Northwoods resident, Troy Hester, asked me to share the following letter he received from representative Cynthia McKinney. It details her views on illegal immigration laws being discussed in Congress and gives her reason for voting against the ‘‘Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005.”
As I attend events throughout the District and constituents participate in our monthly District Days, I am hearing the opinions of many constituents on the current national debate on immigration law. Last December, the House of Representatives passed HR 4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005. I was one of 182 Democrats and Republicans to vote against this mean-spirited ~ counterproductive bill. HR 4437 would, among other things, make it a felony to be undocumented in this country.
With the exception of Native Americans, who can trace their ancestry on this soil to antiquity, all of us are immigrants. HR 4437 would turn individuals and families who have been in this country for years working, and paying taxes, into criminals literally overnight. About 92% of undocumented immigrant men in this country hold jobs, compared with 83% of native-born men. Undocumented immigrants now account for nearly 5% of the entire U.S. labor force, and account for 1.5% of total wages in this country. Criminalizing and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants is not only beyond the current capacity of local law enforcement, it could hurt our economy.
In 1986, President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform Control Act a bill intended to close the “back door” on illegal immigration by sanctioning employers who hire undocumented workers, and tripling the number of border patrols by 2002. Yet the number of undocumented immigrants has since risen from 3 million to an estimated 11 to 12 million today. The law failed because it did not effectively address employer demand for employing undocumented workers, which has remained high. Too many American employers are all too happy to employ undocumented workers for below minimum wages, often in subhuman work conditions, in order to lower their cost of production while circumventing labor regulations.
Unions oppose HR 4437 because it will push undocumented workers further into the black market, worsening labor conditions for both documented and undocumented workers. Local law enforcement opposes HR 4437 because it undermines their ability to deal with hard crime. Criminalizing undocumented workers will push more of them to turn to illicit activities such as prostitution and the drug trade to derive an income. This, in turn, would lead to the greater development of organized crime in this country.
HR 4437 is another example of a simplistic solution to a complex problem, and it will only make things worse. I will be monitoring this issue closely as the Senate debates immigration reform, and involve a better process of earned legalization without excessive wait time~;It would also involve a better and broader system of issuing temporary visas to accommodate U..S..employers’ demand for immigrant labor, as President Bush called for in 2004.
Whatever one’s views on America’s immigration policy, I think everyone can agree it’s an important issue–particularly in Doraville, a city with so many people from different backgrounds.