They only want to work

Photo by Michael Robinson-Chavez -- The Washington Post

Our so-called leaders in Washington are failing us again. It now appears that the immigration policy of this country is going to drag along in its current unworkable form for the foreseeable future. It really doesn’t matter whether you are blue or red, it’s hard to see how these guys can be so incapable of coming to any sort of agreement or compromise.

My concern is for the U.S. construction industry. The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC, which represents the nation’s open-shop contractors) estimates that the construction industry alone will need to fill one million new jobs over the next seven years. “There are 150,000 to 250,000 new workers per year being added to the construction industry,” said John Meyers, ABC’s national chairman, according to PBF News Briefs. “Our statistics show that two-thirds of the new workers that are being added now are Hispanic, so that shows that most of our needs are being met through the immigrants that are coming into the country.”

So we need a way to control this influx of workers. But it’s like drugs—as long as the demand is there, someone will figure out a way to meet it. Building big fences has proven only marginally effective, so why not take another approach? But making employers liable for enforcing the policy isn’t the answer. Do you want to be arrested because you hired someone on the basis of what looked like a perfectly valid ID? Are you telling me that the United States of America can’t set up a system so that we can quickly and efficiently determine if someone is legally eligible to work?

There needs to be some common sense brought to bear on this situation. We need workers. They want to work. There’s no one else willing to do the work. If we pay them fairly and treat them right and they obey our laws and support their families, how can that be bad?

But it seems that Congress listens to every interest group and hardens their stand on one piece of the issue so that compromise becomes impossible. Maybe we shouldn’t let them listen and they would have to simply look into their own hearts for what’s right.