There’s a word that everybody has avoided in the national immigration debate: amnesty. Amnesty is the forbidden word. Amnesty is the cursed word.
President Bush always makes clear that his guest-worker program is “not an amnesty.”
Senators who favor legislation permitting undocumented immigrants to remain in the country shun the expression. Restrictionist congressmen consider any project aimed at providing any legal status to immigrants as amnesty, giving the word an evil connotation.
“At the Capitol, no one wants to talk about amnesty, due to the bitter taste left from the 1986 immigration reform,” says María Peña, who covers immigration for EFE News Services, the world’s largest Spanish-language wire service.
That law, signed by Ronald Reagan in the mid-1980s, gave legal status to 3 million people, and the immigration problem was not solved. A decade later, the undocumented population had grown to 7 million, and the strictest immigration legislation in US history was approved in 1996. This did not fix the problem.
Currently, there are 12 million immigrants in this country. Last December, the House of Representatives approved a punitive bill by Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner. The measure would make unlawful presence in the United States — currently a civil offense — a felony. Among the project supporters are our own federal legislators Patrick McHenry, Robin Hayes, Virginia Foxx and, of course, Sue Myrick — all affiliated with representative Tom Tancredo’s 92-member House Immigration Reform Caucus.
It does not matter how many restrictionist bills are discussed or passed, the immigration issue will not be solved without comprehensive and realistic reform. During a recent visit to Charlotte, Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, explained the key factor in this explosive problem using simple mathematics. A half-million undocumented immigrants find employment in the US every year, yet only 5,000 visas are annually assigned for low-skill jobs.
Law-abiding, undocumented immigrants wish to come out of the shadows. The best option for them and for this country is amnesty. Then, lawmakers must institute the most rigorous immigration legislation that punishes employers who hire irregular personnel and also establishes a realistic guest-worker program. After that, even I would support construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border.
Missing from this debate is how beneficial the 1986 amnesty was. No one has mentioned its economic impact on real estate, international airlines and government tax revenue agencies.
What those who oppose amnesty don’t realize is that their restrictionist policies have galvanized the undocumented community around the country. On March 7, 40,000 immigrants demonstrated on Capitol Hill. Three days later, 150,000 marched in Chicago, and a lesson emerged from the Windy City: Undocumented immigrants may not have voting power but they have economic power.
Hispanics called a boycott of Miller Brewing Company because the corporation contributed money to Sensenbrenner in 2004. Beer sales declined in Latino neighborhoods and Miller responded immediately with an apology.
Maybe the thousands who demonstrated in Charlotte this past weekend will be a warning sign for Carolina businesses. We have a saying in Spanish: Por la plata baila el perro. That translates, in plain English, to another saying: Money talks.
Rafael Prieto Zartha, a native of Colombia, is the editor of the local newspaper Mi Gente.
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 4, 2006.
