Immigration Policy: Untouchable

This year, as the economy heads into a "soft landing" or mild recession, the predictable hand-wringing ensues over who is responsible for the slowdown. Some fault Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan for not reducing interest rates in a significant manner, while others criticize Congress for not responding quickly enough with growth-inducing tax cuts. Still others blame the electoral standoff between George W. Bush and Al Gore for reducing consumer confidence during the crucial holiday shopping season.

Whomever the culprit, no one is blaming immigrants or immigration for the economic slowdown. At least not yet. But that may soon change. If the economic slump leads to a substantial increase in the rate of unemployment, Congressional leaders may start clamoring once again for a tightening of our country's borders. Public opinion polls over the past 20 years show a consistent desire among Americans for fewer immigrants, although immigration never ranks highly among people's definition of an important problem facing the nation.

During times of economic prosperity, most Democrats and Republicans ignore the underlying public preference for immigration restriction. Indeed, many have even proposed an amnesty program that would legalize the millions of undocumented immigrants who reside in the United States. This is because the tight labor market necessitates a continued increase in legal immigration and an easing of policies related to undocumented migrants.

During times of economic hardship, however, many political elites see a strategic advantage in activating people's concerns over unemployment and tying it to the issue of immigration. Republican leaders attempted to capitalize on such economic insecurities following the previous economic recession. During the mid-1990s they passed various restrictionist measures — first in 1994 with Proposition 187 in California that sought to eliminate education and health benefits for illegal immigrants and subsequently in 1996 with Congressional legislation that restricted immigration and made it more difficult for legal immigrants to access means-tested benefits.

With the specter of unemployment rising once again, some policy experts speculate that measures to restrict immigration will become appealing once again. Last week, the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington published a report that calls for a reduction in the number of legal immigrants to the United States.

While the temptation to restrict immigration may be strong, there is one significant factor that will make Republicans reluctant to bring up the topic of immigration this year: the continued political fallout from the restrictionist policies of the mid-1990s. Thanks to the backlash against measures such as Proposition 187, Democrats in California control the governorship, both houses of the state legislature and the state's two U.S. Senate seats. Furthermore, Latinos nationwide continue to vote in overwhelming numbers for Democratic Party candidates. Even George W. Bush, with his Spanish-language commercials and his Spanish-speaking nephew, could not make significant inroads into Latino populations that were still angered by what they perceived to be Republican anti-immigrant policies.

It is therefore very unlikely that Congress will target immigrants this year in response to the current economic slowdown. Still smarting from the political fallout of the 1990s, few Republicans want to ensure the Democrats' permanent status as a majority party during the next few decades. There will, however, be one immigration-related casualty of any recession or "soft landing" — the amnesty provision for illegal immigrants that has been endorsed by many Democrats and even groups such as the AFL-CIO. With continued uncertainty over the severity of the economic slowdown and its impact on unemployment, few Democrats will seek to broach the topic of a generalized amnesty.

Thus, economic uncertainty in 2001 will most likely lead to a policy of untouchability regarding immigration. With the economy avoiding either strong growth or perilous decline, measures intended to restrict or expand the stock of legal immigrants will be politically infeasible and therefore considered "dead on arrival" in Congress. S. Karthick Ramakrishnan is a politics and Office of Population Research graduate student from Holden, Mass. He can be reached at karthick@princeton.edu.