Posted: 07/21/10 12:43
by Dave Mindeman
The immigration debate gets heated and contentious, but I often feel that we are just dancing around the issue and never focus on the core problem.
Conservatives laser in on the illegal part. While liberals tend to focus on the discrimination part. The problem is you have to deal with both... and you have to deal with them equally.
Argue with a conservative and the ultimate comeback will be "what part of illegal don't you understand?". Yes, there are illegal immigrants in this country and more trying to get here, but lumping entire ethnic goups under a problematic umbrella is just as wrong as ignoring illegal status.
Liberals probably tend to minimize illegal status. There are laws involved -- bad laws -- but laws never the less. Unless we deal with enforcing the law or fixing it, liberals will never gain the high ground either.
The main problem is that we have to do something....about all of it.
One portion of this that conservatives need to think about it is that minority entrepeneurs can help our economy. According to Census and labor statistics, minority owned businesses are growing at a remarkable rate in numbers and dollars.
The number of minority-owned businesses increased by 45.6 percent to 5.8 million between 2002 and 2007, more than twice the national rate of all U.S. businesses, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In addition, the number of women-owned businesses increased 20.1 percent during the same period. The total number of U.S. businesses increased between 2002 and 2007 by 18.0 percent to 27.1 million.
This has been broken down by ethnic groups as well:
Hispanic-owned businesses increased by 43.6 percent.....Over the same period, receipts of Hispanic-owned.... increased by 55.5 percent.
Now, with the US in a deep recession, shouldn't we be giving all the encouragement we can to such ventures? It should be pretty obvious that Hispanic-owned businesses are not going to be operated by illegal immigrants. There is too much paperwork and regulation for that to happen. But how many of these entrepeneurs are we turning away at the border? How much growth are we saying "no" to?
These fledgling minority owned companies are built on hard work and ultimate risk taking. They are not Fortune 500 companies. A lot of them are family owned and financed by mortgages on their homes and property. They put everything they have into these businesses. Isn't that what America is about?
Many of them have families and realtives on the other side of the border. Our laws continue to hamper efforts to reunite them. We desperately need immigration reform.
Studies have been done that point to the benefits of this reform. A study by Dr. Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda from the University of California can be summed up this way:
Researchers point to data that suggests legalizing undocumented workers would be a boon to the U.S. economy. Comprehensive immigration reform would yield $1.5 trillion to the U.S. GDP over a 10-year period, generate billions in additional tax revenue and consumer spending, as well as create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
We can talk endlessly about building walls and detection technology and adding law enforcement presence, but that is the side of the coin that builds animosity and tears us apart.
Let's bring the entrepeneurial engine in this to the forefront. Let's let their hard work, work for America.
It is time for immigration reform. It will benefit everyone.
