Illegal Immigration: A Case for Residency

North American Philosophical Publications

Illegal Immigration: A Case for ResidencyAuthor(s): Reginald WilliamsSource: Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Oct., 2009), pp. 309-323Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical PublicationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40441537 .

Accessed: 11/06/2014 13:02

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of Illinois Press and North American Philosophical Publications are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Public Affairs Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.127.77 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 13:02:31 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinois

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=napp

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40441537?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Public Affairs Quarterly Volume 23, Number 4, October 2009

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: A CASE FOR RESIDENCY

Reginald Williams

i. Introduction

paper argues that illegal migrant laborers who are currently in the United States should be granted permanent residency if they have contributed to

its economy for a certain period of time, which I will not attempt to specify, and if they have not committed any serious crimes in the country (i.e., if the only criminal statute of the United States that they have violated is that against illegal entry into the country). My argument is theoretical and tentative. For some of my points would benefit from empirical support, but there are no definitive statistics on the relevant issues. The aim, accordingly, is to create a framework, and I hope a demand, for empirical investigations of illegal immigration that could lend factual support to my claims.1

2. The Argument

There are five underappreciated facts that, when combined with certain normative considerations identified below, provide strong support for granting illegal migrant laborers permanent residency in the United States:

• Some American companies have recruiting stations in Mexico that solicit the labor of illegal immigrants and even transport them to the United States.

• The illegal migrant laborers whom some American companies recruit are financially desperate, and it is primarily because of this that they are inclined to immigrate to the United States.

• American companies tend to pay illegal migrant laborers less than America's minimum legal wage to work in the United States.

• America's economy could not have expanded to the extent that it has, as quickly as it has, without the inexpensive labor of illegal immigrants.

• The vast majority of Americans, including a vast majority of those call- ing for the deportation of illegal immigrants, have created a demand

309



310 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLY

for, and benefited from, the labor of these immigrants by consuming the goods and services that they have supplied in the United States.

My basic contention will be that it is unfair for America to deport its illegal mi-

grant laborers when some of its own companies have invited and transported some of these laborers to the United States and when the vast majority of Americans have consumed, and thus benefited from, the inexpensive goods and services that these laborers have contributed to America's economy. To establish this claim, however, each of my argument's five premises must be defended.

2.1. On the Recruitment of Illegal Immigrants It would strengthen my argument if I could specify how many recruiting stations exist in Mexico or the number of illegal immigrants that American companies recruit each year. Predictably, though, neither American employers nor the government keeps such records; they simply do not exist. What can be said in defense of my first premise - beyond my firsthand knowledge, living in an agricultural hub of California's Central Valley - is that American companies have recruited

enough illegal migrant laborers to have prompted Congress's Committee on Education and Labor to hear testimony on the matter in 2007.2

This is interesting because, in America, we see government officials and residents of our agricultural communities - people who know about these recruit-

ing practices - debating "what should be done about" illegal immigrants in the United States. But do we ever see these people debating how to hold American

companies accountable for facilitating illegal immigration? Do people protest these companies' products as they protest the fur industry?

News agencies tend to frame the illegal immigration debate as a debate over whether the United States should tolerate people's literally running across its border with Mexico. Even Michael Taylor, who defends granting illegal im-

migrants citizenship, does so by appealing to the risks and harms that they face when breaching the United States/Mexico border:

To get work, immigrants must cross the border illegally, and in doing so they subject themselves to significant risks and sometimes to injury or even death. They may be caught by the Border Patrol or armed militia groups such as the "Minutemen." The occasional irate landowner may take a potshot at them. There are formidable obstacles that must be negotiated if the crossing is made, as it increasingly is, in remote areas, which heighten the risk of dehydration, hunger, exposure, and accident. Finally, there is lethal risk if they happen to be abandoned in a locked truck or railway car.3

Taylor's argument is problematic, though, because we do not usually grant one

rights for incurring risks or hardships while breaking the law. Given that a law is just, that those who wrote and passed it are not inducing people to break it, and so forth, we hold violators responsible for breaking the law. We would not



ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: A CASE FOR RESIDENCY 3 1 1

take a trespasser, for instance, to deserve anything for taking risks and incurring hardships while breaking into someone's house.

More attention should be paid to the fact that some American companies encourage illegal immigrants to enter the United States and assist them in doing so. If illegal immigration is a problem, then companies that encourage, recruit, and transport illegal immigrants to the United States are part of the problem. Indeed, these companies are exacerbating any social problem that is associated with illegal immigration: crime, rising health care costs, etc. Many illegal immigrants would not enter the United States were it not for the financial incentives and transporta- tion provided by American companies. Furthermore, any company that recruits and transports illegal immigrants to America is as guilty of violating America's immigration laws as illegal immigrants are for being in the country.

The question here is who should bear the burden of solving whatever problems illegal immigration has created in the United States. Who should have to pay the costs of illegal immigration: illegal immigrants, who as a class have provided the United States with an abundance of cheap arduous labor, or American companies and citizens who have benefited from this labor?

Given that many illegal migrant laborers have been encouraged to enter the United States in the first place, and given that American companies have benefited from illegal migrant labor (if they had not, they would not have recruited or employed it), it seems unfair for illegal migrant laborers to bear the burden of correcting the problems associated with their presence in the United States. It seems unfair for these laborers to bear the additional burden of being deported - a substantial burden, considering that many of them have resided in the United States for years, at this point. It seems particularly unfair to deport a class of hardworking laborers to a region whose poverty rendered it vulnerable to the recruiting practices described above. It seems only fair that those who have most benefited from illegal migrant labor should bear the burden of correcting the problems associated with it: American companies and ultimately, I will argue, American consumers.

2.2. On the Financial Desperation of Illegal Migrant Laborers

One need only visit potential illegal migrant laborers in their homeland to see that they live in poverty. Were they not poor in the first place, they would not want to leave their homes and families to undertake arduous, precarious work in a foreign country. The immigration debate needs to better appreciate that poverty motivates illegal migrant laborers to enter the United States. For to build on my first premise, American companies that recruit illegal migrant laborers in Mexico are not recruiting just anyone to work in the United States; they are knowingly recruiting the desperately poor. This raises an important question: are such companies exploiting the financial desperation of these people?




This issue is contentious because illegal migrant laborers earn more for their services in the United States than in their homeland; they would not immigrate otherwise. Given this, one could deny that a company that offers to pay these laborers more than they are used to earning is exploiting their financial desperation. Indeed, one could argue that such a company is doing these laborers a favor.

The problem with this view is that one can presumably benefit another and still exploit his or her financial desperation. As Alan Wertheimer notes,

In many cases of alleged exploitation, A takes advantage of B's circumstances to get B to agree to a mutually advantageous transaction to which B would not have agreed under better or perhaps more just background conditions, where A has no special obligation to repair those conditions, and where B is fully informed as to the consequences of various choices.4

The "adult" film industry presumably exploits the hardship of any performer who enters the industry to avoid living on the streets, even if the performer benefits by having a paycheck and a residence. And a company likewise exploits the hardship of potential laborers when it enters their poor neighborhoods outside the United States, recruiting them to work in the United States for the higher wages they garner here.

These wages are higher than those which the laborers make back home, but they are not merely low by U.S. standards; they are illegally low. Moreover, there is a good reason that America's minimum legal wage should apply to all laborers in the United States - be they legal or illegal, accustomed or unaccustomed to earning more. The reason is that anyone who resides in the United States must be able to live in accord with its cost of living.

2.3. On the Compensation of Illegal Migrant Laborers

It is difficult to find reliable statistics on the wages that illegal migrant laborers earn in the United States, and the best professional studies on the topic appear to have been done in the 1990s.5 "Undocumented laborers" are just that: undocumented. There is ample evidence that these laborers are paid less than Americans for doing the same work. A common criticism of illegal immigration, after all, is that it drives down American wages.6 But for this to obtain, illegal migrant laborers must earn less than Americans for the same work. Furthermore, one recent study leaves little doubt that at least one large pool of illegal migrant laborers earns less than America's minimum legal wage - those living in Los Angeles.

In 2006, the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit public research organization, published the results of an extensive study conducted in 2004, of the "informal economy" of Los Angeles: the city's "underground," or off-the-record, employment and taxation trends.7 The study concluded that, in 2004, approximately 679,000 illegal laborers were employed in Los Angeles - a staggering 15 percent of the city's entire labor force. In addition, the average annual income of these laborers was just above $12,000. And this is telling, because in 2004, California's



ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: A CASE FOR RESIDENCY 3 1 3

minimum legal wage was $6.75/hour. So at $6.75/hour, one who worked forty hours/week for fifty weeks in 2004 would have made $13,500, not $12,000. Conversely, to earn $12,000 in 2004, one who worked forty hours/week for fifty weeks would have been earning $6.00/hour, not $6.75/hour.

One could object that if these laborers worked in agriculture, these figures are consistent with their having earned California's minimum legal wage in 2004 (even more). For jobs in agriculture are seasonal; field work does not span fifty weeks/year. While field work is seasonal, and while this paper will focus on illegal migrant labor in agriculture, most of the illegal migrant laborers in Los Angeles, which is not an agricultural area, are employed in factories, warehouses, restaurants, office buildings, nursing homes, and private residences.8 These jobs tend to span not only fifty weeks/year but also to involve more than forty hours/ week. So an illegal laborer in Los Angeles who earned just above $12,000 in 2004 likely earned even less than $6.00/hour.

Taking the illegal migrant labor market of Los Angeles as indicative of broader American trends, then, there is strong evidence that illegal migrant laborers often work in the United States for less than its minimum legal wage. And this again means that they must find a way to live on their wages and yet in accord with America's cost of living.

2.4, On the Economic Contributions of Illegal Migrant Laborers

More than half of the immigrants working in America's agriculture sector are undocumented.9 As noted, moreover, Congress considered America's illegal migrant labor force to be sufficiently important in 2007 to hold hearings on it. Peter Schuck has also recently observed the following:

The interest groups that pressed in the late 1980s both for more legal immigrants and for amnesties or others bars to removal of illegals continue to do so. Perhaps the most important of these is growers, whose demand for agricultural labor seems inexhaustible and whose prosperity is vital to the economies and political establishments in many of our states, including the most populous ones (e.g., California, Texas, Florida, and New York).10

Finally, there is a powerful, straightforward case for thinking that at least some vital sectors of America's economy have expanded on a scale and at a rate which would have been impossible without illegal laborers:

(A) Some important American companies (e.g., in agriculture) have man- aged to pay illegal migrant laborers less than they could have paid legal laborers for the same work since the United States has a minimum legal wage.

(B) Paying illegal migrant laborers less for doing this work has enabled some important American companies to supply more goods and services per cost than they could have supplied without employing illegal migrant laborers.



3 14 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLY

(C) Supplying more goods and services per cost has enabled some important American companies to charge American consumers less for their products than they could have realistically charged without employing illegal migrant laborers.

(D) Therefore, since American consumers have been charged less than they otherwise realistically could have been charged for the goods and services which illegal migrant laborers have supplied, most notably for their food but for manufactured goods and for a variety of services as well, Americans have been able to save more money, thus generating invest- ment income, and to spend more money on other goods and services, from furniture and cars to education, medicine, and technology.

Assuming that illegal migrant laborers have not imposed costs on the economy which outweigh their contributions - an issue that I will discuss at the end of this paper - I see no way to avoid the conclusion that illegal migrant laborers have helped America's economy expand on a scale and at a rate that would have been impossible without their contributions. One could object that, given sufficient demand, American companies would supply the same levels of goods and services with or without illegal migrant laborers; these companies would just generate less profit without these laborers. This objection, however, contradicts three of the most basic principles of American business (if not of capitalism). First, companies pass on their costs to consumers. Second, the more a good or service costs, the less consumers demand it. Third, companies normally refuse to supply goods and services for less than "normal profit" (unless the government mandates that they do so).

Given these principles, illegal migrant laborers have contributed to America's economy, and the vast majority of Americans have benefited from their contributions. One could object that Americans have not only benefited from the labor that illegal immigrants have provided American companies; Americans have benefited from these companies' employing such laborers as well. In addition, the immigrants themselves have benefited from obtaining this employment; otherwise, as noted, they would not have left their homes to obtain it. Indeed, one could add, if America's illegal migrant laborers were deported tomorrow, they would still be better off having worked here temporarily than not at all; many of these laborers manage to send some of their earnings to family in their homeland.

So what, exactly, is the problem here? If Americans, American companies, and illegal migrant laborers have all benefited from America's immigration policy, why grant illegal migrant laborers residency? Everyone seems to benefit from the way things are.

The problem which I will develop in Section 2.5 below is that America's current and long-standing immigration policy has fostered in illegal migrant laborers a rational expectation that they will not be deported from the United States, which over time can be taken to undermine the legitimacy of deporting those who have



ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: A CASE FOR RESIDENCY 315

been in the country contributing to it. Furthermore, as illegal migrant laborers would not enter the United States if they did not stand to benefit from doing so, they would presumably be anxious to get back home when their work in the United States is done if they did not believe that they stood to benefit more by staying in the country. So even if illegal migrant laborers are better off having lived and worked temporarily in the United States than not at all, the question remains open whether it is acceptable for these laborers to be deported, given the facts highlighted in this paper, and given that these laborers prefer not to be deported.

2.5. On the Benefits of Illegal Migrant Labor

Much of the immigration debate in America ignores the ways in which Americans have benefited from illegal immigration. The debate often does not even juxtapose the benefits of such immigration and the problems with it. Stephen Kershnar, for instance, has recently used the following thought experiment to argue that immigration can harm a country's current citizens by "changing the character of the institutions to which [they] have consented":

Imagine that one hundred of us are members of a private club and that we agree upon certain arrangements that allow our club to be quite enjoyable to all or nearly all members. Then one big-hearted member decides he would like to add another 120 members, where these members will likely bring about great changes to our club, of which we might not approve. For example, if the new members are Hasidic Jews, they might not approve of some of the scantily clad social events that the club traditionally sponsors. The big-hearted member would be changing the nature of our club, probably in significant ways, without the permission of its members. This would seem to infringe upon their rights, especially their contractual rights. Hence, it would seem that there is no right to join the club, and that allowing a flood of new members without the consent of the current membership would be unjust.11

This scenario emphasizes some important aspects of immigration in the United States. For example, the fact that the new members of Kershnar's club bring with them a radically different culture represents the fact that many Americans feel that illegal immigration detrimentally affects their nation's culture or ethos. In addition, and relevant here, the fact that one member of Kershnar's club invites the new members without the consent of the other original members parallels the fact that even if Americans create demand for illegal migrant laborers, as I contend, most of those who create this demand did not invite illegal migrant laborers to the United States or consent to their being in the country. American companies invited some of these laborers, and the rest of them entered the United States without invitation.

There are, however, at least two respects in which Kershnar's thought experiment does not parallel illegal immigration in the United States. The first problem concerns Kershnar's choice of numbers. A club with 100 members would be




overrun and difficult to sustain if 120 new members joined; the original members would be literally outnumbered. But these numbers hardly represent the United States, whose official population exceeds 300 million and whose illegal migrant population is an estimated 12 million.12 Second, Kershnar's thought experiment seems to assume that the effects of "new members" on an institution will be wholly negative. Like so much of the immigration debate in America, Kershnar's thought experiment does not consider that new members could be both a partial burden and a partial boon to the original members of an institution.13

Granted, the original members of an institution may prefer to forgo the benefits which new members could provide in order to maintain the character of their institution. In this event, though, the original members should actually forgo these benefits as much as possible. Few Americans forgo the benefits of having an illegal migrant labor force; the vast majority reaps these benefits daily. Every dollar that one saves on food that illegal migrant laborers produce or harvest in the United States is a dollar that one can spend on one's education, on a home, on a mutual fund, etc. The benefits that accrue from such savings endure long after one has digested one's food, and it is unfair for America to deport a class of

immigrants from whose labor its citizens have thus benefited, especially when one considers these benefits in conjunction with the following claims that I have

sought to defend: • American companies have often recruited illegal migrant laborers in

their homeland and helped them enter the United States, violating its immigration laws in the process.

• These companies exploit the severe poverty of a region, luring particularly desperate people away from their homes and families.

• The people then work in the United States for less than its minimum legal wage, struggling to live in accord with its cost of living.

• They have helped its economy to expand to an extent, and at a rate, that would have been impossible without their inexpensive labor - labor for which the vast majority of Americans have created a demand.

One could object that despite being encouraged to enter the United States, illegal migrant laborers had to realize that their being in the country was against the law, and that they faced deportation if discovered. The question, then, becomes why think it unfair to deport these laborers. Why not see deportation as a risk that they knowingly and willingly took in order to earn an income that was unavailable to them back home, and one whose consequences they must face if discovered in the United States. To deport an illegal migrant laborer, after all, is but to enforce an immigration law that is on the books in the United States.

Illegal migrant laborers do realize that their being in America is against the law, and that they could be deported if discovered in the country. They also realize, however, that for decades the United States has not deported them, despite the ease with which it could have done so. To deport illegal migrant laborers




in large numbers, the government need only visit America's farmlands during harvest season.

By not deporting illegal immigrants whom it could easily deport, the United States has fostered in these persons a rational expectation that they will not be deported. And even if it is not unjust for the United States to violate this expectation and to deport these laborers - granting that America's failure to enforce its immigration laws does not render it forever unjust to enforce them - America's failure to enforce its immigration laws does weaken the normative force of these laws. In particular, given its long-standing tendency not to deport illegal migrant laborers, it seems unfair for America now, without an official and widely publicized change of policy, to begin deporting those who have been allowed to live in the United States for years with the rational expectation that they would not be deported.

The United States should grant residency to illegal migrant laborers who are presently in the country and have contributed to it for a period of time, which I will again not specify. Moreover, if Americans wish to end illegal immigration, the government should announce that it will begin immediately to police its borders and, as of some specific date, will begin to deport illegal immigrants unless they can provide evidence of having been productively employed for a certain period. Such a policy would be more fair than deporting a hardworking class of laborers in which America has fostered a rational expectation of living in the country. There remain, however, eight objections to my argument that merit replies.

3. Objections and Replies

First, one could object that even if the vast majority of Americans have consumed goods and services that illegal immigrants supply, many Americans are either unaware that they have done so or could not realistically avoid doing so. The issue, however, is whether the benefits that Americans have accrued by consuming these goods and services establish a debt to those who have supplied them. One need not voluntarily or knowingly benefit from something to owe another a debt for providing it. I, for instance, would presumably owe part of my tax dollars to police agencies even if I did not voluntarily entrust them with securing my society and even if I did not realize that they did so. Similarly, I would argue that my society owes a debt to illegal migrant laborers who have provided it with the benefits highlighted in this paper, even if those who have benefited have not voluntarily or knowingly done so.

Second, one could object that the reasons that I have offered for granting illegal migrant laborers U.S. residency better support deporting them with added compensation for their contributions to the country. The companies that employed these laborers, for example, might be required to pay them a stipend when they are deported - one that compensates them for working in America for less than



3 1 8 PUBLIC AFFAIRS QUARTERLY

its minimum legal wage. While this is an interesting proposal, it is unviable as a matter of public policy. For approximately twelve million people again currently reside illegally in the United States, and companies that employ them tend not to keep records on them. Specifically, these companies tend not to record the names of their illegal migrant laborers, the duration of their employment, or their earnings with the company. So even if we could identify the companies that have recruited illegal migrant laborers and paid them less than America's minimum legal wage, the prospects of determining what these companies should pay such laborers at the time of their deportation are very low.

Third, one could object that if I am right, and illegal migrant laborers should be granted U.S. residency, why not take their contributions to warrant making illegal migrant laborers full-blown citizens of the United States? Is there any principled reason to grant them only residency? The question of citizenship is different from that of residency, and it must be answered on different criteria. Residents of the United States should be allowed to apply for citizenship at some point, but deciding whether they should be made citizens would require considerations that go beyond the scope of this paper - beyond their economic contributions to the country. One does not have a claim to become the citizen of a country by merely contributing to its economy.

Fourth, one could object that temporary but legal migrant laborers contribute to America's economy (even to its agriculture sector). But we do not see them as entitled to stay in the United States permanently. So why should the United States treat illegal migrant laborers differently? Temporary migrant laborers do not work for years in the United States for less than its minimum legal wage, and thus the labor of temporary migrants has not helped keep American production costs and prices down to the extent that illegal migrant laborers have. In addition, temporary migrant laborers work with a contract that specifies how long they will be employed and allowed to live in the United States. These laborers do not therefore form a rational expectation to live in America indefinitely as many illegal migrant laborers do. My argument, then, provides a basis for granting illegal migrant laborers residency in the United States that does not extend to temporary migrant laborers.

Fifth, one could object that if my argument establishes that illegal migrant laborers who contribute sufficiently to America's economy should be granted residency, what about current residents of other countries who would be happy to enter the United States illegally and contribute to its economy if doing so earned them residency? Does not my argument sanction such immigration? The answer is no. For my argument concerns how illegal migrant laborers who are now in the United States ought to be treated, not the terms under which migrant laborers should be allowed to enter the country. It might have been wrong for these immigrants to enter the United States in the first place; my argument is consistent with this claim, and with my suggestion that illegal immigration should stop at




some determinate and publicized date in the future. The fact is that many illegal migrant laborers are now in the United States and have contributed to its economy for some time, which provides grounds for granting them residency.

Sixth, one could object that illegal migrant laborers are not the only persons who work for American companies for less than America's minimum legal wage, thus helping America's economy to expand in a way that would be impossible without their labor. Countless foreign laborers do the same thing every day in sweatshops that American companies operate abroad. One could thus ask the following question: if this paper is correct, and illegal migrant laborers should be made residents of the United States, ought these foreign laborers to be offered residency as well?

There may or may not be good independent reasons to oppose an American company's paying foreign laborers less than America's minimum legal wage; this matter cannot be resolved here. In either event, my argument does not entail that such laborers should be offered U.S. residency. For one thing, even if foreign laborers contribute to America's economy as much as illegal migrant laborers do, only the latter must manage to live in accord with America's cost of living on a lower wage than its law sanctions. One at least hopes that while American companies pay foreign laborers less than America's minimum legal wage, the countries that house American sweatshops have lower costs of living, which allow people to live on less money than one needs to live in the United States.

One could reply as follows: if America's standard of living is higher than are the standards of living in countries that house American sweatshops, and if il-

legal migrant laborers in the United States enjoy even some of the advantages that America's standard of living offers, why take illegal migrant laborers in the United States to deserve residency more than do foreign laborers who provide similar services without receiving the benefits of living and working temporarily in the United States?

There are advantages to living and working even temporarily in the United States, but there is another important difference between illegal migrant laborers in the United States and foreign laborers who work for American companies. The former laborers, again, leave their homes, their families, essentially the lives to which they are accustomed, to work for American companies. They sacrifice the opportunity to stroll familiar streets, to eat at familiar tables, to see their loved ones and friends - even to communicate with locals if they do not speak English. Foreign laborers who work for American sweatshops do not face these hardships. And, thus, while such laborers earn less than America's minimum legal wage, and while they help America's economy expand as do illegal migrant laborers, my argument provides grounds for not extending residency rights to them.

Seventh, one could object that, for residency rights to mean anything to illegal migrant laborers, the United States would have to offer their spouses and children residency, particularly as my argument emphasizes that these laborers are often




recruited away from their families. And even if one is convinced that the treatment and contributions of illegal migrant laborers warrant making them U.S. residents at some point, one could deny that the United States can or should accommodate the families of these laborers, who have neither been so treated nor contributed anything to the country. Indeed, extending residency rights to these laborers' families could be economically disastrous. For, again, there are approximately twelve million illegal immigrants in America today; so if even 20 percent of them had just a spouse back home (a conservative estimate), then extending residency rights to these families would increase America's population by more than two million, and this at a time when America's economy is already strained.

This is a difficult objection. Perhaps the best way to implement the immigration policy that I am defending would be to offer residency to the family of an illegal migrant laborer only if the laborer has moved beyond entry level work (e.g., in agriculture fields) and has secured employment (e.g., a management position) that can be proven stable and sufficient to support the laborer and his or her family without government assistance. We might require that illegal migrant laborers earn twice the income they need to support themselves in order for a spouse or domestic partner to become a resident and an additional percentage of their income for each child to become a resident, as many apartments require that prospective tenants earn three times the rent to secure a lease. While no doubt imperfect, such a policy would have advantages. It would allow illegal migrant laborers a realistic hope that their families could eventually join them in the United States, making the right of residency that I would extend to them meaningful. It would provide an incentive for illegal migrant laborers to move up in their employment. And it would prevent a deluge of new immigrants from entering the United States because many of the illegal migrant laborers who are in the United States do not currently earn enough to secure residency for their families.

Eighth, and finally, I have presupposed that the debate over illegal immigration in America should be framed in terms of the economic contributions that illegal migrant laborers have made to the country. I take this focus to be important because those who debate immigration in America often ignore or trivialize these contributions. It is more common to see this debate framed in terms of the burden that illegal immigrants pose to America's health care system or the crimes that some of them commit. But, of course, illegal immigrants do require health care, and some of them commit serious crimes as well.14 Moreover, while the number of working illegal immigrants is substantial - sufficiently substantial again to motivate Congressional hearings and interest groups in Washington - many other illegal immigrants in America are not working. In fact, a recent report to Congress indicates that the "typical crop worker" only performs farm labor 66 percent of the year. And 16 percent of these workers are unemployed the rest of the year.15

These facts are important. For if the costs of illegal immigration are high, they might override my argument by showing illegal immigration to impose a net loss




on America's economy. My argument, however, is consistent with America's denying residency to illegal migrant laborers who have consumed too much of its health care or have committed serious crimes. The United States should implement the immigration policy that I have defended on a case-by-case basis, performing background checks on each prospective resident and verifying that he or she has, in fact, made a net contribution to America's economy. The problem is that, as of now, such verification is impossible because there are not adequate records of, or studies on, the economic contributions of illegal migrant laborers. The hope again is that my argument will motivate research in the area.

Bakersfield College

NOTES

I would like to thank Jeff McMahan for providing extensive comments on several drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank René Trujillo and Jeremy Oxford for research assistance, and Joseph Carens, Stephen Kershnar, and Shelley Wilcox for helpful cor- respondences.

1 . Not only have economists failed to pursue the issues that concern me in this paper, but also, historically, very little philosophical attention has been paid to these matters as well. Thus, in a recent survey article, Michael Blake writes: "Immigration has not received a great deal of philosophical attention. While the issues surrounding immigration have become subjects of vigorous public discussion, a like discussion has not been forthcom- ing in the philosophical community. Indeed, there may be no other area of political life in which so many heated issues have met with so little sustained normative theorizing." See Michael Blake, "Immigration," in A Companion to Applied Ethics, eds. R. G. Frey and Christopher Heath Wellman (Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), p. 224.

2. For Baldemar Velasquez's testimony on American companies' recruitment of illegal migrant laborers, see www.floc.com/documents/BV%20Testimony%20HR1763 .pdf.

3. See "Illegal Immigration and Moral Obligation," Public Affairs Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 1 (January 2008), p. 32.

4. See Alan Wertheimer, Exploitation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 27. See also Joel Feinberg, Harmless Wrongdoing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 179.

5. I have in mind Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz, "Undocumented Workers in the Labor Market: An Analysis of the Earnings of Legal and Illegal Mexican Immigrants in the United States," Journal of Population Economics, vol. 12, no. 1 (1999), pp. 91-116.

6. See, for example, Peter Brimelow, "Economics of Immigration and the Course of the Debate since 1994," in Debating Immigration, ed. Carol M. Swain (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 163-164.

7. See Richard D. Vogel, "Harder Times: Undocumented Workers and the U.S. In-




formal Economy," Monthly Review, vol. 58, no. 3 (July-August 2006), available at www .monthlyreview.org/0706vogel.htm.

8. Ibid.

9. A recent report to Congress indicates that since 1997, "unauthorized aliens" comprise more than 50 percent of the "estimated 1.8 million workers" on America's farmlands. See Linda Levine, Farm Labor Shortages and Immigration Policy (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service, 2007), p. 2.

10. See "The Disconnect between Public Attitudes and Policy Outcomes in Immigra- tion" in Debating Immigration, ed. Carol Swain (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 22.

1 1 . See "There is No Moral Right to Immigrate to the United States," Public Affairs Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 2 (April 2000), pp. 141-158.

12. See Adam Davidson, "Q&A: Illegal Immigrants and the U.S. Economy," on National Public Radio (March 30, 2006), available at http://www.npr.org/s .php?sId=5312900&m=l.

13. In fairness to Kershnar, one could read his thought experiment as a purely theoretical argument against the "cosmopolitan" view that liberal political theory entails an open-borders policy on immigration. That is, it could be read as having nothing to do with immigration as it actually exists in the United States, for instance. This, however, would seem a bit of a stretch, interpretively, given the title of Kershnar's paper: "There Is No Moral Right to Immigrate to the United States." Furthermore, in either event, the present investigation will proceed to discuss immigration in a way that is hopefully of practical significance. In this way, then, the present investigation will be in the spirit of Shelley Wilcox's recent concern with "cosmopolitanism": "The 'open borders' position on immigration is an attractive cosmopolitan ideal, and the freedom of movement argument may be plausible at the level of ideal theory. However, I will suggest that this argument fails to provide adequate normative guidance concerning immigration in the world as it is today." See "Immigrant Admissions and Global Relations of Harm," Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 38, no. 2 (2007), pp. 274-291.

14. It is surprisingly difficult to get official numbers or percentages of U.S. crimes that are committed by illegal immigrants. The U.S. jails and prison systems tend not to record whether crimes were committed by citizens or illegal immigrants. In addition, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Department of Homeland Security tend not to classify illegal immigrant offenders in terms of their specific offenses. So, as being in the United States illegally is a criminal offense, one is hard-pressed to get reliable numbers on how many of these persons have committed violent or even property crimes in America. What one does find is much speculation on these matters. On the one hand, there is no question that illegal immigrants commit some serious crimes. A 2006 Time article, for instance, reported that from October 1, 2003 to July 20, 2004, 9,051 people with criminal records were apprehended by Tucson border patrol agents - 378 of them with active warrants, and two of these warrants in a one- week period were for homicide. See Donald L. Barlett, and James B. Steele, "Who Left the Door Open?" Time (March 30, 2006), p. 14, available at www.time.com/time/magazine/article/O^ 17 1 ,995 145-14,00.html. On the other hand, a careful, well-researched 2005 paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas concluded that, while increased patrolling of the United States/Mexico border between 1991 and 2000 was correlated with a reduction in violent crime along the border,




this reduction was lower than that observed on the national level in America during the same period. See Roberto Coronado, and Pia M. Orrenius, "The Effect of Undocumented Immigration and Border Enforcement on Crime Rates along the U.S. -Mexico Border," Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Research Department, Working Paper 0303 (December 2005), p. 19, available at www.dallasfed.org/research/papers/2003/wp0303.pdf.

15. See Linda Levine, Farm Labor Shortages and Immigration, p. 12.



Date post:	07-Jan-2017
Category:	Documents
Upload:	reginald-williams
View:	228 times
Download:	9 times

Illegal Immigration: A Case for Residency

Documents