What some conservatives, including Trump, get wrong about immigration

Immigration and border security are one of the hottest political topics driving our current political discourse. But especially here in Iowa, about a thousand miles away from the U.S./Mexico border, most haven’t acutely experienced issues stemming from border security or mass immigration in our daily lives. In lieu of experience, many let their own personal politics form our opinions. And regardless of ideology, most of us get at least one or two things wrong when it comes to the border crisis.

Last week, I traveled with a group to Yuma, Arizona at the invitation of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a 501c3 group with which I’ve had a relationship for about a decade. The city of Yuma is nestled just east of the U.S.-Mexico border, only miles from multiple ports of entry to the US.

Like many, I have long-held political opinions on migration and border security. While some might look to confirm their biases, I like to challenge mine. In this column, I’ll deal with my own end of the political spectrum, because as my closest family and friends can attest, I never pass up a chance to pick on my own people.

Don’t worry, I’ll harp on the other side of the aisle in the future. There’s a lot the liberal left gets wrong in the immigration debate.

STANCE ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION OVERSHADOWS BELIEFS ON LEGAL MIGRATION

Ask a person who describes their politics as conservative about their position on immigration and they will almost always begin talking about illegal immigration. Whether called illegal, undocumented or unauthorized; immigrant or alien (the latter of which still is the word used in the federal statute,) illegal immigration is any instance in which an individual has either entered the United States illegally, or entered legally at one point but has remained after their legal authorization has expired.

Conservatives aren’t wrong to have strong feelings on illegal immigration. As I learned in Yuma from conversations with local law enforcement and area Border Patrol officials, illegal immigration can indeed be a substantial burden — not just on the United States as a whole, but more immediately and more acutely on the local jurisdictions affected by large numbers of unauthorized entries into the country. Again, I’ll dive deeper into those issues in a future column.

While many conservatives will readily add that they support legal immigration, they rarely elaborate on what a healthy immigration system would resemble. Nor do they see legal migration of temporary workers as playing a role in a healthy immigration system.

“GRINGOS DON’T WANNA WORK”

Conservatives also fall victim to beliefs such as that allowing immigrant or migrant workers into the country would cause natural born or naturalized American citizens to compete with those foreign workers, commonly referred to as “displacement,” as well as the belief that foreign workers drive down overall wages in industries that employ large numbers of immigrant and migrant workers.

Both assumptions are incorrect, as demonstrated by research from several different studies laid out in the 2017 book “The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration” from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Those studies conclude that wage reductions as a result of immigrant labor are almost entirely nonexistent.

When it comes to availability of jobs themselves and whether or not Americans will have to compete with foreigners who will work for lower wages, a local Arizona resident who spoke with my group of interested out-of-towners described in a respectably blunt manner what makes that a non-issue: “Gringos don’t wanna work.” (In this context, “gringos” refers to mostly white Americans.)

It’s unpleasant to admit, but the uncomfortable reality is that entry-level farm labor is something that virtually no natural-born American adult is willing to do. Even in the state of Iowa, a rural state that prides itself on its embrace of hard work, jobs like detasseling or the mostly-yesteryear task of “walking beans” are seen as work we send our 15-year-olds to do for a couple weeks each summer to build character and earn their first real paycheck. Few if any of us can picture a 38-year-old white guy following the work from state to state as the seasons change. But even in Iowa, the produce is produced, and someone needs to pick it.

In an employment landscape where over 140,000 agricultural labor openings exist, immigrant and migrant workers present not a problem, but an opportunity, despite a national immigration system riddled with bureaucratic idiocy and illogical rules.

“We depend very much on a worker program here, said Phil Townsend, a local business owner known widely as “The Godfather of Yuma.” While Iowans might not think of Arizona as an agricultural state, Yuma County — which is almost eight times the size of Linn County — is known as the “Winter Salad Bowl Capital,” producing virtually all of the leafy green vegetables consumed in North America during the winter. During the peak harvesting season, as Townsend explained to my group, Yuma County growers “will use anywhere between 25,000 and 40,000 workers a day that cross the border legally.”

The worker program to which Townsend refers is the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Program. One requirement of the program is that an employer petitioning for an H-2A visa on behalf of a prospective worker must demonstrate that there are not enough U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to do the jobs needing done.

If the contributions of willing migrant workers can’t to be utilized to get those jobs done, not only will that affect the growers’ ability to produce and harvest those leafy greens, it also will affect how likely you are to find them at your local grocery store — and what you’ll pay when you do. A March survey from Quinnipiac revealed that 22 percent of Americans — a plurality — claimed that food costs were the personal financial expense that worried them most.

But more than just supply, demand or the price of a head of lettuce, conservatives who hesitate at migrant workers as a part of a healthy immigration system discount the benefit our nation can reap in the future from today’s migrant workers. Being on H-2A visas, most migrant workers are foreign nationals.

FOR MIGRANTS’ CHILDREN, A BETTER FUTURE

But while they work, their children — many of whom are U.S. citizens — are attending local Yuma schools and contributing to what Townsend, also a member of the Yuma Union school board, boasts as one of the highest graduation rates in the country. And when they grow up and become adults themselves, they aren’t following their parents into a lifetime of hard labor. They’re pursuing higher education and higher goals. At a time when 78 percent of American adults do not feel that their children’s generation will have better lives than they do, migrant workers are making sure theirs will — while modeling to them the very principles of hard work and self-determination conservatives know are the core of the American identity.

"I have yet to meet a field worker who wants their child to grow up to be a field worker,” says the Godfather of Yuma.

But some conservatives just can’t see how migrants’ brighter futures could also mean a better future for America. On the same day my group and I arrived in Yuma to learn about the realities that persist in border communities, former President Donald Trump announced on his campaign website his intent to end birthright citizenship for children born to some foreign nationals on U.S. soil.

DREAM DENIED WITH STROKE OF A PEN?

While the language of Trump’s announcement insists that birthright citizenship will be denied (only) to children of “illegal aliens,” the details suggest that the executive order he insists on signing on Day One of a second term would “direct federal agencies to require that at least one parent be a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident for their future children to become automatic U.S. citizens.”

As migrant workers are neither U.S. citizens nor lawful permanent residents, such an order, in the unlikely event it were to pass constitutional muster, would deny citizenship to all American-born children of the workers who came to this country legally, who work long hours at hard jobs, and who are actively engaged in seeking and providing that better future for their children. If the process of that life cycle sounds familiar, that’s because it describes to a tee what we for over a century have called “The American dream.”

It's well-established that our immigration system is riddled with problems, not the least of them being a failed state of border security and a host of bad actors exploiting our vulnerabilities. I’ll tackle those issues in a column later this summer. But my first take-away from visiting our southern border and hearing from stakeholders in the community is that conservatives would do well to consider what our nation can gain from bringing migrants into our country — legally — to do meaningful work. The American dream still is within reach to some people. Even if it’s not the ones we expected, we’d be crazy to deny them a chance at it.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com