Sunday, November 4, 2007

10/10/07

I appeared on an immigration panel last night at William Jewell University as a part of their informed speakers series. Despite the name of the event, the panel also included a lobbyist for FAIR and the local president of the Minutemen.

I argued that our legal structure on immigration is broken because, not only does it not regulate the borders, but because it doesn’t meet our needs as a nation. These are economic needs as well as social (family unification) and humanitarian (justice). Somewhat to my surprise the Minutemen apparently don’t believe our legal structure regarding immigration is broken. It’s fine the way it is. It just needs to be enforced. That’s what the problem is, according to the Minuteman. I heard that enforcement mentality expressed to me from audience members after the meeting as well. “If we are going to have laws, they have to be enforced,” they said. “We are a nation of laws.”

True, we are a nation of laws, but we are also a nation that aspires to justice. We need to be right; to reflect the better aspects of faith and humanity. When laws are unjust, we need to change them, not mindlessly enforce them. Laws that separate families for long periods of time for minor non-criminal immigration violations are unjust. There is no virtue is simply enforcing those laws, as if we are meeting some kind of moral mandate.

Last year, the House passed its horrendous immigration bill that would have criminalized, for the first time, non-criminal immigration violations. It would have also criminalized the behavior of those that aided undocumented immigrants. This bill led to massive protests in the streets. Cardinal Mahoney of California declared that if that bill were passed, the Catholic Church would disobey it.

Enforcement of bad law is no virtue. What if suddenly the federal government passed a law that made the maximum speed limit nationwide 20 mph? They could justify that by pointing to the thousands of deaths that are caused each year by excessive speed. The lower the speed, the better the chance of surviving a collision. If congress did that, would the Minutemen be on every street corner with a radar gun demanding that the law be enforced? Of course not, because that law would not serve the country’s needs. We would have a nation of lawbreakers until Congress finally got around to fixing the law.

The FAIR representative made the odd assertion that her organization believed in enforcement of the laws on the books now, but that they did not support mass deportations. Exactly how does that work? There are approximately 12 to 20 million (the Minuteman says 35 million and I guess no one really knows) undocumented immigrants in this country. The existing law prescribes that they be deported. So how does FAIR want that to work if not mass deportation? Gradual deportation over a period of years? Harassment and heaping misery upon misery upon undocumented immigrants until they finally decide to leave on their own? This seems to be the current approach as they lobby states for local enforcement and criminalization of employers and landlords. It seems the hope is to make these non-criminal human beings so unhappy that they can’t stand it here anymore and they will just leave. Dream on. Undocumented immigrants are deeply imbedded in our society, and in fact, needed by our society. None of those sound like just or humane solutions to me.

I also found it odd that the Minuteman repeated several times that his organization “offers solutions” to the problem of “illegal immigration” and no one else is doing that. Well, an intimidated Congress isn’t offering much in the way of solutions, but an enforcement only mentality is also certainly no solution. Both DHS Secretary Chertoff and former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge have affirmed that there is no way they could possibly deport every undocumented immigrant in this country. It would cost billions and billions of dollars even if you knew where everyone was. And at the end of the day, what have we gained? We have separated families and crushed employers. We have trampled on civil and human rights and run our country like the Gestapo. Enforcement only is a very poor option for our tax dollars. It’s certainly no solution to the immigration problem.

Did you know that studies have shown that about 1/3 of the undocumented population has been here 10 years or more? This indicates to me that they are deeply imbedded in society. Uprooting them without any option for attaining legal status will be the cause of much unnecessary human misery. Are the enforcement only folks ready to accept responsibility for this unnecessary human suffering?

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