Entry-Level Answers for the Long Term

SACRAMENTO — What’s wrong with this picture? Several hundred thousand welfare recipients are forced to look desperately for jobs that their advocates say don’t exist. Meanwhile, at least as many illegal immigrants work at jobs that apparently nobody else wants.

Defies logic, you say. The fix is simple. Boot out the people who sneaked into the country illegally and give their jobs to American citizens and legal immigrants. Whether they want them or not.

Simplistic, you’ll hear. You’ll also hear a lot of mumbling and clearing of throats.

Welfare and immigrant rights advocates are members of the same political coalition within the Democratic Party. And although these liberals will say, “Well, sure” illegal immigrants should not be taking jobs away from welfare recipients, you don’t see them really trying to do much about it.

Employers and their advocates within the Republican Party likewise look a bit sheepish at the mention of this delicate incongruity. Conservatives hem and haw that the illegal immigrants are, after all, good workers; welfare recipients lack a work ethic.

Besides, the foreigners work cheap--sometimes cheaper than the minimum wage law permits. People living illegally are easy to exploit. Americans won’t take that stuff.

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Occasionally I’ve asked Gov. Pete Wilson about all this. It’s not in his nature to hem and haw.

“An employer wants good workers. Some welfare recipients turn out to be exactly that kind,” the governor told me last August at the Republican Convention. Then he added: “Illegal immigrants who are willing to work hard are obviously prized above welfare recipients who are in rotten shape and don’t work hard. But there’s no reason they couldn’t [work hard]. The reason they don’t is because they don’t have to. They’re on welfare.

“Hell, a lot of welfare case workers and welfare rights advocates sneeringly dismiss certain jobs as unworthy, beneath the dignity of welfare recipients.”

Soon after that, President Clinton signed the landmark welfare reform bill. It will force family aid recipients to find a job after two years and sets a five-year lifetime limit on cash benefits. Wilson now has proposed an even tougher implementation plan for California. It’s so complicated that reading it is like wading through duck hunting regs, but basically the governor wants to force welfare newcomers to find work after only one year.

That would mean creating around 600,000 new jobs this year. But the state generated only roughly half that many in 1996. And there already are 1 million Californians looking for work.

Here are some other relevant statistics: An estimated 125,000 illegal immigrants enter California each year. There are perhaps 2 million total living here, roughly half of them in Los Angeles County. They’re drawn by jobs--some crop picking, but also car washing, maid service and other entry-level work. Why not make those jobs available for unskilled welfare recipients?

Bumping illegal immigrants is not going to solve the welfare problem. But it could be part of the mix, along with child care, transportation, supplemental aid and job training.

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This presumes, of course, that companies would be willing to hire people on welfare.

“A lot of employers who now employ illegals probably are skeptical about [welfare] replacements because they don’t think they know how to work, but under the new system they’ll have to learn,” the governor told me recently as he was drafting his welfare proposal.

The governor also conceded, “In some cases, employers have been delighted to hire illegals because they could exploit them [while] they were living in the shadows.”

Democrats chastise Republicans for not nailing companies that illegally hire undocumented workers. The GOP answers that because of phony ID cards, employers can’t tell who’s legal and who isn’t. Wilson wants “a tamper-proof system of verification.”

Democratic legislators certainly will kill the governor’s proposed one-year aid limit. They’re also looking beyond minimum wage work. They want to create better paying jobs--private and public--and train welfare moms to handle them. Offer child care.

A bill by Sen. Hilda Solis (D-El Monte) would exempt grandparents raising their grandkids from the new work requirements.

Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) says “reinvest every penny” of welfare savings back into the safety net and turn it into “a trampoline that helps a family bounce back into the economic mainstream.”

All that makes sense.

But this isn’t either/or. If California and Washington really are serious about both reforming welfare and fighting illegal immigration, this seems an opportune moment.