At ASU West during our second annual Justice and the Border forum. Students of the class are assigned to go to an event. The panal discussion I chose was the
“The Economics of Migration”
Harry Garewal, CEO Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, says that immigrants working here are improving the economy. One example of how they are contributing to the economy is paying social security and not even being able to benefit from it. The same things with taxes illegal immigrants are paying taxes and due to the fact that they cannot file to get money back and the beginning of the year they are giving money and not getting back. He never made it clear whether or not he thinks that we should help them become legal, but does think immigrants are necessary to boost our economy. I think he was leaving the legalization up to Sally.
Sally Spray is the Director of International Trade for the Arizona Department of Commerce. She also migrated here. She talked about how difficult it was to receive her green card, if I remember correctly she said that it took her three years. Her first point is that the United States is a country founded off immigrants and that we pride ourselves on that. She said that most people come here to work and to have a better life, but when people come here with bad intentions like the people that planned the September 11th bombing, it forces us to have stricter immigration policies. She said it is even harder to get your green card now because the background checks are much stricter. It could take up to three months before people get their visa’s and by then the job may not be open anymore. In the public eye this is a good thing, but according to Sally it is affecting things negatively on a larger scale, like tourism, business from other countries, explorers, recruiting people for professional jobs has gotten much harder. It is harder to do trade with global businesses, since they can’t get people to America to do meetings. For instance, a Convention that would have brought ten million dollars got discouraged because the background check to get in America is so much more difficult than for other countries. In Sally’s final argument she state that stricter requirements are depriving America of money and culture. The question she leaves us to ponder is how can we improve security but keep internal trade.
Wayne Oliver, Sundt Corporation and Arizona Chapter of Associated General Contractors, works for a company founded on European Immigrants and says there is still a need for immigrant employees. He states that it is important to have people with legal papers. Wayne discusses how business want to benefit from cheap labor. Illegal immigrants without citizenship is costing the taxpayers 25 million dollars. He feels that this is the reason for the cost of health care rising because instead of having insurance illegal immigrants are going to emergency care and unable to pay. He feels that in order to stay competitive in labor against world trade people need to constantly be reeducated and retrained.
The panel discussion seemed one sided. They also didn't provide any answer or propose a solution to the problem. It seems that giving citizenship to illegal immigrants will benefit everyone, so they can have the same rights as well as responsibilities of American citizens.