The immigration debate has largely focused on Hispanic workers.
What penalty they should pay? Should they be deported? Does their presence lower wages for American citizens?
The policy discussion has not yet touched to a very great degree on the young children of illegal immigrants.
But it can?t, of course, be avoided by serious analysts and policy makers.
Census statistics for Maryland show that of the 297,717 Hispanics in the state, 92,851 of them are 17 or younger.
The majority of the Latino population is not here legally.
The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 225,000 to 275,000 of the Hispanics living in the state are illegal immigrants.
Nationally, Pew estimates that about 1.8 million of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the country are children. That number in Maryland might approach about 34,000.
Complicating matters is the fact that the illegal children have 3.1 million brothers and sisters who were born here and are therefore U.S. citizens.
Should you deport parents of children who are U.S. citizens?
In some ways, the children are not like their parents, the majority of whom are low-skilled workers with little education. These children ? both illegal residents and U.S. citizens ? attend Maryland schools, speak English and have the opportunity to work in high-skill, high-wage positions as citizens. Filling these jobs with qualified workers is key to the future of the Maryland economy as low-wage jobs continue to migrate to lower-wage countries.
A study from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education estimates that the number of Hispanic students, both U.S. citizens and illegal immigrants, graduating from Maryland high schools will grow from less than 2,000 per year in 2002 to more than 6,000 in 2014.
That could mean thousands of people who could contribute to the economy won?t ? or at least not in a legal or meaningful way. They will enter the Maryland work force as maids and restaurant workers and other low-skill, low-wage professions. Without medical insurance, they will continue to use emergency rooms for medical treatment, driving up costs.
How do we feel about that possibility?
Are we prepared to pay the direct and indirect costs of new members of the underclass?
We?ve advocated in these pages that immigration reform must include strict enforcement of existing laws. We?ve also said immigration reform should not penalize those who have waited years to legally immigrate to this country.
But children of illegal immigrants ? the ones not born in the United States ? cannot reasonably be lumped in with their parents for committing the crime of crossing the border. They didn?t pick their parents or choose to break the law, right?
Many of them no longer speak Spanish. And they are no longer Mexican or Guatemalan or Salvadoran. But neither are they American. They exist in legal limbo.
For their sake and for the sake of the U.S. economy, their status needs to be defined.
