Immigration pause.

SINCE the 1994 passage of California's Proposition 187, virtually all policymakers, Republican and Democratic, have agreed with the American people that the United States should take strong measures to control illegal immigration. But when it comes to reforming legal immigration, there is an inverse relationship between what ordinary Americans and policymakers want. And both the House of Representatives and the Senate Judiciary Committee demonstrated their indifference to popular anxieties by rejecting the legal-immigration reform proposals introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Tex.) and Sen. Alan Simpson (R., Wyo.).

In fact, the House and the Senate seem to be playing a perverse game of one-upmanship. In mid March the Senate Judiciary Committee approved an amendment to the Simpson bill from Sen. Spencer Abraham (R., Mich.) splitting consideration of legal and illegal immigration. The following week, Reps. Dick Chrysler (R., Mich.), Howard Berman (D., Calif.), and Sam Brownback (R., Kan.) introduced an amendment eliminating reductions in legal immigration from the Smith bill (under the guise of "splitting" the bill). Then, one week later, Sens. Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.), Abraham, Paul Simon (D., Ill.), and Mike DeWine (R., Ohio) proposed an amendment that replaced Sen. Simpson's cuts in legal immigration with an increase (see p. 10 of this issue). Which is where matters now stand.

Some conservative friends like Sen. Abraham and Rep. Dick Armey were on the wrong side of these votes. In his letter on page 4 of this issue, the senator protests that he is nonetheless a reformer -- and indeed he did propose some useful, if uncontroversial, measures to speed up the deportation of criminal aliens. On the main question, however, he sponsored the amendment that everyone else knew would kill legal-immigration reform. And he did so even after the provisions affecting skilled immigration (ostensibly the cause of his objection) had been dropped. He is sadly misinformed, moreover, if he thinks the technical literature shows "little wage impact" from immigration. These effects began to be reported several years ago, as the post - 1965 Immigration Act influx started driving the data. Indeed, they appear in Professor Card's later work. This phenomenon was discussed in George Borjas's Journal of Economic Literature survey of the field in December 1994, and for that matter in NR senior editor Peter Brimelow's book Alien Nation last year. Dr. David Jaeger's results are simply the most dramatic evidence yet. (Dr. Jaeger is not a "graduate student," by the way, but a full-time economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- and his work has been awarded the Upton Employment Institute Dissertation Award.)

Now that reform of legal immigration has been gutted, however, what is left? The remnants of the Smith and Simpson bills significantly improve illegal-immigration control. Both would enhance border and workplace enforcement, speed up the deportation process, and reduce welfare use by immigrants. Both deserve public support. But they don't go far enough. In particular, they allow legal immigration to continue at rates that are both historically high and roughly three times the level favored by 70 per cent of ordinary Americans.

And ordinary Americans are right. Economically and socially, there is little to choose between legal and illegal immigration. Legal immigrants today, like illegals, are largely unskilled and poorly educated (only 10 to 15 per cent are admitted because they have needed skills); they are highly concentrated in low-wage industries, and thus pay low income taxes; and they are more likely than natives (or illegals, who are ineligible) to receive welfare benefits. Finally, of course, there are many more legal immigrants than illegal ones. Of the 1.1 million or so immigrants who enter the U.S. annually, almost three-quarters are legal. Smith and Simpson clearly recognized that, by failing to reduce legal immigration, Congress would be addressing only a quarter of the problem.

Their approach was opposed from the outset by the usual pro-immigration liberals, allied with ethnic lobbyists. To defeat reform, this group joined forces with a conservative minority made up of big-business supporters and libertarian immigrationists. Even then, the coalition wasn't large enough to rout legal reform --until it was joined by the Administration and the Religious Right.

The Administration, in yet another flip-flop, reversed its support for the Jordan Commission reforms and encouraged the elimination of legal-immigration reductions (pulling the rug out from under Democrats who had previously supported them). It had, however, the excuse of electoral calculation, since the Democratic coalition is fortified by new immigrants and the ethnic pressure groups they strengthen. How does one account, though, for the Christian Coalition's letter to conservative congressmen urging support of the effort to strike down reform "on behalf of members" of the Coalition?

It cannot be because of pressure from these members. Opinion polls show overwhelming support for lower immigration among religious conservatives. Nor does the letter's moral logic make sense. It says that proposed cuts in legal immigration "could severely damage the American family." What the Christian Coalition is upholding here is not the interests of families as such but those of immigrants' extended families -- by defending the rule that once an immigrant is admitted, he is thereafter entitled to bring in his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts. And the reunification of foreign families in America often occurs at the expense of poor American families.

The Coalition's letter makes better sense as a case of Beltway loyalty. Elites in the liberal coalition have long sacrificed their grassroots members to their D.C. allies. Hence, their decline. The Christian Coalition's letter was similarly a payoff to its big-business and libertarian allies in the conservative coalition. We look forward to the Cato Institute's support for school prayer (just kidding).

Is reform of legal immigration doomed? Not at all. A large GOP majority is now committed to reform. More than two-thirds of House Republicans voted for Lamar Smith's bill, and it was defeated only by a shaky coalition. Expose that coalition to the light of day and it will surely shrink.

It is even possible that, with public pressure and leadership from Majority Leader Bob Dole, who has been sympathetic to reform, Simpson's legal-immigration cuts could be put back into the bill during the Senate floor debate in mid April. Still, it seems doubtful that significant reform will be enacted this year. After all, it took Congress 25 years to reduce immigration at the last turn of the century. Unfortunately, at current immigration levels, 25 years means 25 million more immigrants.