With 11.9 million undocumented residents in the United States and
illegal entrants accounting for nearly half of the low-skilled foreign
workforce, there is widespread agreement that the current U.S.
immigration system is broken. Past reform agendas have emphasized
strengthening border security, increasing the number of visas for
foreign guest workers, and defining a path to legal residence for
illegal immigrants already living in the country. When the Obama
administration addresses immigration reform-as it has promised to do
before 2012-should it pick up where previous reform proposals left off?
In Regulating Low Skilled Immigration in the United States, Gordon H.
Hanson contends that efforts to curtail illegal entry will fail unless
policymakers design a system that is responsive to market signals that
encourage individuals to move from low-wage labor markets in regions
such as Central America to the more robust labor market in United
States. On the whole, immigration benefits the U.S. economy by raising
national income and making domestic capital more productive. However,
increasing the low-skilled population may also increase the net tax
burden on native residents. Successful reform depends on attracting
immigrants with strong incentives to be productive laborers who will not
place excessive demands on public services. Illegal immigration, as
regulated by market forces, largely satisfies these criteria, but at the
cost of undermining the rule of law and leaving the immigrant population
unprotected. To create a better system for managing low-skilled
immigration, Hanson argues, Congress should preserve the features of the
current regime that serve the country well and strip away the features
that corrode civil society and harm immigrants.
