Argument Paper

English 1101
Professor Artis
Jerry Baker

COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM: WE CANNOT GET FOOLED AGAIN!

Americas immigration problem needs fixing, but it needs to be done one step at a time,
not comprehensively. As a country, we have done a very poor job of securing our Southern
border with Mexico. We currently we have approximately 12 million people here illegally. This
problem has existed for decades. The reason for it is easy to understand. America is the land of
opportunity. For decades, our country has been a destination for millions of people from other
countries who yearn for the chance at a better life. The problem is that there are many more
people who want to come here than our current laws allow for. So many that the waiting time to
enter the United States legally is almost nine years. Many of these people come from Mexico
and Central America. They have limited opportunities in their home countries. They see
America as a place where they can come and make a better life for themselves and their families.
Rather than getting in line and waiting, many choose to cross into our country without
permission.
What are the costs and the benefits of this action? Many of these illegal immigrants enter
the country with very little education or skills. Many of them cannot speak English. A good
number of them get hired as farm workers, day laborers, dishwashers, and other low-skilled jobs.

Some of these illegal immigrants do not get work at all. There are advocates for these illegal
immigrants who claim that these people help the country economically. They claim that these
workers do the jobs that Americans will not do. They claim that there is a shortage of unskilled
labor to do these jobs. This is not true. In fact, unemployment among low-skilled workers is
high about 30 percent (Malanga). Not only do these unskilled immigrants take jobs from
unskilled native workers, they push down the wages of the native-born who do have these
unskilled jobs. Harvard economists George Borjes and Lawrence Katz, for instance, estimate
that low-wage immigration cuts the wages for the average native-born high school drop-out by
some 8 percent, or $1200 per year (Malanga).
The advocates of comprehensive immigration reform say that the above statistic is due to
these workers status as illegal which pushes them into the shadows and allows them to be
exploited by business owners. Legalize them, as their theory goes, and this will all change. As a
country, the last time we passed a comprehensive immigration bill was 1986. It was called the
Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). The current advocates of comprehensive reform
point to the aftermath of that law to try and prove their point about the economic benefits of
passing this type of comprehensive reform. The historical experience of legalization under the
1986 IRCA indicates that comprehensive immigration reform would increase consumption,
create jobs, and generate additional tax revenue (Ojeda). Furthermore, Mr. Ojeda claims
comprehensive immigration reform generates an annual increase in U.S. G.D.P. of 0.84%. This
amounts to $1.5 trillion in additional G.D.P. over 10 years (Ojeda).
While this may be true, what he and many other reform advocates fail to point out are the
realities of our current social welfare system and the increased costs that these low-skilled
workers are putting on that system. A 1998 Academy of Sciences study found that more than

30 percent of Californias foreign-born were on Medicaid including 37 percent of all Hispanic

households. The foreign-born were more than twice as likely to be on welfare than native-born,
and their children five times more likely to be in means-tested government student lunch
programs (Malanga). The cost of that? In high immigration states like California, native-born
residents are paying up to 10 times more in state and local taxes than low-wage immigrants
generate in economic benefits (Malanga).
On balance, due to our current generous welfare system, the illegal immigration (or legal
for that matter) of low-skilled workers costs the American taxpayer far more than the economy
benefits from them. If our social welfare system was reformed to include far less benefits and
more stringent work requirements, then and only then, would the costs and benefits of these lowwage workers begin to balance.
The other problem with comprehensive immigration reform is that it failed to stop illegal
immigration. The last time it was tried was in 1986. Ronald Reagan and a Democraticcontrolled Congress, came together to pass the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA).
Under the act, 3.5 million immigrants were given legal status in exchange for stepped-up border
security and tougher laws against hiring illegal workers going forward. What were the results?
Almost 30 years later, we have over 10 million new illegals in the country. Todays
conventional wisdom is that the IRCA failed and the immigration system is badly broken. With
at least 10 million people in the country unauthorized to be here, more than double the number
when IRCA passed, that judgment is not surprising (Meissner).
One reason that it failed was lack of will and resources devoted to enforcement on the
border and on illegal hiring. For example, There are more than 8 million employers in the
country. In 1990, there were 500 or so investigators enforcing employer sanctions. Today, there

are fewer than 100 (Meissner). This lack of resources and attention was a key reason why the
1986 IRCA failed to stop illegal immigration. The 1986 IRCA failed almost completely in its
presumed effort to use employer sanctions to weed out undocumented workers (Freeman). In
essence, the practical effect of the IRCA was to give the illegals amnesty and enforcement never
came. Proponents of legalized action of the undocumented got most of what they wanted, but
those eager to see a major reduction in the number of illegal entries would be justified in
believing they were suckers as parties to an ultimately fraudulent grand bargain (Freeman).
I was a teenager during the 1986 immigration debate. I remember the arguments made at
the time. Todays advocates for comprehensive reform are saying exactly the same things now
that were said back then. These advocates have the same big-moneyed interests on their side
(the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big labor unions and the media) as they did back then.
The balance of interest groups engaged in lobbying Congress on immigration issues is
overwhelmingly on the side of expansionist policy. Critics of immigration reform policy have
few resources and limited access (Freeman). At the end of the day, the people pushing for
comprehensive immigration reform are simply trying to pull the wool over our eyes again.
"Comprehensive immigration reform is not necessary except as a stratagem to make some form
of substantial amnesty palatable to a majority in Congress (Freeman). Given what has
happened in the past, I oppose comprehensive immigration reform. Any changes should be
made incrementally and only after our borders have been completely secured. After all, you
know the old saying, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. We as a
country should remember the wisdom of that.

Works Cited
Freeman, Gary. "Can Comprehensive Immigration Reform Be Both Liberal and Democratic?"
Society (2010): 102-106. online.
Malanga, Steve. Preface "The Effects of Illegal Immigration on the American Economy". Detroit:
Greenhaven press, 2008. web.
Meissner, Doris. "Learning from History." American Prospect November 2005: a6 - a9. web.
Ojeda, Raul Hinojosa -. "The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform." Cato
Journal (2012): 175-199. Web.