Republicans should back a ‘work-and-return-home’ immigration policy

How can we solve the problem of illegal immigration without either accepting the lawlessness currently at the border or committing immense resources to roundups and massive deportations?

The key is to recognize that most illegal immigrants wish they could occasionally return to their native countries to visit family and friends, but they fear to leave since it may be difficult or impossible to return. Plus, most want to be documented. They want work visas. But they came without them because they were too hard to get.

These two motivations can be combined to create a process for illegal immigrants who self-deport to become documented workers.

We need to create a much more generous work permit program that allows citizens from the Western Hemisphere seeking low-skill work to enter and work for two to four years, provided they have no criminal record. During or after this work permit period, they would be required to return to their home countries for an accumulated period of at least six months. Once this minimum return-home residency requirement has been met, they would be eligible for a new work permit cycle.

How would this apply to the 12 million illegal immigrants already here? First, they would have to register for a work permit on their way out. That would start the clock for reestablishing residency in their home countries. If their work application investigations reveal no criminal record, then a two-to-four year work-and-return-home visa will be waiting for them on their return.

This guarantee of permission to work in the U.S. would provide a strong incentive to sign up for those present in the U.S. illegally, as well as economic migrants who know their asylum claims are unlikely to pass muster.

U.S. immigration policy has always been built on biases involving ethnicity and skill. Even today, the bias toward skilled workers ignores the injustice of depriving less educated people a better opportunity to feed their families. Overly restrictive distribution of work visas is an injustice, which is exactly why so many of our neighbors to the south feel that they are morally justified in bypassing our immigration laws.

In short, I believe it is good public policy to give preferential access to work permits to our closest geographic neighbors. Our own peace and security, and even economic wellbeing, will benefit from expanding the economic growth of the countries sharing our borders and our hemisphere. 

For example, if we want a prosperous and stable Mexican government on our southern border, the best thing we can do is to provide more work visas to Mexican citizens. Such job opportunities are far more effective than any foreign aid package.

Generous work visas would allow Mexican immigrants the opportunity to earn money to send home to their families, where it will help stabilize their own economies far better than any IMF loan.

Allowing them to develop work skills here will empower them to take those skills home and establish new businesses in their own countries — businesses that would not have been possible, had U.S. work visas not enabled them to acquire the skills and startup capital they needed.

At the same time, the requirement to leave for cumulative periods of at least six months every few years would encourage many, perhaps most, to use this work visa privilege as a jumping-off point toward financial independence and business development back home.

Also, there is no reason why these visas should necessitate a path to citizenship. That issue can be handled separately.

Finally, establishing a larger base of documented workers can also enrich our own tax base — especially our Social Security bankroll. Unlike non-immigrant foreign workers holding certain visas, these workers should be required to pay the equivalent of the Social Security withholding tax that they would otherwise pay, only without being eligible for future Social Security benefits. This would simply be an extra tax in exchange for the much-sought-after privilege of being able to work in the U.S. legally. It would also eliminate any economic benefit for employers from hiring immigrants illegally.

I believe this proposal could help heal the national and party divisions that the immigration issue is creating and exacerbating. It offers migrants a path to regularization and lawful employment, but it restores the rule of law where currently none exists. And it does so in a way that is very pro-family, pro-economy, and pro-self-sufficiency.

It addresses the concerns of Republican immigration hawks by acknowledging the importance of immigrants following the law and entering the country with legal work visas. At the same time, it provides undocumented immigrants who already have family here an opportunity to comply with the law by leaving the country for short periods and reentering with proper documentation.

David C. Reardon, Ph.D., director of the Elliot Institute, is a biomedical ethicist and author of “Making Abortion Rare: A Healing Strategy for a Divided Nation.”