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Immigration See other Immigration Articles Title: Conservatives Spar Over Immigration; Two camps take lead at five-hour forum DENVER — A Colorado-based think tank may have united under one roof some of the nation’s greatest conservative thinkers on immigration Monday, but it united them under little else. In a debate-style format, 10 leading conservatives — including politicians, philanthropists and economists — sparred for five hours at an Independence Institute forum called “Invitation or Invasion,” a discussion on the conservative response to illegal immigration. The meeting — which explored how illegal immigration affects growth, economics, culture and national security — drew about 200 people to the Colorado Historical Society building in Denver. Though some speakers and members of the audience fit into neither category, two camps clearly stood out. The first, represented in part by Rep. Tom Tancredo and Louisville’s Frosty Wooldridge, called for an immediate moratorium on legal immigration, tougher enforcement of existing immigration laws, tighter border security and the removal of illegal immigrants in the country today. The other camp, which some at the forum referred to as Libertarians rather than Republicans, testified to the strength of the U.S. economy over the last two decades, to the role of both legal and illegal immigrants in aiding that economy, and to historical evidence that America has often feared and loathed new waves of immigrants until those populations assimilate. “As conservatives, we all believe in free-market principles and competition,” said the meeting’s moderator, Independence Institute president Jon Caldara. “Some conservatives believe the security aspects outweigh the free-market aspects. This is the meeting place for these two conservative viewpoints.” “Immigrants don’t just take jobs; they create jobs by participating in the economy,” said Steve Moore, a nationally known economist and contributor to the Wall Street Journal. Moore noted that in the last 25 years, the United States — which has the highest rate of immigration among industrialized countries — has created 40 million new jobs. Europe, with limited immigration by comparison, has created only 5 million jobs over the last 25 years and has a dwindling birth rate of 1.4 children per couple. “Immigrants are people who are largely self-selective based on ambition, motivation and risk-taking,” Moore said. “I believe human beings are assets,” he added later. Another speaker — Dan Griswold, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Trade Policy Studies — said the obsession with the Mexican border has done nothing to make the country safer since Sept. 11, 2001. “Let’s not commit economic suicide in the name of national security,” Griswold said, adding that the legalization of the country’s undocumented immigrants today would actually drain underground channels of crime and fraud and make the country safer. Tancredo said he won’t support any guest-worker program until America’s borders have been secured. “For every one we get, three to five get by,” Tancredo said of illegal immigrants who elude security patrols on the Mexican border. “There is, in a way, an invasion going on. We need to know who’s coming, for what purpose and for how long.” Yeh Ling-Ling, a Vietnamese-born naturalized citizen and current immigration-reform advocate, said mass immigration is destroying the country. Ling-Ling, who immigrated herself in 1980, suggested that if mobilized, millions of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the Southwest may start voting in the interests of Mexico. “Is Mexico conducting demographic warfare against the U.S.?” she asked the audience. Anti-liberal jokes served as ice breakers Monday, easing tension between otherwise like-minded conservatives. “A poll said that 90 percent of Hispanics are proud or very proud of being American,” one speaker said. “What do you think those figures would be in Boulder?” Another speaker, philanthropist Helen Krieble, outlined an immigration-reform plan she believes could unite conservatives. Under her plan, private employment agencies operating outside the borders would issue temporary work licenses to a given amount of workers the government estimates are needed to satisfy market demands. Those guest workers would be issued “smart cards” that any U.S. employer could swipe through a machine to identify a person and determine if and for how long they are eligible to work in the country. Krieble suggests offering the employers of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country the chance to pay $500 to send their employees back home. The employees could return to work in the United States once processed through the privatized guest-worker agency located in their birth country. “If we impose a $50,000 fine for each illegal worker detected, employers will make a good economic decision, don’t you agree?” Krieble said. One of the few topics upon which all the speakers agreed during the forum was that by not enforcing current laws, America is sending the wrong message to immigrants trying to get to the country fairly. “It tells them they are suckers,” Tancredo said.
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