With the Senate immigration overhaul bill all but dead, it is useful to reflect on the law we do have, why it is so broken, and how those fractures affect the Rocky Mountain West.

There is an almost total disconnect between real life in our region, especially its economic future, and the United States’ current immigration law.

The existing statute reflects an East Coast take on what the nation needed 30 years ago. Amendments since have focused on enforcement with no attention paid to either the need for labor in industries key to western economies or the needs of undocumented workers who have provided that labor in increasing numbers, but outside the current law.

There is a very good reason 12 million people, approximately 3 million in the Rocky Mountain states, are living and working outside the current legal immigration structure. They can’t be legal.

Our current law has absolutely no provision for them to be granted work visas, so that workers must cross without visas and employers must hire without Social Security cards. The result is a huge shadow land in which workers have no benefits or recognition, law-abiding employers are pushed to break the law, and the country is stuck with the moral and practical equivalent of a system that looks and feels like slavery.

How did it come to this? The current statute has two primary paths to green cards: family-based and employment-based immigration. These two paths allow lawful entry to the United States under very strict conditions that do not reflect national or Rocky Mountain needs.

Employment-based Immigration

Employment-based immigration allows only people who have at least the equivalent of a U.S. university four-year degree to even be considered for admission. In fact, the four-year degree quota is oversubscribed for those countries that historically produce the most scientists and engineers, China and Russia, so that only someone with a master’s degree or higher qualifies.

The category intended for people who have “essential skills,” i.e., construction workers, health care attendants, nannies, gardeners, resort industry workers, harvesters and farm workers, meat packers and horse trainers, is so backlogged the U.S. government no longer even estimates the number of years it would take to finally be considered for admission. That category has only 10,000 visas a year, a statistical non-event in terms of the U.S. job market. Someone from Mexico seeking a visa in the essential skills category, which still requires at least a high school diploma, would wait more than 30 years to be interviewed for the job and lawful admission.

In addition to having no useable provision for the blue-collar workers the Rocky Mountain states need in increasing numbers, our current law ignores the needs of our technical sectors. All Rocky Mountain states want to beef up their high-tech economies. Most of our states have set up technology corridors and tax incentive packages. Such efforts are useless unless the manpower to staff them is available. Right now it is not.

China and India graduate hundreds of thousands of degreed electronic and computer engineers and scientists each year; the U.S. graduates about 5% of those countries’ numbers. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that 100,000 new computer engineers are needed each year; the United States graduates about 10,000. More telling, approximately 50% of the U.S. graduates in the hard sciences are foreign students, a figure that increases with the level of education. It is not uncommon for 90% of advanced math PhD candidates in some of our major universities to be foreign students. While many of them want to remain in the United States, our immigration laws are so punitive and slow that most are forced to leave the country. Of course, they are employable throughout the world, but in direct competition with U.S. business.

The technology industry broadly defined is the most important global economic engine now and will be for the next quartercentury. The technology industry, in turn, runs on engineering and science. The quantity and quality of a nation’s engineers and scientists will determine which countries can compete effectively in the dynamic information technology market. Without being able to recruit and retain the best and the brightest in the world, the United States will trail its competitors. Only a robust and focused immigration law that enables U.S. industry to hire this scarce talent on a global basis can solve our core, and continuing, labor problem in high tech.

People come for jobs that need filling, whether the law provides for them or not. Whenever a “have” nation exists next to a “have not” nation, movement will occur. That dynamic is virtually unstoppable when – as is true with the United States and its neighbors to the south -- there are historical, social and political connections going back over a hundred years that have created access, expectations and trade between the haves and have-nots.

The demographics of Mexico, a large young population with entry-level skills, dovetail with the United States’ aging population with limited numbers interested or available to handle service jobs. The true picture of what all those undocumented workers are doing in the United States is no mystery to Rocky Mountain residents. They are washing our cars, our dishes, our windows, caring for our young and old, building our homes, herding our cattle, picking our crops, packing our meat, cleaning our high-rises. Our lifestyles depend on them.

Rather than see immigration as a hostile takeover, the United States should remember its own history, embrace the good fortune that provides us with a close labor pool for the very labor we need, and stop marginalizing and demonizing the very people who support our comforts.

Family-based immigration

Family-based immigration’s categories are based on familial proximity to a U.S. citizen or permanent resident [green card holder]. Spouses, parents and minor, unmarried children of U.S. citizens who are over 21 years of age are given top priority and may immigrate without any quota. Spouses and minor, unmarried children of permanent residents, however, are given global annual quotas that are broken into country-based quotas. Since no distinction is made among the countries, those seeking to immigrate from Luxembourg are under the same numerical limits as those from Mexico.
The result is a huge backlog of would-be immigrants who come from countries that have deep ties to the United States.

When a country’s annual quota, roughly 20,000 “green cards” a year, expires, a waiting line develops based upon the date the U.S. citizen or permanent resident filed the initial petition with the U.S. immigration agency. The backlogs can be so long that the green card becomes an annuity, or a retirement program, rather than a realistic plan. If you are a citizen from Mexico, for example, married to a U.S. permanent resident, you will wait approximately 15 years for a green card to become available. During that wait, the Mexican spouse has no legal right to be in the United States, even though that is where his/her spouse lives.

The backlog numbers are greatest for countries with historical, social and family ties to the United States: the Philippines, Mexico and the Dominican Republic are all backlogged decades in the family-based categories.

Even U.S. citizens are blocked from immigrating their family members. Brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens have a waiting period of approximately 20 years, no matter what country they come from. Adult children of permanent residents wait so long that the U.S. government cannot even estimate the wait.

Remember that the law prohibits people from being in the United States during these endless waits. Anyone who enters before his or her elusive green card is granted is deportable and then excludable for life for this civil law infraction. If one enters during the wait, is deported, and then attempts to re-enter, the law imposes criminal sanctions in addition to a lifetime bar from immigrating. So much for family values.

Of course, these delays often do not keep nuclear families apart. The drive to be together is so profound, and predictable, that families do whatever is required to be together, even crossing borders without documentation or over-staying lawful entry periods.