Realities of Immigration\Any overhaul to the current system must match our values as a\people and our aspirations as a nation.

Byline: Spencer Abraham, William Bennett, Jack Kemp and Malcolm Wallop 

SPONSORS of the immigration-restriction bill now before Congress argue that immigration is destroying the quality of life in America. We agree that illegal immigrants are an obvious problem. By coming to this country illegally they undermine our laws. But legal immigrants, those who play by the rules, make good Americans. Their numbers shouldn't be further restricted by Congress.

Because they work hard, immigrants create a "brain gain" for the U.S. During their empire's final days, Soviet officials decried the drain of Russian Jewish physicists, engineers and computer specialists who emigrated to America as refugees.

Today, knowledgeable immigrants from around the world continue to want to come to our shores. Attracting inspired minds from around the world is America's greatest strength, not a weakness.

Restrictionists argue that immigrants are stealing our citizens' jobs. But the total number of jobs in America is not a fixed number; in fact, it has more than doubled since 1960 to 125 million.

Immigration is not a zero-sum game in which every job that goes to a foreign-born worker means one fewer job for an American. Immigrants start new businesses, save, invest and give back to their communities as consumers and active participants.

And, as Julian Simon of the University of Maryland notes, "the studies uniformly show that immigrants do not increase the rate of native unemployment."

The Manhattan Institute, for example, has shown that the median unemployment rate in the 10 states with the largest immigrant populations was lower between 1960 and 1991 than that for the 10 states with the smallest immigrant population (5.1 percent vs. 6.6 percent).

It is the restrictionists who will cost Americans their jobs. Proposed immigration legislation would impose new taxes, regulations and restrictions on companies hiring skilled immigrants.

This will hurt American companies, particularly in the important high-tech industry, in which a small but critical group of immigrants supplies scarce skills.

Restrictionists also argue that immigrants financially burden American taxpayers, who pay for welfare and other benefits.

Though the evidence of this is mixed (for example, the Manhattan Institute reports that working-age nonrefugee immigrants are less prone to receive welfare than natives), we should adopt a policy of immigration yes, welfare no.

First and foremost, we should prohibit illegal immigrants from receiving welfare. For legal immigrants, we ought to both limit the classes of legal aliens eligible for government benefits and restrict the type of benefits they can obtain. The ultimate solution is to truly end welfare as we know it for native and foreign-born alike.

Another restrictionist argument is that America needs a reduction or even a timeout in immigration to aid assimilation. Yet no evidence exists that allowing fewer immigrants into the country will benefit assimilation of those already here.

And, as Prof. Simon notes, immigrants today make up a significantly smaller percentage of our population than the historical average.

Historian Paul Johnson notes that previous pauses in immigration were unfortunate overreactions to the perceived public sentiment of the times. These were sad chapters in America's past, not guideposts to its future.

Those of us who support generous immigration policies do, however, believe that something must be done to halt illegal immigration.

We need tougher border enforcement, quicker deportation of criminal aliens, harsher penalties for visa over-stayers, a streamlined Immigration and Naturalization Service bureaucracy, and market-oriented solutions.

Unfortunately, the effort to address the illegal immigration problem has spawned "cures" worse than the disease. Legislation advancing in Congress would force all Americans to comply with a national identity verification system administered by a new and powerful government agency.

Every employer would have to ask the federal government's computer for permission to hire any new worker, citizen or not.

This inevitably will lead to a national system in which workers will have to provide identification to bureaucrats in the form of fingerprints, retina scans or other "biometric" data.

Such schemes are incompatible with Republican Party themes of expanding freedom and reducing government.

A national I.D. system represents a further burdensome unfunded mandate on employers that will cause many of them to decide not to hire new employees. It will not work, and even if it did, it would not be worth the cost in dollars or lost liberty.

We must have an immigration system that matches our values as a people and our aspirations as a nation. It should be based on the following pro-family, pro-growth conservative principles:

1) Our commitment to the institution of the family demands that we allow family members to be reunited with their loved ones. Spouses, parents, siblings, and minor and adult children of U.S. citizens should be eligible, as they are under current law, to join their families in the United States.

Many came to this country by themselves with the goal of becoming citizens, working hard and acquiring the resources necessary to bring family members to America. It flies in the face of the American immigration experience to keep brothers and sisters, parents and children separated. Extended family unification is by definition "pro-family."

2) Our belief in free markets requires us to recognize that businesses possess the right to hire highly-skilled workers from other countries, since such individuals enhance the competitiveness of America's companies.

Enterprises should be able to find needed employees without paying exorbitant fees and without being forced to go through regulatory hoops designed with protectionist intent. Protectionism does not work for trade, and there is no reason to believe it makes for a sound immigration policy.

Further, free-market conservatives should not encourage the Labor Department to interfere in the workplace in ways that we would never tolerate from the Environmental Protection Agency or the Internal Revenue Service.

And we must recognize that restrictions on family reunification and other categories not labeled as economic are vitally important to our economy. Many skilled would-be immigrants will not come to this country if they cannot, for example, bring their college-age children with them.

3) Finally, our long tradition of providing succor to those in need calls on us to maintain a humane refugee policy.

Our immigration policy both reflects and projects our character and level of decency.

In his farewell address to the nation, President Ronald Reagan said: "I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it.

But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.

And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still."

We choose the shining city over a fortress America.

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Photo (1--Color) Eyes on America Several residents of Mexico await the perfect moment to cross the border near San Ysidro, Calif. The Orange County Register (2) A bust Border Patrol agents round up illegal aliens in Northern San Diego County.