Immigration Reform Vital to Business
For the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, May 12, 2008
by Helen E. Krieble, President of the Vernon K. Krieble Foundation
Small business owners have no good choices
On ancient sailing ships planks below the water line were sometimes called “devils” because they were hard to reach for caulking. A sailor who tired of climbing on ropes in the ship’s rigging were told if they fell their choice was between hitting the deck or landing in the ocean – “between the devil and the deep blue sea.” It’s the same kind of unacceptable choices faced by small business owners who can’t find the local workers they need to stay in business: break the law and hire undocumented foreign workers, or close their doors and lay off everyone. Thousands of businesses across America find themselves faced with becoming criminals or losing everything while Congress makes the labor shortage worse by its inaction.
As a small business owner myself, I understand that survival (not to mention growth) depends on the availability of workers. But government policies have made a complete mess of the labor market. Today leaders of both Parties use the issue to posture and campaign, with no apparent interest in solutions. Their refusal to extend the returning-worker exemption effectively reduced the available pool of legal foreign workers this year by 30% – while the demand for worker visas limited by this artificial quota is growing, not shrinking.
Turning business owners into criminals because Congress can’t muster the courage to address illegal immigration is no different than sending innocent people to prison for crimes they didn’t commit. And while Congress sits on the sideline, state governments feeling pressed by angry constituents are rushing toward stronger enforcement against employers. Tough enforcement may sound good at first, but it punishes the wrong people.
As usual, Chamber of Commerce members understand the issue better than most politicians. They know the right solution is to eliminate most of the border security problem by enacting a practical work visa program for those who want to fill jobs American workers will not do. That is the core of a proposal we have been advocating for several years, with one additional element critical to its success: Let the private sector handle the implementation.
Letting private employment agencies open offices abroad, run background checks, and issue “smart cards” to non-immigrant workers is a simple idea whose time has come. Government bureaucracies have already proven their inability to handle a caseload of millions of such workers. After all, they would not in the U.S. illegally if the system provided any workable legal alternative.
Two things must be changed for a new system to be practical. First, the number of allowable workers must be set by the marketplace, not by artificial quotas based on congressional politics and guesswork. Congress allows only 66,000 H-2B visas for the entire country each year, but we know my home state of Colorado alone needs more than that. Second, the congressional-directed bureaucracy that doesn’t work must be replaced by businesses that will get the job done.
The simplicity of such an approach may seem counterintuitive to cynical bureaucrats. But in fact, thousands of businesses across the country perform these services every day. Companies routinely connect jobs and workers, run background checks, issue cards that are nearly impossible to duplicate and transfer information around the world instantly. Their motivation for speed and accuracy is simply: competition and profits.
Both employers and employees already have a strong desire to operate legally. This plan would finally give them the means to do so. It would also eliminate 90 percent of illegal border crossings, making border control easier and cheaper. In fact, this plan would be financed by user fees, not taxpayer dollars. Best of all, it’s a simple solution as old as America itself: Let the free market work.
Enforcement will remain an important part of solving this problem. But before turning thousands of small business owners into criminals, we must give them a better choice than the devil and the deep blue sea.
