EXECUTIVE-DECISION MEMORANDUM

To: The President of the United States
From: D. N. Forser, Chief of Staff
Re: Immigration--Lock and Load?
Date: April 8, 1996

In 1994 voters in California overwhelmingly approved "Proposition 187," the referendum that would deny nearly all public benefits, including schooling and many forms of medical care, to illegal immigrants. In 1995, a bipartisan national commission on immigration reform endorsed much tougher measures to detect and deport illegal immigrants. This year, the House of Representatives has already endorsed a measure that would deport LEGAL immigrants if they become "public charges" by applying for welfare during their first seven years in the country. The same bill would also reduce the quotas for most categories of legal immigration.

The United States has been built by immigration--and wracked by debates about each successive wave of it. Very soon you will be called upon to make clear decisions about the nation's immigration policy. You will need to support or oppose a series of Bills moving through the Congress. You will need to make statements to other nations, principally Mexico, affected by our immigration policy. You will face decisions about executive orders governing our handling of refugees and other immigration-related issues.

Most of all, as occupant of the presidential "bully pulpit," you will have the opportunity to speak to your fellow citizens about how to view the impact of ongoing immigration on our national life. You will take that opportunity or you will let it pass--and you will have to live with history's judgment about whether your decision was right.

Immigration is a complex issue. Before making an Excecutive Decision, you should decide which problems related to immigration you think are most important. Click here to read a memo on the various questions about and consequences of our current immigration policy.

Mr./Ms. President, we've outlined five different approaches you could take in formulating America's immigration policy.

B. Breathing Room. Impose a short-term moratorium on immigration. (Please read this brief argument in favor of Option B.)

C. Encourage LEGAL immigration while discouraging the ILLEGAL flow. (Please read this brief argument in favor of Option C.)

D. Encourage more-selective immigration, so we get the people with the skills this country needs(Please read this brief argument in favor of Option D.)

E. Open the Borders. Revolutionize our relationship with Mexico by recognizing that functionally we are becoming one economy. (Please read this brief argument in favor of Option E.)

ARE WE SIMPLY GETTING TOO MANY IMMIGRANTS?

When the United States won the Second World War, its population was under 150 million. When George Bush took office the population was under 250 million. Now it is over 260 million--and according to Census Bureau projections the population is on its way to more than 390 million by the middle of the next century.

The United States is still uncrowded when compared to Japan, India, the Netherlands. But even we feel environmental pressure--which each new resident increases. Topsoil is disappearing as agriculture grows more intensive. Our fishing, forestry, water, and energy resources are under increasing stress.

As birthrates among American citizens fall, immigration is becoming more and more the source of America's population growth. The Census Bureau analyses (summarized by the Federation for American Immigration Reform) suggest that immigration will be responsible for virtually ALL the increase to a projected population of 390 million in the next century. Surely environmental prudence suggests that we slow this process.

ARE WE GETTING THE WRONG IMMIGRANTS?

Economists have found over the decades that immigrants often outperform native citizens in distinctive ways. They often create their own businesses (largely because language barriers and other obstacles keep them from going the normal corporate route). They have high savings rates. Their children do well in school. Eventually their median income exceeds that of the native-born population.

But this is not true of all immigrants. Those who come with high skill levels--for example, the scientists who fled as refugees from Europe before the Second World War--often use those skills well in the American economy. Those who come as peasants--for example, the second and third waves of Indochinese refugees--often do not. Those who come as aged dependants rarely make the full adjustment in either language or economic behavior. And those who come as "sojourners," voyaging back and forth to their home country, are distinctly less successful than those who make a full break with their original homeland.

Some of today's immigrants have the traits that build investment, innovation, and assimilation in the American work force. But a significant share, at least half, come from groups that historically are less likely to innovate: peasants (mainly refugees); aged dependents; and sojourners, mainly illegal immigrants from Mexico. If we are going to expose our country to the disruptive effects that immigration historically brings we might as well do so in the most beneficial way.

ARE WE GETTING TOO MANY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS?

America is supposed to be a society that offers equal opportunity under the rule of law. Illegal immigration makes a mockery of that goal.

The widely tolerated presence of illegal immigrants is an affront to Americans who believe in "playing by the rules." The immigrants themselves are a standing invitation to lawless treatment--as shown recently in California, where illegal immigrants from Thailand were found to be working in conditions resembling slave labor. Economic studies have shown that a reserve army of illegal labor depresses wages and working conditions for the least-skilled American workers. It is these unskilled workers, we need hardly remind you, whose living standards have dropped over the last decade, making America a more polarized and brutal economy. In the city of El Paso alone, an average of 20 Mexican mothers cross the border each day so that their children can be born on U.S. soil and become American citizens. This clearly flouts U.S. law and undermines the sense that rules will be applied evenly.

And of course there is the problem of immigrants who are criminals in the normal sense. According to recent reports, as many as one quarter of all inmates in federal prisons are in the country illegally. A nation built on respect for law can ill afford to tolerate such lawlessness.

DOES CURRENT FEDERAL IMMIGRATION POLICY PUT A DISPROPORTIONATE BURDEN ON CERTAIN STATES?

Immigration law is of course a national policy. But the burden is grossly unfair at the state level. Three states--California, Texas, and Florida--probably absorb as much of the impact of immigration as the other forty-seven states combined. These calculations cannot be precise because they include an uncounted illegal presence. But these three states have since 1980 absorbed nearly half of the nation's total flow of legal immigrants.

Resistance to immigration in these states, understandably, is mounting. Soon after California officials estimated that the state was paying more than $1 billion per year for medical care for illegal immigrants, the state's citizens approved Proposition 187, a sweeping ban on service for illegals. California has filed a $10 billion suit against the federal government for costs associated with the federal government's failure to patrol the borders and enforce its immigration policy. School districts in California, Texas, and Florida spend large sums to teach the children of illegal immigrants--most of whom pay no property taxes. The school districts with the greatest burden are usually those whose American taxpayers are the poorest. It is hard to defend a national policy that places the greatest demand on the poorest citizens of these three states.

WHAT'S THE IMPACT OF IMMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION POLICY ON RACIAL TENSIONS?

Through most of its history American culture has been majority white-European and minority African-American. Racial tensions between these groups, originating in slavery, are at the root of America's deepest social problems.

The U.S. government began deliberately to change the country's ethnic mix in 1964. For the previous half century, immigration policy was skewed in favor of further European immigration. From 1964 on America's legal immigrants have been 80 percent Asian and Latin American. The illegal immigration flow has also been heavily non-European. Good, bad, or indifferent in its effects, what is happening now because of this shift represents an engineered change in the racial composition of a country--an experiment very few other societies have willingly undertaken.

Most Americans are reluctant to discuss this issue in public. Yet Pat Buchanan's success suggests that the concerns remain just beneath the surface. They are compounded by fears of linguistic separatism, mainly driven by the expansion of a Spanish-language culture in Florida, Texas, and California--and driven also by increasing tensions between American blacks and the Hispanic or Asian immigrants with whom they often compete for jobs.

America is a more absorptive society than most. But perhaps even we should proceed slowly and resolve existing racial difficulties before inflicting more changes upon ourselves.

DO WE HAVE TOO FEW IMMIGRANTS?

Perhaps the people who are worried about too much immigration are seeing things backwards. America's native-born population is aging rapidly. Two generations ago there were eight working-age Americans to support each retiree. A generation from now the ratio will be barely two-to-one. Most immigrants are working-age rather than very young or very old. They have a higher birthrate than the native population, and that keeps the working population growing. America's vigor depends on vigorous Americans, so let's be sure we keep up the supply.

To learn what your different options for an Executive Decision on immigration policy are, go back to previous page.

Pat Buchanan was right. The United States cannot continue to absorb as many immigrants and refugees as the rest of the developed world combined. In the right circumstances immigration can be good -- but those circumstances do not occur automatically. It is a matter of proportion: bringing in only as many immigrants as our culture and economy can absorb. It is a matter of fairness: protecting the least-skilled Americans who are most immediately hurt by competition for entry-level jobs. And it is a matter of being serious about the rule of law: we have borders, and we should defend them, as every other nation does.

Special-interest pleaders act as if immigration were an unsolvable problem, but that is true only as long as we fail to take it seriously. A three-part program could make a huge difference.

Part one would be changing the quotas for legal entry: to start, cut them in half, from roughly 700,000 per year to roughly 350,000. Even that would be above the annual level of legal immigration (roughly 300,000) through the 1960s. The Smith bill, recently approved by the House, shows how this could be done. It proposes cutting the total for immigrants with special skills to 90,000 (from 140,000 now); cutting the quota for refugees to 50,000 (from 100,000); and cutting visas for family-reunification from about 450,000 to about 270,000.

Part two would be stricter enforcement at the border. The conventional wisdom suggests that this cannot be done, but recent projects in Texas and Arizona suggest that the U.S. border can in fact be sealed. As several Republican candidates have recently proposed, using the military for this purpose would be wholly legitimate.

Part three would be serious enforcement of the "employer sanctions" system (whereby fines are levied on the employers of illegal immigrants) that has been the law of the land for the last decade. Despite early fears this system has prompted only a minimum of complaints about civil liberties or ethnic discrimination. Your administration can--and must--enforce our laws.

The key to "doing good" as a political leader is to do things in a practical, realistic way. The best intentions count for nothing if they are carried out in a way that simply builds resistance: this is the story of "well-intentioned" efforts from the Vietnam war to the war on poverty.

The key to being practical-minded about immigration is to recognize that it is a matter of proportions. In the long run it is probably good for our country. Immigration has brought in scientific, cultural, and commercial talent, and has made American society the most diverse on earth. But our society has always had--and has apparently needed--breathing spaces between the periods of most intense immigration. The only time in our history when immigration has approached current levels was during the three decades before World War I. Significantly, for the following FIVE decades immigration levels were quite low. First they were pushed down by World War I; then by the highly-restrictive legislation of the 1920s; then by the world-wide depression and world war. It was not until the mid-1960s, after half a century of "settling" time, that America opened its doors again. We have had another thirty years of high-speed immigration, absorbing vast numbers of refugees and immigrants, both legal and illegal. The strain is showing: conflict between immigrants and native-born minority groups in our big cities; controversies over language; rapid population increase. The safest course by far would be to give ourselves another breathing space, and open the doors in a decade or two when we're ready for another infusion. The level of legal immigration has been roughly 750,000 in recent years. Let us take it to 250,000 at most for the next decade, then move it back toward current levels.

(Please note, Mr./Ms. President: This approach differs from Option A in that it recognizes the essential value of immigration yet wants to moderate the flow temporarily.)

All the evidence on hand suggests that LEGAL immigration is having the same effect in the late 20th century as it had in the middle of the century, and a century ago. That is, it is building America's economy and enriching its culture without creating any serious problems in the long run. In the early 1980s the popular press was full of warnings that Vietnamese refugees would "never" be absorbed because of their radically different culture. Now most are highly successful members of American society.

The most discouraging trend in immigration is the recent DECLINE in the number of legal entrants to the United States. In each of the last two years the total of legal entries has fallen by about 10 percent from the year before. Rather than taking satisfaction from this trend we should try to reverse it by streamlining the cumbersome waiting lists that keep talented immigrants away. By making it easier to enter legally we will reduce the pressure for illegal immigration, which in turn will reduce the climate of lawlessness that now taints America's immigration policy.

The number of immigrants now reaching America is modest by relative historical standards. As a proportion of our existing population, today's flow--legal and illegal combined--is only about half the peak it reached at the turn of the century.

The main problem is the composition of the flow. More than half of all legal immigrants are in the loosely-defined "family unification" category. Only in rare cases does this mean hardship situations, with parents rejoining their children. More often "families" included aged and often dependent parents and adult brothers and sisters. It is no doubt convenient for those families to be in one place, but accomodating them should not be the driving force in American immigration policy.

We should shift the emphasis of our policy. Rather than two thirds family-oriented and one-third employment-related visas, two-thirds to three-quarters of all visas should be skill-related. The remaining one-third or one-quarter--still at least 150,000 visas per year--could cover all the true cases of family hardship plus emergency refugee flows.

Immigration made America. It makes us stronger now. Where would our scientific establishment and research institutions be without scholars who have poured in from Europe a generation ago and Asia today? Where would our hospitals be without extensive staffing from the rest of the world? How long could Silicon Valley continue to operate without foreign-born coders and technicians? How long could America's agribusiness remain the strongest in the world?

Technology, capital, and products now flow freely around the world. Increasingly people will demand freedom to flow as well. As a nation perpetually oriented toward the future, we should accept this demand. When America has opened itself to immigration in the past--in the mid-1800s, in the mid-1960s, when receiving Cuban and Asian refugees in the 1980s--its courage and confidence have looked good in history's eyes. When it has decided to close the doors--with the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 1800s, with the "Gentleman's Agreement" excluding immigrants from Japan, with the explicitly racist immigration laws of the 1920s, which allowed only European immigrants--in retrospect those decisions have looked bad.

An appeal to our people to open our doors would be the clearest possible symbol of America's confidence in its economic future and its emergence as the one truly international civilization. Historians would remember you for this gesture as they remember Lincoln, Wilson, and both Roosevelts for their confidence and progressive vision. You could recommend the end of all immigration restrictions. You could urge that Congress raise the current legal limits by a factor of two, or five, or ten. What matters is that you look forward, allowing your country to continue to attract the talent of the wide world.

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