While Mayor Bloomberg’s support for an amnesty program for illegal immigrants, reported in yesterday’s New York Sun, is admirable at a certain level, his formulation gets things backward. Mr. Bloomberg seems to realize that those who have come to New York City from abroad to live and work and build better lives for themselves and for their families are deserving of the opportunity to do so, and that American immigration policy attempts to block too many from realizing the American dream. However, his nod to accompanying any such amnesty with an effort to “get control of the borders” smacks of punishing those who are trying to obey America’s laws while rewarding those who have flouted them. The new proposal being considered by the mayor’s Charter Revision Commission to allow non-citizens to vote in New York City elections puts the cart even further in front of the horse. If we want to liberalize our immigration laws, that can be done forthrightly; there is no need to skirt them at every turn.

The idea of giving amnesty to illegal immigrants is problematic. For starters, America already tried a blanket amnesty, for illegal immigrants from all countries, under President Reagan in 1986; if the country has one of these every 15 to 20 years, our policies set up the expectation that immigration laws can be ignored for profit. This will only encourage more people to cross the border illegally, and it will ultimately create pressure for another amnesty program down the road. More limited amnesty programs, such as the one the Bush administration has flirted with, only for Mexican illegals, raise their own problems. No sooner had the administration floated that idea than lobbying groups for every other immigrant population in the country were up in arms over the special treatment. Better, it would seem, to raise quotas for temporary and permanent visas and implement guest worker programs — anything to give hard-working immigrants the opportunity to achieve American citizenship.

It’s not only the right thing to do, America needs the workers. Before September 11 derailed the possibility of immigration liberalization, President Bush put the matter simply enough: “I do believe, though, that when we find willing employer and willing employee, we ought to match the two.” Contrary to anti-immigrant hysteria, immigrants aren’t stealing Americans’ jobs. America’s economy absorbed 3 million Mexican workers in the 1990s, according to the American Immigration Law Foundation, but still saw unemployment fall to 3.9% in 2000 from 6.3% in 1990. As the Wall Street Journal noted recently, the Labor Department estimates that there will be 20 million job openings for people with minimal education by 2010. Workers will come to fill those jobs, legally or illegally. The question is what incentive we leave for workers to come here legally, pay taxes, learn the American language, and study how to become a citizen. To give them the right to vote without complying with America’s laws is illogical. Better to widen the legal route for entering the country and becoming an American.