Ddebate immigration policy Replies:

...In making it possible for immigrant workers to settle here, we will place heavy downward pressure on wages and conditions of native workers (including immigrants of earlier flows and generations...

...But in the nearer term, I offer another January Times account: that "a recession has done what laws and American border guards can't...

...She counts not on a revived labor movement to wipe away immigration conflicts but on Swedish- (pre-1980, though) style social policies that reduce income inequality, provide high quality day care accessible to all, mandate paid time off from work at ten times the rate required here, and additional income redistribution in the event safety net holes remain...

...A lack of jobs in California has resulted in a 6 percent decline in illegal immigrant border crossings from Mexico...

...She's right, and in the very long run the adoption of such policies can mitigate pressures to emigrate...

...There are now immigrants in Sweden performing low-wage work, their unemployment rate is higher than that of natives (while native Swedes have higher unemployment rates than we), there are increasing numbers of homeless living in the streets, and there is a growing backlash against immigrants...

...Rather, Brand's and Barkan's complaint is not with my analysis but with my sentimentality— I "sound too little concerned with . . . what it's like to be inside" the immigrant experience (Barkan) and, although I "briefly note immigrants" low wages," I am "not otherwise concerned with their working conditions," and, reading my article "one doesn't get a sense of the gravity of the problem" (Brand...

...It will probably work—keeping the nation in permanent economic stagnation will reduce the incentive of Mexicans to emigrate...

...She also ignores the reality that, for the foreseeable future, the benefits from productivity gains in all industries, even high tech service industries like software design, will likely be lost to competition from low-wage nations...

...Barkan finds solace in a New York Times report suggesting that more equitable income distribution in developing countries can stimulate economic growth...

...I attempted to convey that immigration reform will be unusually complex, requiring a balance of competing interests of immigrant and domestic workers, complementary interests of the same groups, and a multitude of economic, social, and political factors in sending and receiving countries that affect immigration flows in unpredictable ways...

...Many of these factors cannot be untangled in public policy and are not amenable to our influence...

...412 • DISSENT...

...One can only conclude from Barkan's report that Sweden now moves more to the American model than we to theirs...

...I would add to Barkan's concession that Sweden recently raised its pension eligibility age from sixty-five to sixty-six...

...The apparel industry, which employs fifty thousand immigrant workers in New York sweatshops, also employs hundreds of thousands of workers in even more degraded sweatshops in China, Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, the Philippines, and now even in Vietnam...

...Is our object to raise labor standards so high in New York that there is profit only to apparel assembly in far-off factories we can't see...

...Denouncing this situation won't change it, but recognizing it may make some amelioration possible...

...But can't we afford a different solution— tolerating the political friction, discomfort, conflict, and, yes, even exploitation of immigrants that will increase with a less modest economic recovery...

...Neither H. Brand nor Joanne Barkan finds much to dispute in my analysis of the forces that drive immigration, the impossibility of fully consistent positions in response to calls for its restriction, or the desirability of progressive social policies to ameliorate immigrants' conditions and blunt the reaction of domestic workers with whom they compete...

...That's a sure sign the country has an aging workforce and inadequate fertility rate, a precursor to immigrant dependence...

...Without restating my argument from the Fall issue, I have minor rejoinders to Brand's and Barkan's complaints...

...That's why, as Barkan acknowledges, her model no longer applies even in Sweden...

...I acknowledge the accuracy of these complaints, but my tone was deliberate...

...Barkan says, "no problem" —we can have immigrants and good wages too, simply by using productivity gains in other industries to pay for uncompetitive wages in immigrant-impacted industries...

...Does Brand advocate shutting American markets to all exports from developing nations, a move that would be required to create space for radical improvements in working conditions of labor-intensive industries at home...

...Barkan is silent, however, about identifying the political constituency for this tax on native workers, unless she expects they won't notice a failure to share in the benefits of their own rising productivity...

...Is this really the way we want to address the problem of undocumented immigrants...

...Like Brand, Barkan ignores the international technology and economic integration that make such a dream unrealizable in the foreseeable future...

...Brand wants to wish away immigration conflicts by noting that if a fundamental change in the political climate occurs, a revitalized labor movement could raise wages in immigrant enterprises, abolish exploitation of immigrant workers, and cleanse immigrant workplaces of sweatshop conditions...

...I don't know who benefits from insisting that social policy rests on so wildly unrealistic a premise, but in the best of circumstances, worker organization and labor standards enforcement can't be a clean single-factor solution— not least because of the international context in which immigration takes place, a context Brand ignores...

...I hoped to suggest that expressions of outrage have only limited use in addressing this complex web of intersecting forces, because any balanced response to immigration must involve the compromise of competing values and loyalties...

...Barkan's deus ex machina differs from Brand's...

...In the short run, to the extent that these policies do not proceed rapidly apace, industrialized nations will receive immigrants who SUMMER • 1994 • 411 Arguments accurately perceive that they will be exploited less here than at home...

...In the long run, policy should seek more equitable development programs in the third world, a managed but not protectionist trade regime, and an expansive monetary and fiscal policy in the industrialized world to create markets for third world products, along with the organization of both American and third world workers and a coordinated upward harmonization of labor standards and enforcement...