Unused immigrant visa available !

Edith Agnes Andrews was my Great Aunt. I found her passport during a visit to Belfast and was fascinated to discover this visa allowing her to immigrate to the USA. Aunt Edie did not exercise that visa. According to family folklore, she went with her friends to catch the boat to the USA. The boat was anchored in Belfast Lough and a small tender carried the immigrants between the shore and the ship. Aunt Edie boarded that tender, went out to the ship and returned to Irish soil with the tender. She never did leave Britain and is buried in Belfast.

Why do I mention Aunt Edie? In recent months the subject of immigrants, border fences and national security has filled the airways. Aunt Edie is an example of past times. Coming from Ireland she was a textile worker. That was probably a useful profession in 1929. When she applied for that visa she was sure that immigrating to USA would give her a better life than staying in Belfast. I know that thought pattern continues today. People only leave home when the benefits on the other side of the fence are clearly better. For Aunt Edie, the ties to home were more powerful than the greener grass across the Atlantic. Every day, immigrants to USA – legal and illegal – make that same calculation. Fences, even double fences will not stop immigration. They will only change the arithmetic of the decision to come.

Is there an answer? As long as people view life in the USA as “better” they will try to come here. If our standards regress then immigration will naturally decline. Right now that might be happening but regression is not an acceptable policy. If we want to slow immigrants then the only real way is to help those other countries increase their standard of living. We give lots of aid but much of it is military aid. Sadly, in terms of our size, the amount of our practical help is small compared to countries like Norway. Maybe the solution to our immigration problem – and our declining image abroad – is not to become a walled and gated community but to spend that money raising standards in countries outside.

People - here today; here tomorrow

I am an immigrant to the USA so it is probably natural I am interested in what the presidential candidates say about immigration. I have not heard a sensible position lately. They are all searching for a catchy news bite. That is sad, because immigration won’t be solved in 30-second news-bites. In a May 2006 article the Christian Science Monitor asked the question, “How many illegal immigrants?” The article included the diagram copied below (thanks, Christian Science Monitor!).

The article also said that about 4.7 million homes have at least one parent who is an illegal immigrant. If these homes have the “standard” 2.2 children then about 27 million people living in USA are directly affected by an immigration policy.

Several candidates claim that they will send illegal immigrants home. (Will they keep families together?) The candidates have not said how they will move 27 million people. The dark history of the 20^th century shows how that number of people might be moved. My parents and the rest of the “Greatest Generation” proudly showed us how democratic people dealt with those governments. Today, any candidate claiming that a democratic freedom-loving USA can send all illegal immigrants home is not truthful. If they did, the USA would not be the country we know and love.

I suspect that deep down, we want to remove 27 million people, build a wall along the border and give up the freedoms that define our country because we are afraid. Today, I see a USA that has lost its confidence. 9/11 did not only shatter two buildings. It shattered our psyche. Osama bin Laden must be laughing all the way to his cave.

People will continue to come to USA for the same reason I did: for the chance of a better future for our children and ourselves. Those who are really desperate will continue to come illegally: especially if employers will hire them and ask no questions. If government wants to stop further illegal immigrants then it must focus on employers. That only leaves the 12-20 million illegal immigrants currently living with us. I back the suggestion that gives them an opportunity to become legal citizens. People who are born here love this country. Those of us who are granted the privilege of citizenship love it just as much.

Over Christmas we saw several cartoons of the baby Jesus, his mother and father fleeing to Egypt. The point was not very subtle. It suggested that Joseph and his family were likely undocumented immigrants. I took the photograph above in Venezuela last year. It is a collection of posters on a wall near a subway station in Caracas. It suggests that Jesus was a revolutionary. Is there a grain of truth in these two very different images - the poster and the cartoon? I don’t know, but I recall that one central message in the Bible is that we should care for the poor, the oppressed and the stranger at our gate. Are those illegal immigrants today's "strangers?"

Jobs - here today, gone tomorrow

The recent primary in Michigan raised the question of unemployment at home and good jobs that have been lost overseas. Senator McCain said that some jobs would not return. He talked about retraining. Governor Romney claimed that he would encourage business to generate new jobs. I fear that Senator McCain was the more realistic. The United States is loosing more than blue-collar and industrial jobs. Large engineering companies that serve the oil industry have been moving work to other countries for years. They do not call it “outsourcing”. Instead work is assigned to “value engineering centers”. These “value engineering centers” are usually in countries like India, the Philippines, Turkey or the old Eastern Bloc. These countries all have one thing in common – educated workers who are paid less than the same skill earns the United States, Europe or Japan. So, US companies use them. European companies use them. Even Japanese companies use them.

When engineering outsourcing began, companies only exported easy and routine tasks. Later, simpler design and drafting were relocated. Now, those foreign centers have the skills and experience to engineer large parts of any industrial plant. The US, European and Japanese companies are still in control but they need fewer employees with higher skills and experience. Work is migrating to the management parts of their organizations. At the entry-level, US employees compete directly with young people at those “value engineering centers”. It does not need an economics degree to predict who will cost less and where the work will be done.

What about the future? Managers get their jobs because they have experience and ability. But, if all the junior jobs are outsourced, how will young US employees get the experience and skills they need to become managers? They can’t! The people working in the “value engineering centers” are just as well (maybe better?) educated as us. They are now getting the training and experience that was given to juniors in the US before outsourcing. Their kids, not ours will be the people who will build the future.



At one time this welder might have been working in USA. This photograph was taken in Korea. Skilled white-collar jobs are leaving US today just as this blue-collar job left US shipyards years ago.

Senator McCain’s proposal for more retraining may be a band-aid but it is not a cure. We need to change our business model. If we always demand the lowest cost then work will travel to people prepared to accept a smaller paycheck. It applies to the goods we find in Wal-Mart and it applies to design of major industrial projects. The jobs that once made televisions, toys, clothing, shoes, light bulbs or toasters will never return to the US. Only education and a willingness to pay a little more will keep the jobs we still have. Right now, the US is the market to the world. Maybe there is something to be said for import tariffs if they can stop the specter of our children and grandchildren with no livelihood. Certainly free trade has not brought the average worker the rewards that we expected.