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Texas Agriculture Archive

April 7, 2006

Immigration:
Border security or else!

By Steve Pringle
Legislative Activities Coordinator

We all support a secure border. After 9-11, we all understand that the United States has been lax in the security of our borders, both land and sea. A flood of people who want a better life and economic security is washing onto our shores. Freedom is a powerful lure. Some are undoubtedly entering our country with the intent of doing us great harm. All Americans believe in security and the sovereignty of our country.

We could react emotionally to this crisis and argue for a wall around our border, or a "throw the rascals out" policy. That position, however, does not address the overall security of our nation. There are many people in this country illegally, but do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. Those who are working illegally here are registered with our Social Security System (with fictitious names and numbers), and they are paying into a system from which they will never collect. Is it right for the government to collect taxes from an individual while fully aware that those people will never collect a dime of those services?

Let's face it. There are jobs in this country that Americans simply don't want to do, regardless of pay. In agriculture, approximately 50-80 percent of the labor force is manned by undocumented or fraudulently documented workers. This is because it is not possible to hire Americans to perform these tasks. Not only that, profit margins for most agricultural crops are so razor thin that huge pay increases are simply not possible.

We could take these workers away from agriculture by imposing an immigration reform plan that is all enforcement and non-incentive, with no guest worker program. After all, we can always buy our food from other countries, just like we do our oil. Should Congress take this approach, who will provide the labor for our construction sites, build the buildings, construct the new homes and clean the hotel rooms we use when traveling? All of these jobs require labor not being performed by Americans today. These are serious questions with serious economic consequences.

We need a legal guest worker program as part of the immigration reform bill. Our elected leaders are tampering with the U.S. economy, when they say "we will address border security now and consider guest worker provisions at a later date." We can only hope that they will be as responsive to the economy as they have been to the "illegals."