Immigration takes center stage in House campaign

Second of three parts

BOISE – Idaho’s 1st Congressional District includes an international border – the northern border with Canada. But that’s not why immigration has become such a big issue in this year’s congressional race.

Instead, the focus has been on tales from the far-off southern border about people sneaking across the line from Mexico and entering the United States illegally, whether it’s for work or for darker reasons.

“Immigration and border security are inextricably linked,” said Republican candidate Bill Sali, who warned that “drug cartel operatives, gang members and terrorists” are among those pouring across America’s borders.

That makes the issue a “national security problem,” said Sali, who wants to call out American military troops to patrol the borders, build a big fence and deport any illegal residents who are turned up in routine traffic stops.

Democratic candidate Larry Grant has a different take. “There are three issues: border security, jobs and immigration,” he said. “Immigration doesn’t have anything to do with the first two.”

Grant said the nation should provide legal ways for legitimate workers to enter the country – but that shouldn’t entitle any of them to settle here permanently.

“If they want to immigrate, then they get at the end of the line like anyone else,” Grant said. “My point is: When you provide employers with employees they need and employees with jobs they need and a legal way to cross the border, then you can go after the criminals.”

“It’s a complicated issue,” said Jim Gimpel, professor of government at the University of Maryland in College Park. “About half of the illegal immigrants in the country did not come across the Mexican border, did not come across the northern border with Canada there – they came through on perfectly legal visas, very much like a temporary guest worker might, and just decided to overstay that visa.”

No one knows how many illegal residents are in the United States, Gimpel said – though his estimate is somewhere between Sali’s estimate of 12 million and United Party candidate Andy Hedden-Nicely’s figure of 30 million. A U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service report in 2000 estimated the illegal immigrant population at 7 million; some estimates suggest a million people are arriving per year.

Hedden-Nicely said the numbers are overwhelming. “Why pass more laws? We’re not even enforcing the laws we have on the books now,” he said.

The presence of so many new immigrants – many of them with low skill levels and little education – has benefited American business, Gimpel said. “Business uses an open immigration policy to inflate its profits and to deflate its wages.”

But at the same time, he said, it has hurt the poor by further depressing the low wages they can expect to earn and creating “complex cultural issues related to the complexion of these work-places.”

Gimpel has studied Iowa meatpacking plants, where 25 years ago, workers typically were fairly well-paid American citizens. Now, they’re more typically low-paid foreign laborers.

“A native-born worker does not want to go into a meatpacking plant for $7 or $8 an hour because it is rough and dangerous work,” Gimpel said. “But in years past, when the meatpacking industry paid better wages, all of those jobs were held by natives.”

Grant said he thinks he has the answer. “Unlike my opponent, I believe you cannot solve the border security problem until you solve the economic problem,” he said, adding that a wall won’t stop illegal border-crossers. “As long as there are employers willing to hire them, they’ll come in somewhere else.”

Grant said that when he was vice president of Micron Technology, the high-tech Boise firm frequently brought in foreign engineers under a federal visa program – but Micron had to prove it was paying a fair wage and that no American engineer was available to take the job. “What works in the laboratory ought to work in the lettuce field,” he said.

The native of Fruitland, Idaho, noted that Idaho employers are facing a labor shortage. “Anybody that’s got a crop in the field right now, there’s a shortage of labor,” he said. “Even at $10 an hour, they’re not going to get the cherries and peaches out of the orchard.”

Hedden-Nicely said the nation should enforce the immigration law Congress enacted in 1986 while cracking down on border security and building a fence.

But Gimpel said the 1986 law included amnesty for illegal residents – and that caused even more foreigners to enter the United States illegally in hopes that another amnesty would legalize their residency. “I don’t think they want to do that again, not if they want to stem the flow,” he said.

Sali said he opposes any amnesty for illegal residents because of the “drug cartel operatives, gang members and terrorists” among them, but Gimpel said that’s an exaggeration. “Most people do come here because they want a better life for themselves and their families,” Gimpel said.

The 1986 law included sanctions against employers who hire undocumented workers, Gimpel said, “but it had no teeth and never was really implemented.”

Punishments for employers who hire illegal workers weren’t mentioned by any of the candidates as they discussed the issue with The Spokesman-Review, and Gimpel said that’s telling.

“One of the reasons why there is this steady flow across the border is because there is this economic magnet of all these employers that are waiting to exploit this illegal work force and treat them badly and pay them dirt,” Gimpel said. “That’s part of the ugly ambivalence of the United States toward this immigration issue.”

Constitution Party candidate Paul Smith said, “Illegal aliens should be carted up and booted out.”

Independent candidate Dave Olson said he favors “routine health screenings” for all people entering the country to reduce the risk of bird flu and other contagious diseases, but Gimpel said that’s not been a major concern. “That’s a pretty negligible problem,” he said.

Sali said that once the nation’s borders are secured and amnesty is denied, he wouldn’t oppose limited numbers of workers entering the country with temporary work visas. But allowing illegal residents to stay, he said, would “start down the path of really the extermination of American culture.”

Grant said the immigration issue long has resonated in politics in America because it plays into people’s prejudices and fear of the unknown. “It’s a question of whether you want to solve the problem – which I think we can do – or whether you want to just talk about it to get elected,” he said.

Gimpel said it’s not unusual for fear to motivate public policy decisions. “I believe that electoral politics will actually favor the candidate who offers the kind of simplistic, pat solution like ‘build the wall,’ ” he said. Fear, he said, is “an emotion that does play into people’s decision-making. It’s a powerful emotion.”