
Rep. John Hostettler, Indiana Republican, is the chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims.
Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, is the former chairman and a current member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims.
The Washington Times is a full-service, general interest daily newspaper in the nation's capital. Founded in 1982, The Washington Times is one of the most-often-quoted newspapers in the U.S. It has gained a reputation for hard-hitting investigative reporting and thorough coverage of politics and policy. Published by News World Communications , Inc. [see company profile below], The Washington Times is "America's Newspaper." Click here for subscription information to the daily print version of The Washington Times.
source: http://washingtontimes.com/about-twt/ 13dec2005
News World Communications, Inc. Company Profile
Could the news of this world be influenced by the Moon? News World Communications is a newspaper publishing company owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. The company publishes "The Washington Times," which reaches more than 100,000 readers in the Washington, DC, area. It also produces the news magazine Insight Magazine, as well as international publications "The Middle East Times" (Cairo) and "Tiempos del Mundo" (weekly Spanish-language newspaper distributed in Latin America and the US). In 2000 the company added struggling news service United Press International to its portfolio. Moon began publishing the "Times" in 1982, but has reportedly lost more than $1 billion on the venture.
source: http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/54/54437.html 13dec2005
Thoughts on Moon
In a 1978 edition of Esquire magazine, Jerry Falwell said, Korean cult messiah, "Reverend Sun Myung Moon is like the plague: he exploits boys and girls, and he should be exported. [sic]" Then in 1994, Falwell quietly accepted $3.5 million from Moon as part of a larger deal to bail Liberty University out from under its horrendous debt load. In May of 2002, Moon delivered an hour-long speech in Korean. In it he said things like, “The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world.”
source: several websites 13dec2005
At Santiago's Body Shop in San Francisco's Mission District, the question of whether immigrants are taking jobs from native-born workers made Julio Flores bristle.
"I never took anybody's job,'' said Flores, 41, who spoke no English when he arrived from Guatemala and started sweeping floors on his way to learning the trade. "I took the jobs nobody wanted."
CHART (1):
Foreign vs. native workers by occupation
Percentage of workers by job category in 2004, nationwide:
Foreign-born Native-born
Management and professional 26.3% 36.6%
Service 23.3% 14.9%
Sales 18.8% 26.9%
Construction and maintenance 12.9% 8.8%
Production and transportation 17.1% 12.2%
__________________________________________________
CHART (2):
Asian vs. Latin American immigrants by occupation
Percentage of workers by job category in 2004, nationwide:
Asian Latin-born
Management and professional 45% 12.4%
Service 16% 29.3%
Sales 23.6% 15.4%
Construction and maintenance 3.4% 18.9%
Production and transportation 11.7% 21.5%
Source: The Impact of Immigration on the California Economy
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The debate is at the core of new report that says average wage and job growth in California have improved relative to the nation during a 15-year period in which the state has experienced a massive influx of both legal and undocumented immigrants.
At the same time, the influx has, at least in the short term, strained state and local governments, which provide education and medical services to the poorest migrants, many of whom are undocumented.
The 64-page study, "The Impact of Immigration on the California Economy," was commissioned by the California Economic Strategy Panel, whose members are appointed by the governor and legislative leaders. Its author, Stephen Levy of the Continuing Center of the California Economy, will present its findings at a informal study session in Sacramento on Thursday.
Levy characterized the report as an effort to gauge the economic and fiscal impacts of immigration. In order to do that, he stressed, it's vital to understand two facts: that 1 out of every 4 Californians, or 9.5 million people, were born outside the United States; and that 25 percent of these newcomers, or 2.4 million people, arrived here without papers.
California and the United States have been in the throes of an immigration boom that began in the 1990s and has raised the percentage of foreign-born Americans to the highest levels since the 1930s.
That's prompted a sharp debate. Have the newcomers been taking jobs, or are they fueling economic growth?
The controversy tends to focus on undocumented migrants working in low-pay, low-prestige occupations. But there is another aspect to the story, which centers in Silicon Valley, where skilled foreign professionals brought here under H-1B temporary work visas are often seen as displacing native-born engineers.
The new California report seeks to quantify migration trends since 1990 and assess their impacts at the broadest economic level. Its principal finding is that California, with its high rate of immigration, has done better than the national average over the past 15 years according to such measures as wages, job creation and unemployment.
The report noted that average wages in California have risen faster than those in the nation as a whole since 1990. In addition, job growth in the state has outpaced that of the nation since 1994. And California's unemployment rate, three percentage points above the national average in the early 1990s, has now drawn closer to the U.S. figure, measuring 5.2 percent in the most recent month versus 5 percent nationwide.
"The economy of California has withstood a giant aerospace-led recession (in the early 1990s), a gigantic tech bubble bursting and this large wave of immigration into the state," Levy said. "All the indicators of economic activity have improved relative to the nation. How can it be that immigrants have messed up the economy?"
Of course, such big-picture analysis doesn't settle the question of whether some workers, especially those in low-wage occupations, might be hurt by the flood of newcomers.
"There are always losers," Levy acknowledged. "There are probably other people who would have had these low-wage jobs or might have had higher wages in these low-wage occupations."
Researchers on the effects of immigration on wages have come to widely varying conclusions.
Pia Orrenius, an immigration economist with the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas, said most studies indicate that, even when large numbers of immigrants join the labor pool, they have a tiny impact on local wages.
Take a job paying $10 an hour. If the number of foreign-born workers were to increase by 10 percent, the hourly wage would probably drop about 2 cents, Orrenius said.
Harvard economist George Borjas argues that labor competition from immigrants has a much larger impact on wages. To use the same example, if foreign-born workers in the $10-per-hour job category increased by 10 percent, Borjas would expect wages to be whittled back 30 cents or more.
"California is a prosperous state,'' Borjas said. "Its prosperity masks the impact. But California is less well off than it would have otherwise been without this immigration."
UC Berkeley economist David Card said the dispute over the size of the wage loss attributable to competition from immigrants proves that economists don't know enough about labor competition to settle the matter.
"The truth lies somewhere in between," said Card, who thinks it's probably closer to Orrenius' calculation. Card said his own view is that while immigration gives an economy more mouths to feed, it makes up for most of this competition by expanding the pie.
The California report also paints a portrait of the composition and work experience of the immigrant population.
It notes that 90 percent of California's immigrants come from Mexico, Latin America or Asia. Asians account for 40 percent of the state's legal arrivals and just 10 percent of the unauthorized ones. In 2004, 80 percent of the undocumented came from Mexico and Latin America.
Occupationally, 45 percent of Asian immigrants nationwide work in management or professional occupations -- a higher proportion than the 36.6 percent of native-born workers holding such jobs, according to the report.
On a nationwide basis, immigrants from Mexico or Latin America are concentrated in service, construction, transportation and material-moving occupation. The report estimates that undocumented workers account for 19 percent of U.S. farmworkers, 17 percent of janitorial providers and 12 percent of construction workers.
The most heated debate over immigration involves those who cross the border illegally. Among the immigrant population, such people tend to be the poorest, least educated and most in need of public services, whether in a classroom or a hospital emergency room.
Studies show "immigrants used more in public services than they contributed in taxes," at least in the years when they first arrived, according to the California report.
What's more, there's an imbalance in where immigrant taxes go and where services come from, particularly in the case of the undocumented, said Frank Bean, co-director of the Center for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy at UC Irvine.
"About two-thirds to three-quarters of the taxes they pay go the federal government'' through income and payroll withholding levies, he said. "About two-thirds to three-quarters of the costs get borne by state and local governments."
Meanwhile, at a grocery store on San Francisco's Mission Street, the experience of 40-year-old shopkeeper David Khuu illustrates the complex ways in which immigration changes lives.
Khuu was a teenager when his family fled Vietnam during the Boat People exodus in 1979. They eventually made their way to Oakland, where he studied English on the way to earning a degree in electrical engineering from UC Davis in 1990.
He worked as a project manager in electronics manufacturing in Silicon Valley until the offshoring trend drove that work abroad and he was laid off in 2002.
Now he counts himself lucky that some relatives have let him and his wife, Sandy Khuu, 35, manage a corner grocery so they can support their three children.
"America is a land of opportunity,'' he said. "It's not about taking a job or competition. Everybody's got to work hard."
The report can be found at www.labor.ca.gov/panel/impactimmcaecon.pdf.
source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/12/11/BUGLBG5M031.DTL&type=printable 13dec2005
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