In an episode of his widely watched show that focused on prison ministries, Robertson had this to say about the war on drugs, and marijuana specifically:

“We’re locking up people that have taken a couple puffs of marijuana and next thing you know they’ve got 10 years with mandatory sentences,” Robertson continued. “These judges just say, they throw up their hands and say nothing we can do with these mandatory sentences. We’ve got to take a look at what we’re considering crimes and that’s one of ‘em.

“I’m … I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot, that kinda thing it’s just, it’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people. Young people go into prisons, they go in as youths and come out as hardened criminals. That’s not a good thing.”

Who knew a guy more famous for declaring gay people responsible for Hurricane Katrina or calling for the assassination of leaders of other countries would be a voice of reason on our nation’s drug laws?

“The question about legalizing marijuana is no longer when, it’s no longer whether, it’s how,” said Ethan Nadelmann, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national advocacy group that will play a pivotal role in any 2012 ballot measures in California or other states. “There’s a really strong body of people who will be ready to pull the lever in the future.”

Indeed, many pundits questioned the wisdom of pushing the proposition in a midterm election year, when young people have such a poor track record of showing up at the polls. This fact only adds to the hopes of supporters for the initiative’s prospects in 2012, however. They say they will once again push the measure in California and perhaps a number of other states during the upcoming presidential election cycle.

It’s an interesting question, particularly given the debate over when the country should take on comprehensive immigration reform to deal with the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country. One side of the debate argues the borders must be secured before the government can take steps to allow some of those illegal immigrants to gain legal status. On the other side — the one the Obama administration has supported — reform advocates argue that providing paths to legalization for some illegal immigrants is necessary to reducing tensions and creating secure borders. But neither side seems to provide a clear answer as to what factors would indicate that the border was officially “secure.”

Bersin did not make such a pronouncement either, but he did provide some clarification into the Obama administration’s objectives. “What we mean by border security is public safety, and this perception in the community that the border is being reasonably managed,” he said.

It’s possible to measure public safety: The FBI and other organizations track rates of violent crime and property crime across the country. But perception is trickier to define. While some polls have indicated that residents of border regions feel safe, rhetoric among some officials encourages high levels of fear about illegal immigration. Warranted or not, this definition means the border cannot be secure unless all residents of border regions think it is secure — a seemingly impossible feat given the length of the border and the differences of opinion on the issue.

The problem is that no one seems to be exactly sure how many resources should be directed at the border. After National Guard troops were deployed to the southern border in recent months, national security experts argued that the government had done too little research to determine what methods were actually effective at keeping illegal immigrants and smuggled items from crossing the border. “We frankly don’t have a very good understanding of what we should invest more in and where we should spend our resources,” Jack Riley, director of the RAND National Defense Research Institute, told Politico last month.

When Bersin was asked how many agents, roughly, would be needed to secure the border, he hedged. “We need to obtain a secure southwest border to say how many agents we need,” he said.

On the one hand, this makes sense: The border is 1,950 miles long, and needs for agents shift as migrants and smugglers change their routes for entering the country. But the lack of specifics seems to leave a large window for anti-comprehensive immigration reform to demand more border patrol, whether or not it is actually increasing safety and security.

There are currently 20,000 Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border — higher than at any time in the country’s history. The Obama administration argues the border is at its most secure point in history, citing lower rates of illegal immigration and increased enforcement within the country.

But in the end, securing the border fully — or completely eliminating illegal immigration — is impossible while illegal immigrants can still find work in the U.S., Bersin said. “Absent comprehensive immigration reform, people will try to enter the country illegally,” he said. “We will try to stop that, and we are doing that better than ever. But absent reform, that will continue.”

If Republicans define a secure border in absolute terms, then, it seems likely gridlock over immigration reform will continue.

The first major trend is a response to the new Obama health care law, in which several states are offering citizens the chance to cast a largely symbolic vote against its implementation within the state’s borders. The initiatives seem destined to fail in the courts, but I’ve written a story today about how that fact hasn’t stopped a combination of conservative activists and health care industry backers from trying to push them through nearly 40 state legislatures as a means of taking a potshot at reform and touting its unpopularity. After passing overwhelmingly by referendum during Missouri’s August primary election, similar propositions exempting a state’s citizens from the mandate to purchase health insurance will appear on the ballot in Arizona, Colorado and Oklahoma next month.

The second big issue, which some strategists are already predicting will be the Democrats’ 2012 version of Rove’s same-sex marriage ban in 2004, is the legalization of marijuana. Legalization of cultivation, possession and transportation for personal use is on the ballot this year in California, while the legalization of medical marijuana (which California already enjoys) is on the ballot in Arizona, Oregon and South Dakota. And some analysts are already predicting the California measure might help drive turnout among young people, who in turn will be more likely to vote for Democrats Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer over their Republican opponents in California’s statewide races:

Seizing on new independent polling data, proponents of Proposition 19 — the Golden State ballot measure that would make possessing and growing marijuana legal — argue the measure is going to drive younger-voter turnout in such a way that it will benefit the Democrats statewide, from gubernatorial retread Jerry Brown to Sen. Barbara Boxer.

“It literally is the thumb on the scale that has been generally missed by the polling models out there, and it is going to have an impact not only on the initiative but everything else on the ballot including the candidates,” said Dan Newman, consultant for the “Yes on 19” campaign.

Also up for a vote: Whether the state of Rhode Island should change its name.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka (EPA/ZUMApress.com)

For most of their history, labor unions opposed attempts at loosening immigration laws and often threw their weight behind restrictionist measures. During the most recent overhaul effort in 2007, a schism among unions cracked an otherwise willing liberal coalition and helped defeat the reform bill. But now, in the wake of Arizona’s strict and highly controversial new immigration law, labor has united to support immigration reform with unprecedented vigor.

[Immigration1] Richard Trumka, president of the 11.5-million-member AFL-CIO, gave a pivotal speech on June 18 at the City Club of Cleveland that crystallized labor’s shift in outlook. Trumka, the nation’s most powerful labor voice, made a moral and economic case for reform and pledged to “face head-on our own contradictions, hypocrisy and history on immigration.” AFL-CIO has joined forces with the 2.2-million-strong Service Employees International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union to pour resources into the fight, and the three have written a joint letter to Congress detailing labor’s “unified position and unfailing commitment” to sweeping reform.

Labor leaders have come to view an immigration overhaul as an opportunity rather than a threat to their interests. A large population of unlawful immigrants undercuts both the working class and the influence of unions, while legalized immigrants could be tapped to expand union membership. Likewise, joining forces with the pro-reform and growing Hispanic community can help secure the movement’s future.

Labor unions’ share of the U.S. workforce has declined steadily since the 1950s, when the figure peaked at roughly one-third. Last year it was 12.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Immigrant workers are the growth sector in today’s labor movement, so they’re a big part of its future,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the restrictionist, “low-immigration” Center for Immigration Studies, put it more bluntly. “Unions obviously see immigration as their only chance at future growth,” he said, “since American workers have pretty much given up on them.”

A January report by the liberal Center for American Progress and Immigration Policy Center noted that a large population of unauthorized immigrants — 10 to 12 million, per most estimates — depresses wages for low-skilled jobs. Unscrupulous employers can hire and underpay unlawful workers, who have no ability to unionize or push back politically. In other words, the larger the undocumented population, the smaller the clout of organized labor.

Legalizing unlawful immigrants and ensuring the rights of all workers, the CAP and IPC study concluded, would “help American workers” by “rais[ing] the ‘wage floor’ for the entire U.S. economy.” Newly naturalized workers could also give unions a boost, particularly if they view them as allies early on.

“We want a strong legalization program, and we want to legalize as many workers as fast as possible,” said Ana Avendaño, director of immigration at AFL-CIO, adding that the AFL-CIO supports the creation of an “independent commission” to structure requirements for future immigration inflows based on the needs of the economy.

While these undercurrents have been brewing for years, the newly galvanizing force for labor is the Arizona crackdown on illegal immigration, which requires law enforcement officials to probe the residency status of suspect individuals during lawful encounters.

“Right now, the big fire that’s pushing the labor movement is what’s happening in Arizona,” said Bronfenbrenner. “It’s hurting workers all over the country.” Trumka forcefully criticized the law in his Cleveland speech as part of “a hate campaign” against “working people,” one that’s designed to “make anyone who might look like an immigrant live in fear of the police.”

Civil rights groups say the law will disproportionately target Latinos — the fastest-growing U.S. demographic, and one that strongly backs an immigration overhaul. Unions are already leveraging their pro-reform stance to reach out to Hispanics — an effort that, if successful, could substantially boost their membership prospects in the long run.

The battle over this issue is ongoing, as five states are currently developing similar laws to Arizona’s, and 17 more have shown interest in it, according to the think tank NDN. “We’re very concerned that Arizona is going to become the model for the United States,” Avendaño said.

A sticking point for labor continues to be the expansion of the current guest worker program, the primary reason for AFL-CIO’s opposition in 2007. This business-backed clause comprises non-immigrant visas such as the H-1B, which grants skilled foreigners the temporary right to live and work in the United States. But because these short-term workers have limited job flexibility and are essentially unable to unionize, the provision has been a roadblock to labor’s goals of having a politically active workforce and protecting low-skilled domestic talent.

Trumka, who calls recipients of these visas “vulnerable, indentured workers,” reiterated his union’s opposition to them in Cleveland. “We will not support the return to outdated guest worker programs that give immigrants no security, no future here in the United States, no rights and no hope of being part of the American Dream,” he said, demanding that all workers be “able to assert their legal rights, including the right to organize, without fear of retaliation.”

But Avendaño declined to say whether AFL-CIO and other unions might again seek to kill reform over this provision. “It’s really hard to picture how this will end up,” she said, adding that labor “won’t support reform that puts working people in a bad position.” During the 2007 effort, dissenting progressives such as Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) cited the bill’s expansion of this program as a prime reason for joining all but 12 Republicans to narrowly defeat it. Labor unity on the next effort could play an important role in swinging the votes of liberals.

With the midterm elections approaching, Democrats appear to have put off immigration reform until next Congress, but have intensified support for it since the Arizona law’s enactment. They released a broad template on April 29 — less than a week after the Arizona bill was signed into law — proposing to beef up border security, create a pathway to citizenship and overhaul the systems for employment- and family-based immigration. After helping Democrats pass health care reform, unions are poised to flex their muscle on this new priority.

To Krikorian, labor’s embrace of immigration reform is part of a broader cultural shift. “The U.S. labor movement has changed and become more like European unions — post-patriotic, culturally leftist — and the change in immigration policy is just part of that change,” he said.

For Trumka, however, the case for immigrant rights isn’t just about workers, politics or the economy — it’s also about the fabric of American society. Critiquing the Arizona law, he said, “All of us should fear such a system. In the end, don’t all of us who aren’t Native Americans look like the immigrants and children of immigrants that we are?”

Sahil Kapur is Washington correspondent for Raw Story and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and The Guardian.

Between 1990 and 2006, Mexican immigrants legalized under IRCA dramatically increased their education levels, reduced poverty rates and became more likely to buy their own homes. Real wages rose, many of them moved into managerial positions and the vast majority did not depend upon public assistance, the report finds.

Economic Progess via Legalization is one of three reports issued by the Immigration Policy Center today aimed at encouraging policymakers to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation. The other two look at the social and economic benefits of legalization, and at who should be allowed to benefit from an “earned legalization” program.

The new report, written by Professor Peter B. Dixon and Research Fellow Maureen T. Rimmer at the Centre of Policy Studies at Monash University in Australia, relies on an economic model used by the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Agriculture, and Homeland Security, as well as International Trade Commission.

Weighing public spending and revenues, U.S. employment rates in various occupations, and price levels for imports and exports, among other things, the authors conclude that “increased enforcement and reduced low-skilled immigration have a significant negative impact on the income of U.S. households.” The minimal savings in public spending on immigrants now “would be more than offset by losses in economic output and job opportunities for more skilled American workers.” A policy that reduces low-skilled immigration to about a third less than projected levels, then, over ten years, “would reduce U.S. household welfare by about 0.5 percent, or $80 billion.”

In contrast, “legalization of low-skilled immigrant workers would yield significant income gains for American workers and households,” the study found. Legalization would eliminate the costs of smuggling illegal immigrants, would allow immigrants to be more productive and openly participate in the economy, and it would “create more openings for Americans in higher skilled occupations.”

The overall positive impact for U.S. households of legalizing these workers over ten years would be “1.27 percent of GDP or $180 billion.”

The findings are consistent with previous studies that show economic benefits from the legalization of illegal workers.

Although Napolitano did say she supports the DREAM Act — which would provide some children of undocumented immigrants raised in the United States a path to legalization if they complete two years of college or military service — Napolitano carefully avoided questions about whether a comprehensive immigration reform bill should include broader opportunities for legalization of the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Her refusal to offer an opinion on that highlights just how controversial and politically dicey that issue will be as a new proposal for comprehensive immigration reform gets hammered out over the next few months.

Napolitano’s refusal to sanction legalization seemed to please Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala), the new ranking Republican on the committee, who pressed the issue by saying that while “we need to fix our immigration system,” in his view, “the American people correctly are dubious of a plan that gives lawfulness now to people who came in illegally without confidence that the legal system is going to work in the future.” That “amnesty” would become “a magnet or a message abroad,” he said. “When the American people realize that the broken pipe is being fixed … we can have a far better discussion about how to deal fairly and humanely with people who have been here a long time.” That echoes a common argument from restrictionist quarters that strict border enforcement must precede any considerations of legalization.

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), the Judiciary Committee chairman, presented a more sympathetic case for legalizing undocumented immigrants now “living in the shadows” and tried to elicit Napolitano’s support. She wasn’t biting. The secretary refused to say she supports legalization, saying only, in response to Leahy’s question about whether it makes sense to try to deport 11 million people, that “the sheer logistics of doing that are overwhelming.”

–

TWI is on Twitter. Please follow us here.

President Barack Obama (WDCpix)

Last week, a senior aide to President Obama told The New York Times that the White House plans to support a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would offer a path to legalization for undocumented workers. But will Obama be willing to invest the political capital needed to pass such a bill during an economic crisis – when anti-immigrant sentiment is generally at its peak? After all, President George W. Bush couldn’t get Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill during his presidency even during an economic bubble; he faced too much opposition from within his own party.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

This time, advocates for comprehensive immigration reform that includes legalization for some undocumented workers – what restrictionists derisively call “amnesty” – are making the case that it isn’t just about being sympathetic towards foreign workers. It’s about improving the American economy, and raising wages and conditions for legal U.S. workers, they say — and it’s won support from the U.S. labor movement on a reform package. And though these calculations are always heavily debated, it does appear that this time, the advocates for immigrants have the data on their side.

Yesterday, the Immigration Policy Center (the research arm of the American Immigration Law Foundation) released a new report , “The Economics of Immigration Reform: What Legalizing Undocumented Immigrants Would Mean for the U.S. Economy.” The report is chock full of facts and figures showing that legalizing undocumented workers would “improve wages and working conditions for all workers, and increase tax revenues for cash-strapped federal, state and local governments.” Comprehensive immigration reform legislation would “pay for itself through the increased tax revenue it generates,” and newly legalized workers would be better positioned to move into higher paying jobs, pay higher taxes, and spend more on goods and services – all of which would serve as an economic stimulus to the economy.

The logic is simple. Legal workers earn on average 15 percent more than their illegal counterparts doing the same job, concludes a report done for the Department of Labor. Raising immigrants’ wages means they pay more in taxes, and have more money to spend in the economy. It also reduces the downward pressure on wages that’s long been exerted by the underground economy, where employers can skirt minimum wage and safety laws — which is why labor unions now support legalization, too.

Other studies of undocumented workers suggest similar gains. The Fiscal Policy Institute, for example, studying the construction industry in New York City, found that nearly one in four workers were working “off the books.” As a result, the federal government lost about $272 million in 2005 because employers didn’t pay Social Security, Medicare, workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance, and another $70 million lost in personal income taxes. Although most studies have found that more than half of undocumented immigrants work on the books and pay federal and state income, social security and Medicare taxes, about half of them don’t. Legalization would collect taxes from everyone.

The impact on the cost of government services, however, is more controversial, with immigration restrictionists citing the heavy burdens that new immigrants place on social services systems. Still, most studies show that immigration ultimately leads to an overall increase in government revenue.

A study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, estimated that the cost of the immigration reform bill proposed in 2006 would have been more than offset by the benefits. Legalization would have generated $66 billion over ten years from income and payroll taxes, which would have more than paid for the $54 billion in spending on refundable tax credits, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and food stamps that the groups estimated the government would spend on newly eligible immigrants and their families.

Restrictionist groups, meanwhile, often cite an older study, from 1997, by the National Academy of Sciences that found that immigrants with no more than a high school education would initially cost the government more than they add in revenue. “If we’re talking about people in the [United States] illegally, we’re talking about people largely without more than a high school education,” said Steven Camarota, Director of Research for the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies. The NAS study, he said, finds that an immigrant who comes to the United States without a high school education creates a net fiscal drain in his lifetime of $89,000, meaning he used that much more in services than he paid in taxes. If he has a high school education, the drain was lower, around $39,000. Those with more than a high school education, on the other hand, had a positive fiscal effect. According to a Pew Hispanic Center study released today, about 25 percent of undocumented immigrants fall into that category.

Nevertheless, a closer look at the National Academy of Sciences’ study shows a different picture. The study itself emphasizes the importance of taking a long-range view of immigration, rather than a one-year snapshot. Taking into account all of the various effects of immigration on the economy, including the effect on wages, demand, taxes and social services, the NAS actually found that immigration yields a gain in the overall economy – “on the order of $1 billion to $10 billion a year. Although this gain may be modest relative to the size of the U.S. economy, it remains a significant positive gain in absolute terms.”

That’s because over time, legal immigrants tend to work hard, get an education and advance themselves and their families economically. And that has a positive ripple effect throughout the economy.

“The U.S. economy is not a fixed pie,” said Dan Siciliano, Executive Director of the Program in Law, Economics and Business at Stanford Law School. “It is a dynamic economy that grows and shrinks depending on what’s going on.” Much of what drives growth has to do with the middle class, said Siciliano, who participated in a conference call of experts arranged by the Immigration Policy Center in conjunction with the release of its new report.

A path to legalization for undocumented workers also serves as a path to enter the middle class. “This is critical,” he said.

The problem with the current economy is the overall uncertainty, which decreases investment. “These problems are exaggerated and made worse if you’re undocumented,” said Siciliano. “Enfranchised consumers who are part of the above-ground economy are better consumers. You’re more willing to buy a home if you have certainty about your ability to stay in a community,” explained Siciliano. Immigrants are also more likely to invest in their own education and advancement, and that of their children, if they know they can stay and work where they are.

In addition to the fixed-pie perspective, opponents of legalization often assume that if the government does not legalize their status, immigrants will leave.

“What you sometimes hear is a kind of wishful thinking,” said David Kallick, a senior fellow at the Fiscal Policy Institute who also participated in the IPC conference call. “If undocumented immigrants just vanished, wouldn’t that mean there would be jobs freed up for US workers? But people don’t just vanish.” What’s more, if they did, it would “cause tremendous disruption in US businesses” which would “lead to fewer jobs to go around,” he said. “Mass deportation would be terrible for the economy. And it’s not real. It’s not going to happen.”

Not that mass deportation would be economical, either: the left-leaning Center for American Progress has found that deporting all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. would cost $41 billion a year.

Heavy spending on border enforcement alone also hasn’t kept people out. Even though spending on immigration enforcement more than tripled between 1993 and 2006, so has the number of undocumented immigrants in this country, notes the Immigration Policy Center in its report.

Administration officials say that ultimately, any comprehensive immigration reform package President Obama supports would include not only a path to legalization, but improved enforcement at the border and development of an improved national computer database that would allow employers to check the work eligibility of new job applicants. (The current system, called E-Verify, is not widely used and has been criticized as unreliable and inefficient.)

Still, Republican opponents of legalization, such as Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), have vowed to fight any such bill, arguing that this is no time to increase competition for legal U.S. workers for scarce jobs. “In our current economic crisis, Americans cannot afford to lose more jobs to illegal workers,” King told the New York Times. “American workers are depending on President Obama to protect their jobs from those in America illegally.”

That labor unions, which have in the past expressed the same concerns, are now coming around to the immigration advocates’ side suggests a major shift in perspective about the potential impact of immigration reform on U.S. workers during a recession. We need an immigration system that is part of a national economic recovery program,” said Esther Lopez, Director of Civil Rights for the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Union.

Gerald Jaynes, a professor of Economics and African-American Studies at Yale, has also come around to supporting immigration reform, after years of resisting due to concern about the impact on low-wage workers.

“Several years ago I was convinced that immigration significantly lowered native wages and employment,” he said at the IPC conference, but added that “subsequently, my statistical analyses forced me to conclude otherwise.” (Here is Jaynes’ testimony to Congress on the subject in 2007.) Although undocumented immigration has a slightly negative effect on native-born low-wage workers, he said, “the effects are relatively small, and in any event secondary to other causes of less educated workers’ dismal employment and wage experiences.” And because the work of immigrants often complements that of U.S.-born workers, “immigration can actually create jobs.”

Immigration reform that includes a path to legalization for undocumented workers, then, “is likely to improve conditions” of the overall workforce, he said, echoing one of the major themes that immigrants’ advocates are using to promote a reform package expected to be introduced this year. “One of the major problems for native workers of low education and skills is that they are competing against undocumented workers who employers are taking advantage of,” said Jaynes. “So to eliminate exploitation for the undocumented in effect eliminates or minimizes exploitation in American labor markets for all of the participants.”

It’s “no laughing matter,” Stamper writes on The Huffington Post, noting that millions of people getting busted or losing jobs over buying or smoking pot and others wasting away from cancer and other diseases where marijuana could provide helpful relief really isn’t all that funny.

And though the news lately has been filled with calls for action about violence on the U.S.-Mexico border, no federal lawmakers are talking about how legalizing marijuana and other drugs would drain the narcotics business of much of its associated money and violence, and, potentially, solve a big chunk of the border problem.

Even Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard (D), who testified at a recent Congressional hearing on the problem of border violence, acknowledged that legalization should at least be debated.

That’s not happening, though. The White House recently announced a $700 million program to collaborate with Mexican law enforcement and send more U.S. law enforcement agents to the border. And the governors of Arizona and Texas recently called on the president to send in the National Guard and expand the border fence started in San Diego to stem the tide of violence. But none of these proposals mentioned considering the idea of legalization.

As Goddard testified at a recent Congressional hearing, over 2.4 million pounds of marijuana is smuggled into the United States each year from Mexico. Profits from drug sales in the United States generate $15 – $25 billion per year, and much of that gets smuggled back into Mexico in the form of cash or weapons.

Goddard recently told CNN that “marijuana is the number one producer for the [drug] cartels. Sixty to 70 percent of their gross profits comes from marijuana.” And those cartels these days are causing about 1,000 murders a year.

A recent Zogby poll found that 44 percent of Americans (and 58 percent on the West Coast) favor legalizing and regulating marijuana, much the way we do alcohol. If just a few influential lawmakers would take the issue seriously, the percentage could shoot up.

So why is the idea of legalizing marijuana, which could raise rather than spend millions of dollars in tax revenue and more effectively eliminate drug-related violence, still considered so funny?