The Policy Dilemma

By George Russell.

Does the U.S. have an immigration problem? If so, what should be done about it? There is no national consensus on these vexing questions. Indeed, the ambivalent feelings that America's latest immigrant wave inspire among ordinary citizens are mirrored in the labyrinthine processes of Washington. In the past decade, immigration reform has been probed, studied, debated and lobbied almost interminably on Capitol Hill. So far, the effort has failed to produce any comprehensive changes.

Congress will stage its Sisyphean ordeal again this year. In May Republican Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming introduced a new version of his much debated Immigration Reform and Control Act, and the Senate held hearings on the bill last month. It is the third time in four years that Congress has considered Simpson's legislation. In 1984, with the cosponsorship of Democratic Congressman Romano Mazzoli of Kentucky, immigration reform passed both houses, only to expire in conference committee. This year Simpson is carrying on the legislative struggle without Mazzoli, who has declined to cosponsor the bill without support from the Democratic House leadership and from black and Hispanic legislative caucuses.

If past chapters in the immigration reform saga are anything to go by, the debate over Simpson's measure will be drawn out, convoluted and acrimonious. That is perhaps as it should be. Seldom has so important an issue come so far so often in the legislative process with those concerned with it having so little idea of its potential effects. No one can say for sure whether immigration reform can be made to work, what it might cost and, most important, whether it would ultimately help or hurt the country. In that informational vacuum, politicians, businessmen, labor leaders, minority representatives and social scientists have taken positions on all sides of the issue. President Reagan is maintaining a discreet profile, hoping only for a policy that is "fair and nondiscriminatory."

To Simpson, a third-generation American (his paternal forebears came from England and Ireland), the current U.S. policy on legal admissions represents an intimidating challenge to that standard. A much amended patchwork based on statutes originally adopted in 1952, the law now sets an annual ceiling of 270,000 on immigrants, with a maximum of 20,000 from any single country. Husbands, wives, parents and children of current U.S. citizens are exempted from limits; last year 273,903 people took advantage of the provision. Within the numerical ceilings, an elaborate series of "preferences" gives priority to other relatives of U.S. citizens and people with "urgently" required skills. In 1980 Congress also passed a Refugee Act that allowed the admission of as many as 70,000 additional people annually who have a "well- founded fear of persecution" on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political opinion. The definition of exactly who qualifies as a refugee under those rules remains highly controversial. Last year 61,750 official refugees were admitted to the U.S.

Rather than take on the entire immigration code, Simpson's legislation aims to stem the far greater tide of immigrants who come to the U.S. illegally. The Wyoming Senator and his supporters argue that failure to act decisively in the present entails a major risk in the future: resentment, xenophobia and an eventual backlash against all immigrants. Says Simpson: "Illegal immigration endangers a fair and generous policy of legal immigration." The concern is generally shared by those responsible for enforcing immigration laws. "Nothing is going to blow up right away," says Alan Nelson, commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. "But eventually a public rebellion is likely if we don't do something. So why don't we do it now and prevent trouble later on?"

While some of the details have changed in the newest proposal, the dual centerpiece of Simpson's bill remains the same: 1) imposition of sanctions, including fines of up to $10,000 a violation, against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants; 2) an eventual amnesty for illegal aliens who arrived before Jan. 1, 1980, and have been living in the U.S. continuously since then.

Simpson's bill would require anyone employing four or more people to demand documentation that establishes each person's identity and eligibility for work. That is slightly less onerous than the requirement in Simpson's earlier legislation that employers fill out forms to show they had properly screened candidates. Many businessmen oppose sanctions because of the additional paper work and because they believe that certain industries need cheap immigrant labor to survive. Hispanic groups have criticized sanctions out of the fear that employers would discriminate against people with Spanish surnames to avoid trouble with the INS.

Immigration officials agree with Simpson that employer sanctions are crucial to cutting off the illegal flow. In the INS's view, it is the job magnet that attracts illegals across the border. Says Commissioner Nelson: "Once word spreads along the border that there are no jobs for illegals in the U.S., the magnet no longer exists." Officials see little difficulty in enforcing the sanctions. Says INS Spokesman Duke Austin: "This will be like the 55- m.p.h. speed limit. Most motorists comply. There will be some who won't, and we know who those people are right now. So our task will be greater, but not so much as one might think."

That view may be too optimistic. A major obstacle is the booming trade in phony documents. Fake driver's licenses sell in Los Angeles for $60 to $65 each. Doctored "green cards" go for as little as $25 apiece. Nothing in Simpson's new bill requires employers to take responsibility for the authenticity of such documents, although the Senator says that he would also favor, under certain circumstances, the introduction of a new tamperproof Social Security card. Barring such a sweeping development, employer sanctions seem likely, if anything, to give the phony-documents industry a further < boost. Thus Simpson also wants to see stiffer penalties of up to two years in prison for ID counterfeiters and traffickers. But that is no more likely to be effective than tough penalties have been in curbing the U.S. market for cocaine.

Simpson's new bill substantially weakens his earlier proposals for amnesty, which he prefers to call "legalization." Largely for humanitarian reasons, Simpson and other reformers want to abolish the underclass of illegal aliens that has sprung up outside the protection of U.S. law. Says Leon Panetta, a California Congressman who favors the controlled importation of aliens as temporary U.S. farmworkers: "The present situation is intolerable. We are creating a subculture in our society, one that has no rights, no protections." Many Americans, however, see amnesty as an unjust reward for aliens who have broken the law.

In 1984 Simpson suggested that legalization proceedings start automatically 90 days after his bill became law. In response to the popular outcry, he now proposes that an amnesty take effect only after a presidential commission has certified that the new law's provisions have produced a "substantial" reduction of illegal immigration. Simpson estimates that this would happen "less than a year" after his bill is passed, but critics doubt that such a decline could be adequately documented.

The numbers game also casts a large shadow over the prospective cost of amnesty. Simpson's proposal would have those who take advantage of legalization become eligible for federally funded assistance programs. The highest estimate for those costs is $8 billion over five years, but that figure is purely hypothetical. Simpson's new bill would also place a $1.8 billion limit on federal reimbursements to states and municipalities for services extended to those who benefit from an amnesty. Critics in Congress have already attacked that figure as much too low.

Simpson's new bill has one basic objective: to produce a compromise that will finally pass Congress. Whether he can achieve that is no clearer than it was a year ago. The continuing difficulty, as the Wyoming Senator tartly puts it, is that "Congress doesn't seem very anxious to pass legislation that somebody may object to."

Many academics, especially in the West, doubt that Simpson's legislation or any similar bill can stem the illegal tide. "There cannot be a successful immigration policy," says Lucie Cheng, head of Asian-American studies at UCLA. "If you really want to do something about immigration, you improve the economies of the native countries. You can't build walls here." Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican studies at the University of California, San Diego, notes that "in the sunbelt area, there is an absorptive capacity for immigrant labor that is far greater than most people think." Linda Wong of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has a disarmingly simple solution: accept the reality of the U.S. need for Mexican labor and raise the quota of legal immigration from Mexico from 20,000 a year to 60,000; at the same time, enforce existing fair labor laws that govern wages and working conditions.

Thomas Muller, an immigration expert at the Urban Institute, a Washington- based think tank, argues that the large numbers of illegal aliens in the U.S. are less a problem than a manifestation of American economic dynamism. "We have always depended on some low-wage labor," he says. "The illegal alien situation today is the continuation of a pattern." Muller's assertion may help explain one of the glaring contradictions of current U.S. immigration policy: the meager funding given to the INS to apply existing laws. The INS enforcement budget for 1985 comes to only $366 million for a staff of 7,599, less than a third the number of officers with the New York City police department. That lack of resources, acknowledges a senior INS official, reflects the longstanding "national ambivalence" toward the service's main function.

Nowhere is that sentiment more dramatically highlighted than along the southern border, where illegal immigration is deeply woven into the local fabric. Some 3,000 U.S. border patrol agents maintain the southern frontier, yet INS officials admit that with bolstered forces the U.S. could significantly reduce the illegal traffic. Despite its length, much of the U.S.-Mexican border is blocked by huge expanses of desert and mountainous terrain. The bulk of illegal traffic centers on only about seven crossings; an estimated 60% of all illegals enter the U.S. near the cities of Chula Vista, Calif., and El Paso, Texas. Says INS Commissioner Nelson: "There will always be some illegal immigration. But we can and must enhance control of the border."

The central argument of immigration reformers, the possibility of a backlash against newcomers, has precedent in U.S. history. Much of the country's immigration legislation of the late 1800s and early 1900s, for example, was specifically written with the aim of barring Chinese and other Asians. But the Urban Institute's Muller believes there is now more tolerance and less racial animosity than at any other time in U.S. history. Says he: "There is no public attitude remotely like the virulent attitude of the 1840s and 1920s. I don't detect any strong backlash out there."

The congressional inability to agree so far on immigration reform may reflect a collective judgment that the minuses of reform still outweigh the pluses. Kentucky Congressman Mazzoli argues that the wearying battle to change U.S. immigration law is "not urgent, except in the sense that it is more difficult to obtain reform as time goes on." A comment from former California Governor Jerry Brown is also worthy of consideration. Eventually, he guesses, some form of an additionally restrictive immigration law will be passed. Then he asks, "But will it make any difference?"

With reporting by Hays Gorey/Washington and David S. Jackson/Houston, with other bureaus