By Anna Crosslin, President & CEO  

The following anecdote is a true story from an acquaintance. One evening, as he was driving back home to St. Charles, he was pulled over on I-70 by a Missouri Highway Patrolman. The trooper asked to see his driver’s license and then, most likely upon noticing his Spanish accent, requested proof of American citizenship. My friend responded that he didn’t have his passport. He asked if his PX card (since he is a retired US Air Force Colonel) would do instead. You see, he was born in Puerto Rico. Spanish is the official language there, and Puerto Ricans are US Citizens!

 

Readers may wonder whether my friend is unique among foreign-born Missourians and the answer is “surprisingly not.” As revealed in the following US census data, our foreign-born population is small, estimated at approximately 3.3% of Missouri’s population. And it is largely comprised of US citizens or those on their way to citizenship. Among them, more than 95% indicate they speak English very well or better. And, perhaps most surprising of all, we have more residents from Asia than from Latin America!

So, why is there such a big ruckus in the Missouri State legislature about passing immigration legislation to ferret out illegal immigrants and penalize them – be it in housing, employment, or on the highways? It is certainly not because there are substantial numbers of illegal immigrants who are overwhelming us!

Let’s consider employment for instance. Approximately 4.2% of Missouri’s civilian workforce is foreign-born. If we refer back to my earlier comment, then we can say that most of those workers are here legally – either as US citizens or on the citizenship path. The Missouri legislature’s efforts to pass employment verification measures to “curb” illegal employment will actually drive up workplace administrative costs, since verification will need to be completed for any new employee. Meanwhile, any potential new hire, including a native-born American, can run the risk of losing a job opportunity due to foul ups in a federal electronic verification system that is at this point fraught with erroneous data mismatches. So, these proposed legislative changes will prove costly to employers and in fact to all of us, and, for what purpose in the end?

In many Missouri communities, our immigrants are the backbones of our communities, representing a disproportionately large share of our small business owners and filling a variety of professional positions, especially in the medical, information technology, and engineering sectors. We should be welcoming and embracing our immigrants. They are not a problem but are in fact part of the solution of how we as a state can revitalize our economy creating opportunity for us all.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Immigration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.