To Achieve Real Immigration Reform, Put The Free Market Front And Center
One hundred years removed from its peak, Ellis Island continues to represent all that America has done to open its arms to immigrants. Unlike today’s broken immigration system, the focus was on hard work, and we allowed the market, rather than the federal government, to determine how many immigrants passed into America each year. Washington can start to fix our immigration system by returning power to employers through expanded guest-worker programs–letting the free market do the job federal bureaucracies are failing to.
The shift in our immigration policy from a largely market-based system to a more red tape-laden, quota-based one has forced the rate of legal immigration far below the market’s demands. The government grants a limited number of citizen-track visas each year regardless of how many unskilled foreign laborers the economy needs to function, creating unskilled labor shortages and requiring businesses to–often unknowingly–turn to illegal immigrants to mow lawns, clean hotel rooms, and perform other essential jobs that many American-born job seekers prefer not to take.
Although Washington is quick to identify illegal immigration as a problem to score political points, lawmakers often don’t acknowledge that our out-of-synch laws make undocumented border crossings much more likely. Because quotas on immigration are far below the market’s demands, the economy is perpetually reliant on millions of undocumented immigrants. Foreign laborers have every reason to come to America for “shovel-ready” jobs, but neither the incentive nor the ability to work through the years of administrative red tape that legal immigration requires.
The government grants a very limited number of guest-worker visas each year, but the American labor market creates seasonal demand for millions of foreign workers. The workers unable to secure one of the few temporary work visas have the option to cross the border illegally, or “get in line” and wait the 20 years, on average, it takes the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service to process a visa application from Mexico. When a construction project needs to move forward this week, there is incentive for neither the employer or the immigrant to wait until 2033 for the government to approve a visa.
Because the present system merely encourages illegal immigration, Congress needs to consider reform options that would put employers back in the drivers’ seat and recast the federal bureaucracy in a supporting role. One idea that merits more discussion is an expansion of the guest-worker program. Often referred to as the “Red Card Solution,” this plan would create an unlimited supply of guest-worker visas that foreigners could use on a short-term basis to fill seasonal jobs.
By removing the arbitrary cap, this plan would allow the market to determine how many guest workers are allowed to enter the country legally. To obtain a “red card,” a foreigner would have to pass a criminal background check and find work in the United States–and would only be allowed to stay until their job is finished. Although the government would retain an oversight role in this system, individual employers would be tasked with processing applications and granting approval, allowing these visas to be turned around quickly and workers to come and go as the labor market dictates.
Since red cards for guest workers would be temporary in nature, they would come with no pathway to citizenship attached, and thus would not be “amnesty” for those who have entered the country illegally. Rather, this system would acknowledge that our country relies on far more temporary foreign laborers than the conventional immigration system allows, and create a middle ground that allows immigrants seeking legitimate work to enter without running afoul of the law.
Immigration is one of many sectors of public policy where well-intentioned government regulations have failed in practice, and market-based reforms can right the ship. Reforming guest-worker visas to meet economic demands of the economy can play a small part in fixing our broken immigration system.