Immigration: the great American foundation

Last month, the Nevada Senate passed a resolution urging Congress to accomplish immigration reform. The resolution also acknowledged that the United States is a nation of immigrants. Indeed, our nation's foundation was built by immigrants, and the best way to preserve that foundation while addressing problems like undocumented immigration is a sensible, market-based immigration policy.

Some suggestions include Vice President Biden's call for Congress to approve a one-billion dollar aid package to Central America. The aid is supposed to improve border policing, build community centers, and prevent future waves of undocumented immigration like the one last year, when thousands of Central American children arrived at our country's southern border.

But money alone won't solve this problem — or any problem within our immigration system. Unless we address the fundamental errors in our current immigration policies, the United States will always struggle with similar floods of undocumented immigrants. This is an especially important issue for Nevada, which had an estimated 210,000 undocumented immigrants arrive in 2012, and is expected to receive thousands more in the coming years.

My organization was recently invited to testify before the United States Senate in support of immigration reform, and I was honored to have the opportunity to remind lawmakers of America's immigrant legacy. It is a story of waves of immigrants who looked to America as their own promised land, with dreams of a better life for their children.

Today, more than 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the U.S, comprising about 5 percent of the labor force. In Nevada, one out of every ten employees is undocumented. Because of restrictive immigration policies, they are left with a challenge to build a better future but live in the shadows. These men and women have a strong desire to contribute to our nation, and they bring with them a culture of hard work and ambitious dreams.

These are not bad people; it's bad law.

My grandfather came to this country as a bracero, at a time when America needed men to grow its food. As our GIs were winning battles in World War II, he was one of the thousands who came in droves to harvest the bounty of our farms and orchards, keeping families and troops fed.

A generation later, after years of farm work, my parents invested their entire savings in a small motel in central Washington state. Eventually, they moved up on the economic ladder. It is a testament to this nation and its free market system that so many of us who started out with nothing achieved prosperity.

As in my family's story, immigration is a response to world economic conditions. There is more immigration when the U.S. economy is strong and Latin American economies are weak. The reverse is true when conditions are different. America's recession in contrast with Mexico's growing economy has been a major factor in the recent drop of undocumented immigrants. According to the Pew Research Center, there were 5.9 million Mexican undocumented immigrants in the U.S. in 2012, compared with 6.4 million in 2009 and 6.9 million in 2007. In Nevada, where the Mexican immigrants represent 69 percent of the undocumented population, there were 20,000 fewer undocumented immigrants in 2012 than there were in 2009.

Our nation should continue to welcome opportunity seekers. They will help build a better nation, as immigrants have done for generations. A more robust legal immigration system would positively impact our economy, improve our nation's security, and decrease pressures on the border by dramatically reducing unlawful immigration.

We must also encourage other nations to adopt the same market-friendly policies that made America great. Low taxes, government transparency, respect for property rights, and sound money: all of these were key features that helped the U.S. become the greatest country in the history of the earth. These policies can help families in Latin America, and elsewhere as well.

But our immigration strategy cannot be to wait for our neighbors elsewhere in the Americas to achieve economic success. Solutions to reducing undocumented migration must legally recognize and account for the innate human thirst for rewarding work and a better life. If our policies take this into account, then everyone will be better off.

Daniel Garza is the Executive Director of the LIBRE Initiative, which maintains a state chapter based in Las Vegas.