A new form of international assistance: unskilled migrant visas

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A new form of international assistance: unskilled migrant visas (12/24/05)

The US plans to erect a barrier on it's border with Mexico evoked some interesting comments from a Mexican citizen which got me thinking. Fernando Robledo, quoted from an AP article:


"We learned to believe in the United States. We have a binational life," he said of Zacatecas, a state that has been sending migrants north for more than a century. "It isn't just a feeling of rejection. It's against what we see as part of our life, our culture, our territory."

Mexico Promises to Block Border Wall Plan By Mark Stevenson, AP

The insightful part of his statement is the context. He calls them migrants, and in the traditional usage of the term rather than as expatriates. I suspect everyone has heard of similar sentiments without actually thinking about them much. We all know the stories of people who've emigrated to the States only to take a demeaning job with low pay, and then send a lot of their pay back "home" to try to help out relatives. They also go to get advanced training which wouldn't normally be available back home, and then sometimes return to use it and teach it to their families and peers. This is the legal version of what Mr. Robledo is saying. An illegal version also exists, and it must be the main reason people cross the border illegally.

So why do we react to it as we do? I've made no secret of my thoughts on how economies develop. Skilled labor is a necessary part of the process, and providing the training for it is extremely costly. Were it to be done by another nation it would be, in effect, a form of international assistance. The standards of quality and advanced techniques that are near ubiquitous in the US and other developed economies are concentrated in specific regions and industries in developing economies. Dispersing those standards and techniques throughout their countries requires a massive effort which could easily be met in the day to day operations of an economy such as the US's.

How? An unskilled migrant visa program could be politically tenable to US citizens if placed within the context of international assistance. In fact, I think US citizens would go out of their way to help the recipients of these visas, teaching them far more than just the skill or skills they have come here for. Such a program would also begin to let us control and tweak the numbers of people coming across the border by offering a legitimate alternative to the illegal crossings and opening the road to better control of the border. The originating country could even be consulted on a high level to determine if visas should be offered in specific industries or for specific job types.

By recognizing this for what it is, we can also request that the originating countries handle benefits for these people, solving yet another problem driving the need for the border wall. If properly developed, such a program could even go so far as providing basic training within the originating country, which would allow the workers to "hit the ground running" rather than consuming time in something so mundane as formal English classes. In short, there aren't a lot of negatives in this plan. Since we're already fighting the immigration, such a program would decrease the total costs of illegal immigration and could even help the originating countries.