Valley Commentary : Illegals Vs. Legals: Closed Doors, Open Arms

Reps. Anthony Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills) and Howard Berman (D-Panorama City), whose congressional districts include most of the San Fernando Valley, discussed illegal immigration on March 30 at a luncheon meeting sponsored by the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. What follows is adapted from their remarks.

BEILENSON We are a very liberal and generous country when it comes to legal immigration. We are currently allowing almost a million people legally into this country each year, more people than all of the rest of the countries of the world combined.

I continue to believe very strongly in legal immigration.

When it comes to illegal immigration, the question at the outset is: Do we believe in our immigration laws or not? If we do, we should allow the 850,000 to 1 million people in legally each year but not the others who are coming illegally.

There are lots of reasons to be worried about illegal immigration.

I have predicted for years that if we did not get control over illegal immigration there would be a backlash against legal immigration, and I think unfortunately that’s occurring. I think it’s also obvious to any thinking man or woman that there’s a limit to the number of people whom we can take in and provide for. But there is no end to the number of people who want to come to the United States and other industrialized nations.

The populations of Central America and Mexico have virtually quadrupled in the last 40 years. Mexico had 26 million people at the end of World War II. Now there are 92 million. There will be close to a quarter of a billion Mexicans sometime late next century. These folks obviously don’t have enough jobs down there, and many of them come here, looking for a better life.

In 24 hours there will be 260,000 net new people in the world, more than 95% of them in developing countries that cannot provide adequate jobs, services, health care or education for their people.

*

I believe that many of our services--our social services, our educational services, our health care services, our welfare services--are being overwhelmed. I spend virtually all of my time when I’m home going around talking to teachers, welfare workers, nurses who dispense these services. Their plea to me always is, Congressman, please try to do something about illegal immigration. We don’t have the physical or the human resources to take care of the citizens whom we’re supposed to take care of.

The net costs of illegal immigration are rising quickly. Some of these costs:

* At least $2 billion a year in California to educate children who are here illegally.

* At least $400 million a year in California to incarcerate prisoners here illegally.

* At least $300 million a year to provide emergency health services to people who are here illegally.

* At least $250 million in Los Angeles County alone for Aid to Families With Dependent Children for children of illegals. I think 25% of all the kids on AFDC in Los Angeles County are children of illegals. The county says that by the end of the decade it’s going to cost $1 billion a year.

If you’re serious about this and you’re a politician, you’ve got to propose solutions. I think there are only three serious ones, and a fourth that is more long-range and has to do with helping slow population growth around the world by making contraceptive services available to people if they want them.

*

One, you’ve got to control the border better, and the very least we can do, and it will have an effect, is put a good many more human beings and equipment down at the Border Patrol. It’s always been the stepchild of our law enforcement system.

Two, the single most important thing we should do is to have a counterfeit-resistant and tamper-proof Social Security card that has to be presented before you get employed in this country. There is no other way of enforcing our existing law, which makes it illegal to knowingly hire someone who is here illegally, or of ending discrimination against people who aren’t here illegally but have darker skins and don’t speak perfect English.

Three, and I know it offends some people, I do believe that we have to change the Constitution. We have to change the 14th Amendment and no longer give automatic citizenship to children of people who knowingly violated our laws and came across our borders, often not to get jobs but to have their babies here. More and more people are coming to have their babies here. There are 30,000 babies illegally born in Los Angeles County each year who automatically are U.S. citizens. We’re giving a benefit, an incentive to do it.

There was a specific reason for that provision of the 14th Amendment. It was ratified three years after the end of the Civil War for the specific purpose of trying to ensure that the newly freed black slaves would have all of the privileges and benefits of citizenship. That was the sole reason for it.

*

We had no immigration law at the time. Nobody ever thought about it. And if we had had the problem then, nobody would have put that in the Constitution. To automatically grant citizenship to anybody born here, even children of travelers who happen to have a baby while they’re traveling around the United States--that’s nonsense. Only three or four other countries in the world do it.

We will not be a less-free, less-democratic, less-wonderful, less-generous country if we repeal that particular part of the Constitution. We still have the Bill of Rights, free speech, everything else. There is nothing special about automatic citizenship because you happen to be born in this country.

BERMAN

I agree with Tony on his first and second solutions. If we do them, his third isn’t necessary.

By amending the Constitution we would create a clouded citizenship status for thousands of people and raise a thousand specific questions that I haven’t seen anyone address: When a mother shows up at the maternity ward, are we going to have an INS official there? What documentation would we demand? If we develop an effective border strategy and effective national identification, citizenship at birth will no longer be a serious issue.

I want to put some of this in the context of what is going on in society today. There are some very serious problems in this country. At such times we tend to look for scapegoats.

Immigration is a tremendously tempting scapegoat because it is true that we have lost control of our borders. We have every right to try to control those borders, and I do not accept the premise that it is impossible to do so.

I think the most serious problem in this country today is the existence of a growing underclass in our society. This is not just an immigrant underclass. It’s an underclass of people who essentially have very little in common with the mainstream of American society, who do not accept the values and the fundamental responsibilities of citizenship in this country. This underclass is not caused by immigration. It’s the result of many complicated social problems, including a well-intentioned welfare system that created a cycle of dependency, that have resulted in a breakdown of the family and a loss of individual responsibility.

*

We have a terrible problem with crime. And contrary to the current political rhetoric, this is not a problem that’s primarily a result of immigration. I’d suggest that the crime rate in Los Angeles is more a product of the fact that we have by far the most understaffed Police Department of any major urban area in the United States.

We have a serious economic problem in Southern California, caused by many factors, ranging from defense cuts to a depressed real estate industry.

Added to this, we have suffered a number of natural disasters that have contributed to the decline in living standards in our community.

But I don’t want to take away from the fact that illegal immigration is wrong. It’s unfair. It has consequences that we cannot anticipate and which produce burdens on our institutions, and we have to try to stop it.

I think we can do this with the focus on the border-crossing problem and a national, effective, forge-proof identification system which includes tough laws to make sure that the privacy of individuals is not invaded.

We cannot institute an identification system that is required to walk the streets or to pursue any of the privileges of participation in our society. It must be very carefully limited and circumscribed to cover everyone’s eligibility for employment and certain public programs. But we can do it. Once this is implemented, we’ll have an instrument with which immigration laws can be enforced.

*

I would also like to know why with all the great attention on illegal immigration, no one has taken a systematic look at the several industries in our state that live on their efforts to recruit, transport and exploit workers from across the border. Agriculture in this state survives on a large pool of undocumented immigrants’ displacing the earlier generation of undocumented workers who have legalized and who are, therefore, asking for more money and better conditions and are moving into urban areas.

A great strength of Southern California is its legal immigrant population. Look at the vibrant industries in our area, industries that are growing, small and middle-sized entrepreneurs. Many of them are immigrant owned and staffed. Many of them bring skills and technologies and a work ethic unparalleled in our own society. They’re going to add to the strength of America.