MB Civic

By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  May 17, 2006  |  The Boston GlobePRESIDENT BUSH slipped just enough humanity into his national immigration address to show this is one issue he sees with complexity. After saying he will send the National Guard to the borders and build new fences and walls, he acknowledged that millions of people are here to stay and millions are still going to try to come here to stay.

In calling for a temporary worker program, he talked about people who ”walk across miles of desert in the summer heat or hide in the back of 18-wheelers to reach our country.” He said ”America is a more hopeful country” because of the work and sacrifice of immigrant parents. He repeated the story of Guadalupe Denogean. Denogean rose from being a crop-picking son of a Mexican migrant guest-worker family and from being a high-school dropout to a 26-year career as a US soldier without American citizenship.

His career ended with serious injuries in Iraq. Moved by his story, the president and Laura Bush went to the hospital to witness his oath of citizenship. ”Our new immigrants are just what they’ve always been,” Bush said, ”people willing to risk everything for the dream of freedom.”

If Bush wants to push the human side of immigration more properly, he can add some things the next time. In the address, he harped on the real or perceived negatives of illegal immigration. ”Illegal immigration puts pressure on public schools and hospitals,” Bush said. ”It strains state and local budgets and brings crime to our communities.” He said nothing about benefits.

Bush left the evidence underneath his own Oval Office desk. He could have used his own 2005 Economic Report of the President. That report found that 58 percent of America’s total employment growth of 11 million workers between 1996 and 2003 came from the ranks of the foreign born. Immigrants accounted for 84 percent of employment growth from 1996 to 2003 in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

In talking about the massive drop of US-born operators, fabricators, and laborers and the massive rise of foreign-born workers in those jobs since 1996, the report said, ”This should not be taken as evidence that the foreign-born displace native workers; rather, it reflects the fact that immigrants have made up all of the growth in the low-skilled workforce. As education levels rise among younger US workers and older US workers retire, the number of low-skilled natives is declining.”

The report said economic studies typically find that ”immigration has little effect on native wages.” It said, ”Immigrant workers range from the seasonal agricultural laborer to the Nobel-prize-winning scientist. They are the doctors and nurses who serve inner cities and rural areas, the professors who teach in our universities, and the taxi drivers and hotel workers that travelers rely upon. Immigrants also fill jobs that simply allow Americans to go to work every day, such as housekeeping and child care.”

Even taking into consideration the strain that undocumented families place on public schools and healthcare, the report said, ”The work ethic of US immigrants bolsters their economic contributions. Summing up the economic benefits and costs of immigration shows that over time, the benefits of immigration exceed the costs.”

One example of the benefits is in a recent study of Latinos in North Carolina by business professors at the University of North Carolina. Nearly half of the state’s 600,000 Latinos are undocumented. On the bare surface, the costs might seem to exceed the benefits. Latinos annually pay $756 million in taxes but cost $817 million in education, healthcare, and corrections.

But the study also found that Latinos had a total direct and indirect spending impact of $9.2 billion in the state. The study said that without Latino labor, ”the output of the state’s construction industry would likely be considerably lower and the state’s total private sector wage bill as much as $1.9 billion higher. Some of these labor-cost savings keep North Carolina’s businesses competitive while others are passed on in the form of lower prices to North Carolina consumers.”

In his address, Bush said, ”America needs to conduct this debate on immigration in a reasoned and respectful tone.” If Bush has the courage to say to the nation that the benefits exceed the costs, this could be a glimmer in a gloomy presidency, a critical issue where he actually came down on the side of reason.