My Plea for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

I agree with John McCain on almost every issue, but it was his independent and courageous positions on both immigration reform and victory in Iraq that first earned him my loyalty and respect. His understanding of the situation in Iraq stems in large part from his military experiences, but his views on immigration are not as easily explained by his background. He usually addresses the need for reform from a spiritual standpoint in most of his speeches, which has the nifty effect of defusing confrontations with some opponents to his political right. I have a different perspective, that of a small business owner, which may be of interest to anyone having difficulty reconciling their support for McCain with his compassionate and pragmatic position on immigration.

We’re a small landscape design/build company, in business for 23 years. In 1996 or 1997, in need of more employees to serve our expanding customer base, we published ads in newspapers with regional circulation. We received over 80 responses, interviewed 40 and hired the10 best prospects. By the end of the busy season, 6 months later, all ten of these employees had left, for a variety of reasons (personal problems, including drugs or alcohol problems, traffic violations or other legal entanglements, or just because the work was too physically demanding—but not because the pay was too low, or the work unsafe). Not knowing where we could find a reliable source of future employees, we turned again to the placement director of the local college whose students had worked for us on a part-time basis. He suggested contacting a member of his church who might know some recent Hispanic immigrants looking for work. Thus we became “employers of a Hispanic workforce”.

I should stress that we do everything that we are legally required to do when hiring any employee--Caucasian, African-American or Hispanic. Everyone completes the same I-9 and W-4, is reported to the State as a new hire, takes a preplacement physical, and receives training and safety equipment appropriate for their job. I bristle when I hear generalizations accusing employers of “taking advantage of their employees” by paying low wages, paying in cash, or skimping on safety or benefits. We have been a Drug Free Workplace for 7 years, and that has helped our OSHA rating and safety record as well. We’ve held free regular ESL (English as a Second Language) classes for the past three off-seasons, which have been well-attended and enthusiastically received, because Hispanic employees are well aware that the greater their English skills, the greater their opportunity for advancement. We've been to weddings, Easter pageants (where one of our employees portrayed Christ carrying the cross) and many soccer games. Our Hispanic employees have been introduced to baseball, gender equity and merit raises, the last of which is the hardest sell.

I know landscaping is not an “essential” industry, but our small business does help support at least 40 tax-paying, health-insured, retirement-and-college-saving employees and their families, about half of whom are Hispanic. One “new” family consists of a Caucasian employee who has married a Mexican-born employee—a result of their meeting here. One Hispanic employee who was with us for nine years has just left, to start his own business. A little difficult to see that training and investment walk out the door, but not when we remember that that’s exactly how we started. Besides, far from being left bereft of talent, there are several folks waiting to advance into the position, or several positions opened up by his departure. That’s the great thing about this country—there’s seemingly always an opportunity for ambition, ambition that is easily squelched in other countries.

As for using the H2B program to supplement the scarcity of young and able workers, even if it would supply the number and type of employee we need (not likely, since the consular office in Mexico has the final say, after a lengthy application process, on who goes and who stays, and they’re very reluctant to let young single men leave Mexico, for fear they won’t return), the paternalistic elements and temporary nature of the program are in direct conflict with the type of permanent, trained and ambitious worker we need to help our company grow.

Besides, the number of H2B and H1B (for highly-skilled workers) visas granted annually by the U.S. government falls well below the demand by employers in this (at least until recently) bustling economy—because there were not enough American citizens born twenty years ago!!! Remember the fuss a few years ago over the Freakonomics guy (Steven Levitt) speculating that the precipitous drop in crime rates might be due to Roe v. Wade? In his eyes, abortion rights played a bigger role than a robust economy or police work in reducing crime. Maybe, just maybe, some of those unborn citizens could be working instead of illegal immigrants, but they were never born, so it’s not possible!!! In 1990, the year my youngest son was born, 25% of all pregnancies ended in abortion—1.6 million lives lost (healthfinder.gov) in all, just that year! They would’ve been a substantial addition to the workforce, but even if they were here, I would still want them to be living and working in the kind of America championed by Ronald Reagan:

“We have a statue in New York Harbor...of a woman holding a torch of welcome to those who enter our country to become Americans. She has greeted millions upon millions of immigrants to our country. She welcomes them still. She represents our open door. All of the immigrants who came to us brought their own music, literature, customs and ideas. And the marvelous thing, a thing of which we’re proud, is they did not have to relinquish these things in order to fit in. In fact, what they brought to America became American.”

Have conservatives forgotten those words, or do they just believe that 9/11 made them irrelevant? If the 19 hijackers had been Mexican laborers, I could understand some of the vitriol directed towards people whose only agenda in America, for most, is to work hard and raise their children in a place where they have a far better chance to prosper than in the country of their birth. President Bush’s words in the 2004 campaign contrasted sharply with his opponent John Kerry’s, and were a deciding factor in my vote for him. Bush said, “A man’s got to try to support his family as best as he can”, while Kerry said, “We need to punish the employer”.

I’m concerned that if the Republican party platform is anti-immigration, I’m going to be torn between voting for a candidate who will make my life as a businessperson much more difficult by raising taxes on everything in sight (Obama), and a candidate (McCain) who might succumb to party pressure and make my life as a businessperson much more difficult by failing to enact the immigration reform I heard him promise he would do on January 21, 2009. I agree with Senator McCain that the borders must be more secure (especially the more-easily-compromised and much longer Canadian one) but I think that had his previous attempts at legislative reform become law--if more paths to citizenship, permanent residency and temporary work had been made available--there would be much less need for impenetrable physical barriers.

U.S. citizenship didn’t prevent Timothy McVeigh or the DC sniper from committing horrific acts of terror; conversely, lack of full citizenship does not make someone a terrorist. Among the first deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2003 were two illegal immigrants, whom I believe were awarded citizenship posthumously. Is that the only path to citizenship acceptable to those of you who see anything short of mass deportation or in-country alienation as unpatriotic?

It is not a (false) guarantee of welfare benefits that draws immigrants here; it is the chance, as Alexander Hamilton (an immigrant before there was any designation as legal or illegal) said, “To elevate my station in life”. In the process of “elevating his station”, Hamilton raised, by extraordinary measure, the “station” of the entire nation. I oppose exclusionary immigration policies for the same reason I oppose abortion—because you never know what difference one life may make.