My wife and I recently left behind the U.S. debate on immigration policy to visit our daughter and her husband who were studying Spanish in a small town in Nicaragua. That trip took us to a country in which there is more than 50 percent unemployment or underemployment, and most of the population is reported to live on less than a dollar per person per day. We were told that school teachers make from $30 to $60 a month (an amount similar to that made by store workers); professors make about $100 a month; and doctors are on strike protesting their $200-$300 per month income. Running water and electricity remain luxuries that many do not have.

		Ronald Brand is professor of law and director of the Center for International Legal Education at the University of Pittsburgh.

We met a generally happy people who love their country and want to work to create a better life for their children. Few of them, however, were without a relative or friend in the United States (not always legally), and many had hopes of coming to the United States.

We were told that more than 100 Nicaraguans line up at the U.S. Embassy in Managua every day to apply for visas that only two or three of them will receive. Each of them pays a non-refundable application fee of $112. Some believe that if they only meet a U.S. citizen who will go with them to the embassy they will have a better chance of getting a visa. Others seek access to the United States in unofficial ways. A friend of our daughter's host family quit her job and paid $3,000 to be transported to the United States. She called home a week later from Mexico, without the $3,000 and without getting to the United States.

Do these people want so badly to leave their homes, their families, and their country? I'm not so sure. They do want to leave poverty, despair, and a lack of hope. They do want to find opportunity, hope, and the chance for a better future.

We in the United States are proud that we have what others want, but we seem not to share it by having them come here to have it with us. That's why we are debating our immigration policy. That's why Congress probably is going to have to enact some kind of new immigration bill.

Can it be, though, that this is more an issue of foreign policy than of immigration policy?

Many of the people we met in Nicaragua lived on very little. It wouldn't take much to improve their lives dramatically. If funds were available for public works jobs that helped build infrastructure, workers could be paid enough to improve their lives. And the country could gain the basic attributes that help attract foreign investment; which could then help create more jobs.

Now that we are back in the United States, we hear continued concern about the desire for -- and cost of -- immigration control, fences and new ways of monitoring our borders. Might it be possible that relatively small amounts spent on foreign aid in the countries south of our border could make life good enough that families would choose to stay together in countries they love?

In the current debate it may be worth spending a bit of time considering whether it is immigration into the United States that is such a draw, or emigration away from poverty that drives the process. If the problem is the latter, then it seems that most current proposals for legislation would treat only the symptom -- when it may in fact be much more rational and economical to treat the problem.

It may be difficult to determine whether it is the leaving or the coming that is driving the process, but it seems we should at least be studying and debating the entire set of issues.