A job path to legalization

With the nation's jobless rate at 10 percent and six applicants for every opening, you might think this is the worst possible time for Congress to legalize millions of illegal immigrants.

Yet that's one of the proposals in a new immigration reform bill introduced by Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Illinois.

Those who believe you can't discuss immigration in a down economy must also assume that newly legalized immigrants would automatically compete for jobs with U.S. workers, and that the last thing our homegrown work force needs in tough times is more competition. This is an easy argument to make, but it's not a very strong one for three reasons.

1. There is never a good time for Congress to discuss legalizing the undocumented. The last time it debated the issue, from 2005 to 2007, the country had a stronger economy and an unemployment rate of less than 5 percent. Even then, many members found the issue too hot to handle. That's because the sticking point isn't the economy or jobs or what's best for U.S. workers. What really concerns many Americans about the immigrants of today is the same thing that has concerned them throughout U.S. history - an irrational but insuppressible fear over shifting demographics and other changes that newcomers bring to the culture, language and landscape. Americans aren't trying to save jobs. They're trying to save their quality of life. What they're missing is that they often owe this quality of life to the availability of cheap and reliable illegal immigrant labor. If they would just admit this, the debate would be better off.

2. The whole "illegal immigrants take jobs from Americans" argument is bogus. It's time to stop pretending that illegal immigrants are really in some wide-scale competition with U.S. workers. Often, what's at stake are jobs that, by their very nature, are unpleasant - working in dairies, tarring roofs, cleaning horse stalls, picking apples, washing windows on skyscrapers, etc. Americans used to do these jobs, but their children and grandchildren won't do them today. So immigrants are hired, many of them illegal. Besides, those relatively few educated and unskilled Americans who do compete with illegal immigrants - a group that often lacks education and the ability to speak English, as well as legal status - and still lose out have bigger problems than where their next paycheck is coming from. They've obviously made bad choices in life, and now they have to live with the consequences.

3. As President Obama himself has suggested, one way to level the playing field for beleaguered U.S. workers is to make undocumented immigrants legal and take away the incentive for unscrupulous employers to hire them because they can pay them less than U.S. workers. The best way to stop pitting one group of workers against another is to bring up immigrants to a point where they're on par with U.S. workers. To the degree that there is a competition, such a change would make it a fair one and eliminate any advantage that illegal immigrants might now enjoy. Once this happens, employers won't have an incentive to hire illegal workers. Problem solved. On the other hand, by keeping illegal workers in the shadows, we keep wages low and U.S. workers at a disadvantage. That's not smart or beneficial to the same American labor force the opponents of comprehensive immigration reform claim to care so much about.

So, even with a sluggish U.S. economy, now is as good a time as any to restart the immigration debate. Although this time, we need to achieve a different ending. During the last go-round, there was plenty of ugliness but not enough honesty.

These days, everyone is a victim - even whole countries. The fearmongers, nativists and alarmists like to say that the United States is experiencing an "invasion." This convenient narrative implies that Americans haven't been willing actors in this drama and excuses them of any responsibility.

Illegal immigration is not something that was done to Americans while they were minding their own business. It's something that Americans did to themselves over the last few decades by raising children who see the worst and dirtiest jobs as beneath them, and then hiring hardworking illegal immigrants who don't have the luxury of doing the same.

If we're going to have this debate again, let's start from there and work our way forward.

• Ruben Navarrette's e-mail address is ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com.

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