Griego: Let's be sensible about illegal immigration

Published January 9, 2006 at midnight

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I went down to the corner of California and 22nd streets Saturday morning to check out the local version of the national Stop the Invasion protests coordinated in a number of states.

In Denver, opponents of illegal immigration chose to stake ground across the street from Centro Humanitario, a day-labor site for workers - male, female, legal, illegal. Most of them are homeless.

Picketing maternity wards and elementary schools must be on the schedule for another day.

I could hear the protest from a block away and discovered perhaps a hundred supporters of the Centro, crammed behind a barrier on the south side of California, facing down, I don't know, a dozen or so protesters on the north.

Each group was equipped with video cameras and slogans and signs. "Go back to Mexico," read one. "Go back to Europe," read a response.

Centro supporters hailed various civil rights heroes of the past with shouts of "Viva!" and a female protester, a Latina who had already screamed herself hoarse, mustered another holler, "You don't understand, this is America. We speak English here."

A fellow protester behind her waved a sign written in Spanish: Nuestro casa no es su casa.

The street may as well have been a chasm.

I'm thinking that if we are going to spend the foreseeable future screaming ourselves hoarse over illegal immigration, it might be useful to refocus on where some of the problem actually lies.

Either that or we can engage in the utterly pointless exercise of swapping good Mexican/bad Mexican anecdotes and contradictory cost/benefit studies and I could amuse myself by counting the number of times the letters to the editor contain the word "hordes" and "illegal invasion" followed by "but I'm not a racist/nativist/xenophobe."

So, here's what we're not going to talk about today: assimilation and the "curse" of multiculturalism. I don't want to hear about Spanish-speaking food service workers and laundry drying on chain-link fences and parties that are too loud in houses that are too crowded. I don't want to hear about the need for a common society with shared community values, the umbrella under which all these complaints fall.

Yes, it's worth discussing whether this larger issue is, in fact, a consequence of illegal immigration. But it's a separate issue and all the misguided, puffed-up patriot hand-wringing does squat to actually address illegal immigration.

Unless you seriously think that some garbage picker down in Mexico, starved by his government's indifference and emboldened by our government's complicity, is going to rethink his move north because in Denver the state legislature wants to make sure every high school graduate speaks English. Man, I was going to pay that scum of a human smuggler $2,000 to guide me across the desert past the bones of the doomed, but, no way, not anymore.

"What would you do, genius?" a sarcastic reader asked me some time back. Refocus on the immediate problem.

Fact: The border must be tightened as a matter of national security. Fact: The federal government must sanction employers who hire illegal immigrants. Fact: These two things alone are no solution.

Any sensible and humane solution, as I've said before, must include an opportunity for those who are here now, those who have been working steadily, paying taxes, and who have not committed a serious crime to become legal residents.

A sensible solution would also expand opportunities for foreign workers to come here legally. Some people disagree with that.

I heard former Colorado governor Dick Lamm say at a debate Saturday night that rather than importing workers, businesses should be going out to every barrio and ghetto to recruit, train and hire America's poor. And I thought the liberal within him had died.

I went to a seminar last week sponsored by the Colorado Bar Association called, "What Every Journalist Should Know About Immigration Law." I learned some things I didn't know and I'll leave you with a few to mull over before you fire off that next letter to your elected representative.

Sixty-six thousand new visas a year are available for temporary, seasonal workers. Nationwide. These are the visas used by employers who prove they cannot find American workers. They're the kind granted to employees of Colorado's ski resorts, the workers who have to return home within one year.

About the same number of visas are available for temporary, professional workers, those requiring a four-year degree, such as nurses, teachers and high-tech workers. With some exceptions, these folks can work here no longer than six years.

In the 2006 federal fiscal year - which started on Oct. 1, 2005 - 65,000 visas for professional workers were made available. All were gone by the end of the day.

To get either of these two visas - and they are the largest immigrant worker categories - employers must demonstrate they will pay prevailing wages. It's a guarantee that protects both American and foreign workers.

That same guarantee does not exist for workers in year-round trades most likely to hire illegal immigrants, trucking, elder care, food processing, manufacturing, construction, meat packing.

Why? Because no visa for such workers exists.

In some of the fastest-growing sectors of our economy, if an employer cannot find a willing American worker - and, granted, some don't even bother to look - there is no way to legally hire an illegal immigrant.

That's a problem worth focusing upon.

griegot@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2699

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