Bush's Doomed Immigration Gamble

You have to give George W. Bush this: Even when he is wrong, he is brave.

Look at him on Monday: He has sunk below 40% in the polls, the lowest level in his presidency, depressed by the war in Iraq and high gasoline prices. So what does he do? He travels to Arizona, a state struggling especially hard with the costs of illegal immigration, and there rededicates himself to the most unpopular items in his whole domestic agenda: amnesty for illegal aliens and a guestworker program to bring even more aliens into the country.

ThatÕs quite the way the president framed the issue of course. He appeared in front of a big green sign that read, "Protecting AmericaÕs Borders." He promised a series of tough actions to enhance enforcement of the immigration laws, including an endorsement of fences and electronic surveillance on the Mexican border and a big increase in the budget for the immigration service.

But these tough promises function merely as cover for the presidentÕs true liberalizing policy.

The problem for the president is that his party knows the truth - and resents it.

American immigration policy is already among the most open in the world. The United States accepts more than 1 million legal immigrants a year. Another 1 million are thought to arrive illegally. Many of those illegals stay for relatively short times, but enough remain to push the illegal total to an estimated 10 million. Altogether, almost 30 million Americans are now foreign-born.

In Europe, AmericaÕs immigration policies are widely seen as hugely successful. That is not how things are perceived here. As AmericaÕs immigration policies have become more permissive, AmericaÕs immigrants have fared less well.

In 1970, about one-quarter of immigrants who had spent at least 10 years in the United States lived at or near poverty as compared to 35% of the native-born.

In 2000, poverty and near-poverty among the native-born had been reduced to 28% - while 41% of immigrants who had lived in the United States for 10 years or more were poor or near poor.

Because immigrants are so much more likely to be poor, they exert greater downward pressure on the wages of less-skilled Americans. That is of course one reason that big American employers tend to favor easy immigration - and why the presidentÕs working class supporters so strongly oppose it.

For over the past 25 years, the Republican party has evolved into the party of AmericaÕs white working class. In the 2004 election, Kerry carried 14 of AmericaÕs 25 richest zip code - but Bush beat Kerry among white women without a college degree. White working class men strongly backed Bush in both 2000 and 2004.

Easy immigration is bad public policy because it worsens so many of AmericaÕs most difficult social problems from poverty to crime to healthcare (a majority of AmericaÕs uninsured are foreign-born) - to national security.

Easy immigration is also bad politics, because it frightens and offends so many of the Republican partyÕs core supporters. Since 9/11, polls have consistently found that majorities of Americans think immigration policy too lax - and regard illegal immigration as a very serious problem. Three-quarters of all Americans oppose amnesty for illegals.

Bush knows all this. He goes ahead anyway - because he thinks it right, and because he is willing to gamble the RepublicansÕ current support in hope of gaining votes among the Hispanic newcomers. So far the gamble has failed, and the presidentÕs immigration policies have done nothing but lower his standard. It is wrong. But it is brave.