The United States was built as a patchwork of immigrants. People of every origin laid claim to a scrap of this new world, and despite the challenges and discrimination faced by many, they each managed to carve out a home.
Times have changed. Gone are the frontier days when one could simply set foot on American soil and be allowed to make his own destiny. We now live in a complex system of economics, security and bureaucracy that requires the documentation and education of every immigrant.
Those who don’t follow the proper steps?because of rejection, ignorance of the system, or choice?become illegal aliens. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates there are 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimates some 100,000 undocumented aliens live in Tennessee at a cost of $285 million a year.
Theories of how much illegal immigrants cost and whether or not they take jobs from legal citizens is always central to the debate, now exasperated by the flagging economy and rising unemployment rate. However, some groups have spoken up in defense of illegal workers, calling attention to an inadequate immigration system as the culprit.
On one side of the issue is Rutherford County’s toomanyillegals.com, a Web site which promotes stronger enforcement of deportation and illegal hiring laws. While the site’s owner did not wish to be named, he was able to provide The Murfreesboro Pulse with copies of petitions in support of stemming illegal immigration and accounts from his own and other’s experience in being shut out or misdirected when they attempted to report illegal hiring.
One petitioner, Jeffrey Jones, was willing to go on record saying that his former employer, Crane Interiors of Cannon County, maintained a large number of illegal workers.
“I was a supervisor there, and I was for years. At one time we had over 200 people, and probably 30 percent of that work force was illegal immigrants, and they knowingly hire them. They changed their names once a year, filed no taxes and had social securities with made up numbers,” Jones said.
Jones also claimed that he and other workers attempted to contact law enforcement to deal with the workers.
“We tried calling Nashville and as far as Memphis. Everyone just got the run around. We were told they only had one person to handle it and there was nothing they could do,” Jones said.
When contacted, Crane Interiors Human Resources Manager Larry Officer declined to comment, saying only that they complied with all applicable laws and statues. Because they declined to comment, the employment status and the terms on which Jones left were unable to be verified.
This battle over immigration has only intensified by a series of conflicting moves from the state. Between 2001 and 2007, illegal immigrants were allowed to obtain driver’s licenses due to Tennessee policies that no longer required proof of permanent residence or a social security number.
A 2008 court case opened the doors for illegal immigrants to marry in Davidson County, as a similar identification is no longer required.
Earlier this year, a bill that would make Nashville governmental business and services provided in “English only” failed when put to vote in a special election.
One group in favor of expanding rights for immigrants is the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC).
“We are a statewide coalition of immigrant and refugee groups. Our mission is to reach out to new immigrant communities?Kurdish, Somali, Sudanese, Latino?and help them understand how our American system works, help them fully integrate, and fully participate,” TIRRC Executive Director Stephen Fotopulos said.
The TIRRC lobbies state and federal agencies to improve the immigration system and to expand immigrant and refugee rights. According to Fotopulos, the current immigration system is unrealistic and doesn’t serve Americans or immigrants, socially or economically. More over, he contends that the issues of immigrants not paying taxes and draining state budgets through health, education, and criminal justice services are “myths.”
“Tennessee doesn’t have an income tax, we have a consumption or sales taxes that everyone pays . . . You don’t have to own a home to pay property taxes; the fees are passed on to you in the form of rent. Immigrants certainly pay taxes, and as such must have basic access to government services,” Fotopulos said.
He also points out that many illegal workers do pay federal income taxes.
“An estimated 70 percent of undocumented workers pay federal income tax. Because our federal immigration system is very broken, because it’s designed to fail and everyone knows that, our federal government has provided other ways for immigrants to pay taxes . . . You can apply for an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) so you can still pay your taxes to the federal government,” Fotopulos said.
He points to studies preformed by the Tennessee Comptroller, the Texas State Budgetary Committee and studies preformed in North Carolina that show immigrants paying more into the system than they are receiving, as they currently only have access to services that are federally mandated for everyone. Moreover, they also claim that a greater number of low-skilled workers create more jobs down the chain of production and sales.
For all of this, Fotopulos maintains that illegal immigrants must be dealt with accordingly. Where some groups favor deportation and strict implementation of immigration laws, he and the TIRRC support an earned citizenship program that would require learning English, paying back taxes, submitting to background checks and paying fines for laws broken.
The Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., released projections based on current immigration rates that claim the U.S. population may swell to 438 million people by 2050, up 82 percent from the 296 million recorded in 2005. Of these new people, a projected 67 million will be immigrants. While there is no way to predict how many will be illegal, it does point to illegal immigration as a major source of the population boom.
So what is to be done? The fact is, no clear consensus exists. Each side represents not only a different position but a completely different ideology and perspective on the scenario–one from the outlook of citizens looking for work and dealing with cultural change, the other from the immigrants’ view of trying to build a better life for themselves in America.
Regardless of the action taken, we must remember that beneath the figures, theories and projections, what we’re talking about are people. People, who for better or worse, are likely here to stay.
