Op-ed on immigration published in the Arizona Daily Star on April 10, 2006

Plenty of jobs, but not enough green cards

Arizonans know that America's immigration system is broken. Twelve million undocumented persons live in America — more than twice the entire population of Arizona.

Up to 600,000 of them live in Arizona, according to the Pew Hispanic Center — one in every 10 residents and one in every 16 employees statewide.

Our dysfunctional immigration system encourages this illegal immigration because it ignores its cause: the risks that enterprising people will take to work jobs Americans shun.

My industry and others, including construction and health care, are growing faster than America's economy, creating entry-level positions faster than Americans' desire to fill them.

Yet while our economy added 5 million jobs in the past 30 months, only 10,000 green cards are available for service-industry jobs annually. No wonder 1 in 20 employees in America is undocumented.

Recognizing these many failings and aware that we can't simply round up and deport 12 million people who don't want to be found, immigration foes reply simply: enforce the law.

Such thinking, epitomized by a House of Representatives bill passed last year, accordingly demands severe penalties for undocumented employees and their employers. They hope to make life so hard for these workers that they quit their jobs, leave their homes and relocate with their families outside America.

To this end, the House bill would make the 1 in 16 Arizona employees who are undocumented "aggravated felons" — along with murderers, rapists and drug traffickers. This would make them forever ineligible for a work visa.

In the restaurant industry, the House would fine even community diners $25,000 for immigration paperwork errors. Yet history shows that stringent penalties and fines have only served to push the undocumented further into the shadows.

Instead, our laws should recognize how we benefit when someone takes a job that others spurn.
Research out of the University of California demonstrates that immigration has led to higher wages for American-born workers — including those without a high school diploma — with cities where immigration is highest recording the biggest gains.

Experience confirms this research.

In a restaurant, fewer busboys and kitchen hands means fewer servers, chefs and restaurant managers; and fewer jobs for restaurant suppliers. The same is true throughout our economy.

The day-care worker makes possible working parents' paychecks, and the construction worker keeps engineers, architects and building site managers employed.

In the restaurant business, the number of food-service industry jobs is projected to grow 1 1/2 times as fast as the U.S. labor force over the next 10 years and yet the numbers of 16- to 24-year-old age group in the labor force — critical for entry-level positions — is set not to grow at all.
Only a guest-worker program will allow us to fill the jobs that all of us depend upon.

Understanding this important truth, many Republican and Democrat senators back strengthening enforcement at the border and creating a guest-worker program.
For the sake of America's security, values and economy, let's hope that both of Arizona's senators support this common-sense plan.

Steven C. Anderson is president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association, www.restaurant.org.