In a rousing speech, the president fixates on some misleading details
By D.K. | WASHINGTON, DC
BARACK OBAMA gives a good speech: that much is clear. For your British correspondent, inured to the lazy xenophobic rhetoric of his country’s politicians, it is hard not to be uplifted by the president’s appeal to Americans to accept immigrants as equals. Giving the example of a brilliant young girl from Nevada, he asked Americans: “Are we a nation that kicks out a striving, hopeful immigrant…or are we a nation that finds a way to welcome her in?” A British politician would never ask such a question, for fear that the answer would be “nope, kick her out.”
But, for all of the inspiring rhetoric Mr Obama produces, his speech underlined the way all politicians seem to approach immigration in broadly the same way, regardless of where they are from. For example, take the obsession with borders. The very first thing that Mr Obama said that he has done is tighten border security: “Today, we have more agents and technology deployed to secure our southern border than at any time in our history.” This supports the common idea—reinforced by Republican complaints—that most illegal immigrants smuggle themselves over the border. In America nearly any time immigration is discussed, so too is border security. Yet this connection is not as obvious as it sounds.
The reality is that even in America, a country with two huge and porous land borders, half of the people living without legal status probably arrived legally and then overstayed their visas. According to research by the Pew Foundation, a think tank, two of the states with the most illegal immigrants are New York and New Jersey. The states with the fastest growing illegal immigrant population are New Jersey, Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. You will notice that not one of those states is on the Mexican border. Meanwhile, the illegal immigrant population in California, New Mexico and Arizona—all border states—has declined. About a third of America’s undocumented migrants have come from countries that are not in Latin America. It does not seem a stretch to imagine that most of the estimated 450,000 Indians living in America without proper paperwork did not arrive through Mexico.
A second point Mr Obama made, about the costs of immigration: “Business owners who offer their workers good wages and benefits see the competition exploit undocumented immigrants by paying them far less.” In this, he again echoes the opponents of immigration: immigrants enable exploitative employers, who would otherwise have to pay proper wages. But Mr Obama has this the wrong way around. Illegal immigrants do not cause exploitative employers to put Americans out of a job. Rather, the toleration of exploitative employers is what creates the demand for illegal immigrants.
To illustrate this, look to Europe. In August, your correspondent was standing on the seafront in Calais, France, asking young penniless Africans why they were so desperate to hitch a ride over the channel, when France is just as wealthy as Britain. The answer is actually simple. In France, finding work without an identity card is extremely difficult. That is why in Paris, unlike in London, tourists often find themselves accosted by African men selling beads or running scams. Africans living in London without paperwork don’t need to sell trinkets to get by: they can find better-paid work cleaning offices.
As well as its land border with Mexico, one of the reasons that America is so attractive to illegal immigrants in the first place is that it is so easy to build a life here without proper paperwork. The only identification most employers ask for is a social security number, which is easily borrowed. It is perfectly possible to open a bank account—or to survive without one—to rent a home and to pay bills without much identification at all (your correspondent speaks from experience). In many states, it is now even possible to get a temporary driving licence. Large numbers of established migrants mean that there are plenty of people from the same cultural background to help new arrivals find work, housing, wives and husbands. In other western economies, if regulation does not make life difficult for people without paperwork, other factors can. Strong unions often lock up industries, keeping immigrants from taking poorly paid jobs (indeed, America has a long history of unions doing just this). Cultural hostility can prevent people from blending in.
America is arguably uniquely open to people who want to live here. Not just legally, but also culturally and economically. And thank goodness, in your correspondent’s opinion. But Mr Obama’s speech is an inevitable consequence of this. If you make it easy for people who come to America to overstay their visas, find friends and get jobs, then it is inevitable that some will build lives. And then it will be impossible, both practically and morally, to deport them. Thus America will always have illegal immigrants—and nearly every president, eventually, will have to make this sort of speech. All the more reason to make it uplifting then.
