A Way to Cut Undocumented Immigration--but It’s Not a Quick Cure : Trade: Only sustained economic growth over decades can keep workers at home. America can help by freeing up its trade in the hemisphere.

Recent developments along the U.S.-Mexico border highlight the continuing controversy and volatile emotions swirling around undocumented immigration.

Two years ago, we visited the Los Angeles and San Diego areas to assess how the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 had affected the volume of undocumented immigrants coming into this country. More recently, we have heard discussions about using a San Diego SWAT team to protect undocumented immigrants. We have also learned of the Alliance for Border Control’s “Light Up the Border” protests against the continuing flow of immigrants.

It is understandable that communities most directly affected by a problem will strive for immediate answers. But neither initiative will have any effect on the causes nor the long-term implications of undocumented immigration. Americans have long relied on short-term enforcement measures to control immigration. Only recently have long-term efforts been undertaken.

In addition to its employer sanctions and amnesty provisions, the immigration act created the Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development. Its task was to study the conditions that give rise to undocumented immigration from Mexico and other countries in the Western Hemisphere and to recommend “mutually beneficial . . . trade and investment” measures to alleviate them.

In its report, issued Tuesday, the commission found that although there are other important factors, the search for economic opportunity is the primary reason that unauthorized immigrants come to the United States. This is particularly true for Mexicans.

Paradoxically, while job-creating economic growth is the ultimate solution to reducing such migratory pressures, it tends, in the short-to-medium term, to add to these pressures by raising expectations and enhancing people’s ability to migrate. Still, it is the only way to keep workers from crossing borders in search of greater economic opportunities.

Toward this end, the commission made numerous recommendations. It is clear that the migrant-sending countries must be primarily responsible for creating economic opportunity for their own people. Mexico and other countries have launched ambitious economic programs to accomplish this. But the United States must adjust certain policies, especially on trade, to help these countries sustain economic growth.

Expanded access to the markets of the United States and other industrialized nations through increasingly free trade is the most promising stimulus to future economic growth in Mexico and other migrant-sending countries. Mexico shares this belief. All year, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari has been saying “we must export goods, or we will continue indefinitely to export people” in his push for free trade between Mexico and the United States. During his visit to Washington in June, he and President Bush agreed to prepare for trade negotiations.

Salinas’ free-trade proposal was motivated, in part, by his concern that developments in both Eastern and Western Europe may divert the attention and resources of the industrialized countries away from Mexico--and the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean. The United States may be similarly affected, though President Bush’s recent proposals on Latin American trade, investment and debt issues hold out the prospect of a North American and, eventually, hemisphere-wide free-trade zone. Private business organizations such as the Council of the Americas, the U.S.-Mexico Business Council and the Assn. of American Chambers of Commerce in Latin America are working on this.

Immigrants, the commission reported, have consistently rejuvenated and revitalized American society, and they will continue to do so. But the plight of undocumented immigrants who, forced by economic or other circumstances to seek better lives away from home, are almost by definition subject to exploitation is worrisome. The constant violation of our laws implicit in the continuing flow of undocumented immigrants into the United States is equally troubling. It was the commission’s hope that fostering growth in migrant-sending countries would eliminate the need to enforce our immigration laws.

Meanwhile, the United States, as Salinas has implied, is in the unenviable position of having to choose between accepting goods and services from its southern neighbors that may temporarily affect our own domestic industry and labor force, or of countenancing unauthorized traffic in human beings that harms our laws, our communities and our resources. While there are other remedies, trade is the only short-term alternative that offers hope to people in a region characterized by a broad spectrum of economic growth. Financial assistance, even if it were available in the amounts needed, would not be nearly as effective. Moreover, expanded trade with hemispheric nations should produce more jobs and greater prosperity in the United States.

President Salinas’ proposal for free trade between the United States and Mexico and President Bush’s broader initiative on Latin American trade, investment and debt issues are worthy of support. But this support must recognize the major paradox reported by the commission--that economic development tends, at first, to stimulate migration. Judgment on the success of economic growth as a solution to unauthorized immigration must thus be withheld for decades.

If the United States is to cooperate with migrant-sending countries in a long-term search to solve the immigration problem, it must be steadfast in purpose and dedication over a great many years. If this is understood, the commission will have fulfilled its mandate, and the flow of undocumented immigrants will gradually diminish as more and better jobs are created for them at home.