By IPS Correspondents
NEW YORK, Jul 18 2006 (IPS)

“Before you build a wall, fix the problem,” says Michelle Wucker, author of the new book “Lockout”, which ties immigration to the United States’ – and the world’s – long-term economic viability.

Speaking recently at Demos, a liberal Manhattan think tank, Wucker argued that economic inequality between the United States and the primary sources of emigrants – especially Mexico, Central America and Africa – has caused a massive influx of immigrants. The solution, then, is not to just tighten border security, but to equalise the economic and working conditions in those regions.

Wucker is a senior fellow at the New York-based World Policy Institute, where she is co-director of the Immigrant Voting Project.

As workers leave, she said, the reduced labour supply at home forces upward pressure on wages and delivers increased bargaining power for benefits and safe working conditions. Remittances – money migrant workers earn abroad but send home to families – boosts the GNP of the home country, also helping to equalise living and working standards.

The author recounted a story of a California representative who, upon learning the level of remittances sent to Mexico from his state, called for a heavy tax on all money wires originating in California. Western Union, a major player in the state’s economy, immediately pounced on the representative who then revised his statement, calling for reduced aid to Mexico.

But reducing aid is exactly what the U.S. should not be doing, Wucker said. Appropriately distributed, aid and economic supports uplift the developing nations, tempering the incentive to find better working conditions in neighbouring countries.

This rising tide was met by intense resistance from established citizens and government agencies, which led to the passage of overly restrictive immigration laws and quotas. Getting a visa to enter the United States, not to mention obtaining citizenship once within the borders, became increasingly elusive.

However, these laws – “shadow laws”, as Wucker calls them – were rarely enforced, especially in the southwestern United States, where Mexican and Central American workers play a pivotal role in the economy. Instead, officials often looked the other way, pursuing employers in violation only when provoked.

Recently, the threat of terrorism, like the communist “Red Scare” before it, has prompted a revival of border security and a heavily guarded immigration policy. Outsourcing, the recent recession, and poor job growth have also encouraged xenophobic tendencies.

Inevitably, Wucker concedes, there will be social tensions when large groups of people move into the labour market. Low-wage U.S. workers will compete with lower-wage immigrants for many of the same jobs, while high-skilled native workers face an onslaught of highly-educated, English-speaking, cheap labour from China and India.

Wucker pointed to the U.S.’s declining ranking in education relative to the rest of the world, particularly IT-heavy China, India and Japan, as evidence of the need to create educational incentives. Additionally, many U.S. citizens lack universal access to quality education, particularly low-skilled workers whose time and income are spread thin.

Immigrants, however, are not just cogs in the labour market machine. They are also active consumers. They increase overall demand in the U.S. economy, which generates more jobs, higher productivity, and rising Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Many immigrants, using false identification numbers to conceal their illegal status, also pay into the social security system, but rarely draw from it.

Legalisation of workers increases their potential contribution by allowing for a driver’s license, home ownership, credit, bank accounts, and myriad other marks of financial independence and the consumer culture. Legal citizens are more apt to be productive community members, contribute to civic and neighbourhood projects, and get involved in advocacy, political and labour organisations.

Wucker’s book also responds to the frequent charge that “new immigrants” – mostly Mexicans, Central Americans and Asians – are transient: they come for a few years to work and return to their home countries, siphoning wages from the economy. In actuality, the rate of immigrant retention is almost 15 percent higher compared to 50 years ago, when the majority of immigrants were European.

Indeed, undocumented immigrants often want to become legal citizens, but are stymied by the complex, restrictive naturalisation process and the rapidly increasing demand. For instance, students outnumber spots in New York City’s English as a Foreign Language classes by 10 to one.

Assimilation, however, is much more difficult for Mexicans and Central Americans simply because of physical and educational differences. David Card, an immigration expert from University of California, Berkeley, said bluntly in a recent New York Times article, “If Mexicans were taller and whiter, it would probably be a lot easier to deal with.”

With legal immigrants comprising 15 percent of the U.S. labour force and another 11.5 million undocumented workers in the mix, non-native workers are increasingly shaping the job market. The question is whether the U.S. can continue to support its new shape.

The answer, according to Wucker, is that there is no choice. “America’s greatest economic asset is its ability to attract the world’s ablest and most talented individuals to a system that can harness their abilities better than any other in the world,” she says in “Lockout”. “It is the combination of those individuals and the system that has made this country the world’s engine of innovation and economic growth.”

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