Academics from universities across the country came to Washington, DC last month to present research papers and data about immigration. The conference was organized by Harvard University Kennedy School’s Center for International Development and the Center for Global Development and was named “Beyond the Fence”. It was a very civilized event: nobody shouted or called anybody stupid, a liar or a traitor. It was the opposite of talk radio. They sought empirical truth and used the instruments of social research to capture it.

It was exciting—really! Surprisingly, we didn’t talk about amnesty, the hot bottom issue that derailed immigration reform two years ago. To academics amnesty is a stock problem: what do you do with the stock of immigrants who are already living here? There was little to discuss since everyone in the room agreed: give them amnesty. It’s well within the power of the government to do so. It’s been done before.

The fireworks were over the flow problem. What do we do about the illegal immigrants who will flow into the US in the future? Should we open the doors wide, slam them shut, or hire a bouncer to open and shut the door? But who would be the bouncer- the government with its laws or capitalism with its needs?

The academics warned that if the flow problem wasn’t solved, the country would face another amnesty problem a few years after passing reform. When pressed by the academics for an answer, Ali Noorani, the head of the National Immigration Forum, a major organization working for comprehensive immigration reform turned the question back on them: when would they, together with big labor and big business, reach a consensus on future flow?

Good luck. Labor and business don’t agree about the door. Naturally, labor wants to limit the flow that would depress wages while business wants as many workers with the skills they need, when they need them. Labor has proposed a committee to set immigration limits each year.

Picture the economy growing again, a real boom with gapping labor holes. Oh Lord, the immigrants would come then. How would a committee stop them? The government might adopt draconian measures—constant ID checks, constant raids along with expedited measures to send the immigrants to jail or back home as quickly as possible. Would you be willing to wait in a traffic jam every holiday as police checked IDs? Would you be willing to have a baseball game interrupted by a police raiding the bleachers? What if you get arrested because you left your ID at home?

Of course, the argument is a waste of time unless the government can enforce its immigration laws. At the conference, economists were clear that capitalism controls the flow of immigrants. That means the government must control capitalism. Ouch. As capitalism pushes immigrants out into the current, the government must act as a dam blocking their flow. The dam would be the same as putting the country in lockdown, sweeping the streets and bus stops, checking everybody’s IDs over and over. In other words the government could stop the flow, but democracy and due process could get caught in the dam like dead fish.

In fact, even in the terrible economy of today in which the flow of immigrants has declined, you can get a whiff of dead fish. The Obama administration is arresting immigrants at the fastest pace in the country’s history. In a really strong economy that whiff would become a putrid stench.

We all have a stake in this. Latino children soon will make up over half of all students in urban and rural public schools from California to Florida.

Experts focus on the schools. They point to the language difficulties of immigrant children and promote expanded ESL programs or total English immersion. All agree that more resources are needed: better teachers, longer school days, and access to tutors just at a time when school systems are cutting back.
None of these solutions assign much of a role to parents. Little mention is made of the Latino home where parents are thought to be too busy, or too ill-prepared, or too poor, to help their children graduate. Schools keep them informed and ask for their support but little else.

It’s a time to turn this thinking on its head.

Latino families must do the heavy lifting if their children are to do well in school. Of course, many already are. Just look at the millions of Latino children who do graduate and go to college. Nonetheless, Latino parents are worried. They see the dropout rates, the gangs, the low paying jobs and unemployment their children face.

But how do immigrants view the American education their children are receiving?

It probably looks pretty good compared to the schooling they got back in Latin America, where poor schools are a major contributor to poverty. These parents must congratulate themselves that just by immigrating they greatly improved their children’s education.

These parents may be more worried about supporting the children they left behind when they immigrated. It forces them to practice a kind of educational triage, allocating resources between here and there. They send billions home each year to support their remaining families. Of course, they also spend money here. But they have little extra to bolster the education of their children in the U.S.

For example, while Latinos swell membership in Catholic churches, they avoid Catholic schools which charge tuition. This is a shame. Parochial schools in inner cities are known to have much better results than public schools.

Programs are needed to encourage Latino parents to help their children stay in school. Parents have to become students. Schools should open their doors to all Latino parents to learn essential skills like English and to become partners with teachers in their children’s education. The Federal government has paid for this in the past and should do so again.

Incentives are needed for Latino parents to open education savings accounts for their children. These accounts could go to tuition or special classes and tutors, or to cover computer and internet expenses. The public and private sectors could contribute to these accounts on a matching basis to motivate parents to save. The government already has a matching fund program in housing which could be expanded for education.

Practical though these ideas may be, they may offend both anti and pro immigration forces. The conservatives will note no distinction made between documented and undocumented parents. True. When educational levels sink as low as those for Latinos are sinking now, it becomes a matter of life and death. Thankfully we treat everyone, legal or not, who comes into an emergency room to avoid an epidemic. Low Latino graduation rates have become and epidemic. Treat it.

Liberals will worry that money Latinos save for their children here will come at the expense of the money they remit to families back home. True. Like William Styron’s Sophie, the Latino mother and father may face a choice. Their children are perishing educationally both here and there. If we in America work with Latino parents to improve the education of their children here, we are clearly expanding their choices, not limiting them.

Why should immigration reformers care about helping states? Can’t their lobbyists do that? Don’t immigrants pay into states more than they take out? And how can we trust the states? Too many have passed laws harmful to immigrants. The Governor of Rhode Island sicked his cops on immigrants. Arizona wants to dump them over their border. Wouldn’t states just use the money for enforcement?
Some will go to enforcement but much more will go to pay for the mandatory servies so helpful to immigrants. For most state leaders including the Rhode Island Governor, the origins of their anti immigration policies are budgetary not racist. In fact, states desperately want what immigrants provide: population. From federal transfer payments to the number of congressmen, to the Electoral College, everything that makes a state powerful, requires increased population. State knows that immigrants are their only realistic bet to get it. This makes immigrants and states natural allies. Only the unfair way the federal government dumps immigration costs on the states keeps them apart.
If immigrants and states did strike an alliance, the future of comprehensive immigration reform would look much brighter. In the last go around the testimony of state authorities tended to support nativist arguments that immigrants were a drain on society. If states change sides and support reformers, the nativists will stand alone, a distinct minority. Reformers will never achieve reform unless they build these kinds of coalitions. It’s what President Obama expects.
So let’s put the E in the I. It turns out immigration reformers have something to say about the nation’s finances after all. Grab a seat at the economic table and start talking.

Like the Israelis, Americans have always feared immigrant hoards that threaten our way of life: hoards of uneducated Catholics, hoards of Asians, hoards of Jews fleeing Hitler, and now hoards of Latinos from Mexico and Central America. We build walls; we invade factories and arrest thousands, we imprison millions; we deny amnesty.
Yet they come, perhaps slowed by our great recession, but still out there, ready to pounce at our slightest wavering. This very day there are hundreds of thousands signed up at American embassies to enter, and those are just the ones who follow the rules; others don’t and number more.
Still America isn’t Israel. It’s easier to protect a democracy than a religion. There are no refugee camps in Mexico, and our wall remains largely un-built. Mexicans don’t hate us or want to push out into the sea. No one has crossed over the Rio Grande to commit massive acts of terror (knock on wood). The 9/11 terrorists flew in from Canada.
So how would we fall into the Gaza trap? Simple: by adopting the extreme anti-immigration agenda. Adherents successfully blocked the administration’s immigration reform in 2007. And the agenda probably has even more followers today as the growing unemployed fear competition for jobs from immigrants.
The agenda calls for rounding up 13 million illegals, overwhelmingly Mexican, and dumping them over the border. Next we would spend whatever its takes to build the wall and arm and deploy the militia to make our border air tight. Then we would squeeze immigration permits to next to nothing to preserve American jobs for Americans.
Also deported would be millions of Central Americans, principally from Guatemala and El Salvador. It would be extremely destabilizing to these countries which lie to Mexico’s south, putting great pressure on Mexico as Central Americans seek refuge there.
To gain support for these policies we would demonize immigrants as drug traffickers, parasites, and aliens who would undermine our language and culture.
The result would be an explosion of slums in Mexican cities, especially along the border. They would look a lot like refugee camps. It would overwhelm the capacity of the Mexican government or of any government to provide basic services such as water and sewerage or schools and hospitals or the infrastructure that nurtures jobs.
Resentments would build among the growing unemployed and crime would explode, especially drug trafficking. Many of these problems already exist, but they would get worse fast.
Eventually the US would have to intervene just like the Israelis are doing now in Gaza. Impossible? We have already done it. One hundred years ago the American army raced across the border in hot pursuit of Pancho Villa who had shot up some American towns. General Pershing never caught Villa, but set the precedent for today’s policy makers. The Minutemen are ready to saddle up now.
But wait, this doesn’t have to happen. We should thank Israel for providing us an opportunity to look into the abyss. Like Dante we can learn and return to our world wiser. We can give the 13 million immigrants without papers a path to citizenship. We can adopt an immigration reform that controls future immigration in more comprehensive ways than walls and gun mounts. We can rely on the American economy to figure out how many workers we need. We can be a welcoming nation.