I love to debate, especially when it comes to politics. Heck, sometimes I just pick a side I don’t agree with because I enjoy both the deliberation process and the subsequent conflict resolution brainstorm session.

However, one recent hot topic has gotten me in quite a jam. The issue is immigration reform.

I was going to write this column last week but decided to wait until the legislature passed some sort of reform. However, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, blocked the vote on a bipartisan bill that would both strengthen U.S. borders and allow undocumented workers currently living here to continue working.
A moderate reform bill is necessary for many reasons that span the political, economic and cultural spheres of the United States and Mexico.

Politically, the passage of some sort of reform is essential for both parties in the United States right now. President Bush (remember he was, at one time, governor of a border state) has long wanted to pursue an overhaul of immigration. With dwindling approval and some serious legislative flops (Medicare, for example), Bush and his party could use a victory on an issue that has stirred so much public attention.

In addition, the Democrats, who have been accused by Republicans of pandering to Hispanic voters on this topic recently, need to look at what’s best for the country, including immigrants seeking a better life, albeit illegally, and working-class Americans.

In Mexico, the government has turned a blind eye to the thousands of citizens fleeing to the United States across our southern border. Census information indicates about 9.3 million undocumented immigrants (more than half from Mexico) living in the United States and about 500,000 entering each year.

Mexican President Fox strongly supported the Bush measure last year to allow undocumented workers to stay in the United States.

Why doesn’t Mexico care that its citizens are so desperate they often leave their families? The people leaving, generally, are poor and unable to afford education.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the average American wage is ten times the average Mexican wage.

The Mexican government, run by an oligarchy of wealthy families, sees it as easier to ship the poor north than to improve the economic conditions of the working class in Mexico. And who wouldn’t want to escape the poverty Mexicans are facing?

Pictures of immigration protests have flooded the news recently. Many of the protesters, from what I have read, were undocumented. If some of that energy, backed with U.S. support, was exerted to help the poor in Mexico, we wouldn’t need to spend as much on border patrol, and a living wage might be easier to come by in our country.

Which brings us to economics. I’m not going to pretend I’m an economics major. But basic common sense tells us the greater the supply of workers, the greater the demand for a job and the lower the wages. Two-thirds of undocumented workers make less than $10 an hour, according to the Urban Institute Immigration Studies Program. Combine that with the fact that 500,000 people enter the United States illegally every year, and their earning prospects don’t look to improve anytime soon.

American corporations exploit our country’s six million undocumented workers, who make up 5 percent of the total labor force. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates about one million undocumented workers currently hold manufacturing jobs, about 1.4 million work in agriculture and about 700,000 work in both restaurants and construction.

At some point we’re going to have to tighten our borders to save both American-born workers and those undocumented workers who are not making a living wage. Although it is essential to tighten the American-Mexican border, it is also important to take care of the undocumented workers who have built their lives in America. This includes both a living wage and some sort of legalization to help with cultural integration.

All we need to do is look at Holland to see that some level of amalgamation must occur in order to have a fair and just society. On the other hand, I wouldn’t argue complete assimilation is necessary or a good idea, as America should retain its proverbial “melting pot” status.

In Holland, about 20 percent of the population are not Dutch citizens but mainly Turks and Moroccans who were recruited for labor in the 1960s. Even most children of immigrants, when given the chance at age 18 to receive citizenship, choose not to do so.

The incohesiveness of Holland’s population has led to terrible treatment of both Dutch citizens and Muslims in the country. The two sides are heavily partitioned within neighborhoods and even cities, and cultural disputes often turn deadly. Holland’s attempt at allowing complete “authenticity,” as they called it, for Muslim immigrants has failed.

Paul Scheffer, a well-known Amsterdam intellectual, said in a New Yorker article that his country had “let its immigrants rot in their own privacy.”

Without, at the very least, integrating some language and creating collective history by granting legalization and allowing immigrants to live outside the shadows, the United States may be in the same danger.

Not only is immigration reform necessary to protect American and immigrant workers economically, it also is essential to maintaining the American dream for those who were born here and those who weren’t. If you want to debate, you know how to find me.

Pelleymounter is a senior print journalism and political science double major and news editor of The Spectator.