So far in the presidential campaign we’ve heard a lot about building walls and pregnant Mexican women. What we haven’t heard is an answer to this question: Why do people enter America illegally rather than wait in line? The answer: There is no line for workers seeking lower-skilled jobs.
In an often fact-free debate about immigration, let’s establish at least one fact: No employment visa category exists for year-round work for jobs that do not require a college degree.
The majority of individuals who enter (or stay in) the United States unlawfully work in jobs that would be considered year-round. Outside of jobs in agriculture, most jobs in America filled by foreign nationals would not be considered seasonal. However, U.S. immigration law has no place for jobs that are year-round and do not require a college degree.
In other words, Congress has prohibited legal employment for foreign nationals in the types of jobs that are typically filled by unauthorized immigrants. Foreign nationals with an undergraduate degree in a “specialty occupation” can fill year-round jobs utilizing H-1B visas. There is no equivalent visa for jobs in construction, hotels, or restaurants.
Employers can use H-2B visas to fill short-term seasonal jobs that are nonagricultural, such as crab picking in Maryland for three months. The H-2B quota is low and the regulations are cumbersome. H-2A visas are used for seasonal jobs in agriculture. The category has no annual limit but the bureaucratic process has limited the numbers such that most farm workers for field work are here unlawfully. An individual can immigrate legally if sponsored by a family member but, as a recent National Foundation for American Policy analysis shows, the wait time for those visas are approximately 20 years in most family categories for Mexicans.
The lack of a year-round visa for “lower-skilled” jobs has been a primary cause of illegal immigration. During the Bracero Program, increases in legal admissions led to dramatic reductions in illegal entry. Research shows illegal entry, as measured by apprehensions at the border, fell by 95 percent between 1953 and 1959.
Ending the Bracero Program in 1964, the lack of a follow-on program and the absence of a visa for year-round work in nonagricultural jobs started the trend in illegal immigration that we have seen up to the present day. It has also contributed to hundreds of migrant deaths each year.
The solution is to create a year-round visa for lower-skilled work with sufficient numbers and flexibility for both workers and employers.
A market-based approach would be best. Creating a category with numbers that are too low or with too much bureaucracy would negate the benefits for the U.S. economy and prevent the new category from reducing both migrant deaths and illegal immigration.
The bottom line: No wall will be impenetrable or will take into account other ways of entering or staying unlawfully in the United States. Increasing enforcement without providing a legal, market-based “safety valve” for legal workers will continue two trends: 1) increasing the power of human smuggling cartels and 2) encouraging people to stay long-term once they enter the U.S. to avoid repeating the costs and danger of crossing the border.
On almost every other issue, U.S. policymakers, particularly conservatives, acknowledge the market is more effective than policing or heavy government intervention in regulating supply. In this case, it is the supply of labor.
Relying on enforcement alone to prevent illegal immigration has been ineffective. Let’s try a novel approach, one that has already proven effective in reducing illegal immigration: Let’s give the market and legal visas a try.
