Who Cares about Security?

In the current debate over funding of Homeland Security, both sides are predictably accusing the other of putting the nation’s security at risk by refusing to cooperate with the other side.  Without an agreement, funding for Homeland Security, which guards our borders, processes immigration benefits, etc., will be at unavailable.

But look at what is below the funding debate and ask which path is more secure.  The President issued an executive order deferring deportation for certain non-criminal long term residents without legal status, but with strong relationships in the U.S. or strong equities for being permitted to remain (e.g. immigrants brought here as children without legal status).  Opponents don’t like the executive order granting temporary legal status to those that qualify and won’t pass funding for Homeland Security unless the executive order is rescinded, or at least made incapable of being carried out.  They have also sued to enjoin it from being carried out, and a federal judge in Houston has agreed, although that decision is widely expected to be overturned in due course, and the executive order will take effect eventually.

Apart from the legality of the executive order, which I strongly support (along with over 100 constitutional law scholars across the country), which option makes more sense for the security of the country?  The status quo is a haphazard roundup of whoever may fall into the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the enforcement arm of Homeland Security.   This can be anyone from migrant workers to scientists who have fallen out of status, to parents of U.S. citizens (in the hundreds of thousands) to criminal aliens.  It can be recent border crossers to residents with over 10-20 years of peaceful work in the U.S.  In fact, over half of the 11.2 million estimated unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. have been here 10 years or more.

The agencies all recognize that they are simply incapable of removing every unauthorized alien in the U.S., even if they wanted to.  The costs would be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and the economic damage would be severe.  There has been untold human suffering already in the over two million persons removed from the U.S. during the current administration.  The destruction that action has caused and continues to cause for immigrant and U.S. families, many of whom have mixed status people in the household, is enormous. 

But would attempted continuation of the current failed effort to remove every unauthorized immigrant make us more secure?  Absolutely not.  A deferred action plan, such as proposed by the President, would require people to come forward and register.  They would be fingerprinted and their criminal histories checked.  Those with criminal history would be ineligible and would likely not come forward or would and be referred to ICE for removal.  The administration estimates about 5 million would be eligible for this temporary relief.  They would be allowed to remain temporarily and receive work authorization while waiting for Congress to fashion a permanent solution.  Enforcement resources could then be directed toward those who do not register and those who do not qualify.  In the President’s scheme, this would be criminal aliens, and recent arrivals, including those attempting to cross at the border. 

With all the focus on giving a temporary reprieve for those mentioned above, it is forgotten that the President’s plan would also shift significant resources to apprehending criminal aliens and those attempting to cross at the borders, rather than the more expensive interior enforcement aimed at settled immigrant communities.

Law enforcement groups widely support this kind of plan, as do a large number of mayors of large U.S. cities.  Why?  Because they need immigrant communities to cooperate with them in law enforcement.  If the immigrant communities fear going to the police, or even talking to them, because they might be turned over to ICE, they won’t cooperate, and crimes will not be solved and criminals will not be punished.  Even persons here with legal status are often afraid to go the police because they have a relative living with them that has no status.  If a significant portion of these immigrant communities are permitted to come forward and get temporary legal status, it will allow law enforcement to focus on those who don’t come forward, and those attempting to enter illegally now.   

The executive action is a more secure situation for the nation, and long overdue.  To oppose the executive action because one simply cannot stomach some kind of "executive amnesty" is to value a random, ineffective, but too harsh punishment of non-criminal immigrants over national security.

To be clear, this is not a substitute for congressional action, but until Congress can find the will to act, the President’s executive action is a perfectly sensible, moral, and more secure action to take on behalf of the country.

Immigration Critics Paint Themselves in a Corner with Cries of “Amnesty”

The President’s Executive Order deferring deportation for millions of unauthorized immigrants who may qualify for his plan is loudly derided by critics as “amnesty” or “executive amnesty” (I love Colbert’s take that the President wasn’t just satisfied with giving them “amnesty” he had to offer them “executive amnesty” – which must mean some special perks.)   

Critics have learned that if they can label something as “amnesty,” it will lose public support.  But when some of those same critics are asked what they would do – take, for example Cong. Tim Huelskamp’s recent awkward and painful squirming when asked that question on Bloomberg News – they have no answer.  They say they don’t support gestapo style mass deportations, but what can they support?  Well, they don’t know yet.  They just know they don’t support amnesty (defined in the broadest way imaginable) and they don’t support mass deportation, so what is left?  Apparently, the status quo, which means about 400,000 deportations a year, including thousands of non-criminal parents of U.S. citizens, immigrant children fleeing persecution and gang recruitment, and untold human suffering and family disintegration.

It isn’t as if critics haven’t been given a chance to do something.  A comprehensive bi-partisan Senate bill was passed over 500 days ago and sent to the House.  The President would have signed it.  The House refused even to allow a vote on the bill (and it had a good chance of passage).  And yet those same people are now saying that the President’s plan fails constitutionally because he won’t work cooperatively with Congress.

Something needed to be done and, frankly, it should have been done long before now.  A bandage was applied by executive action, but it’s Congress that needs to perform the surgery, if only they will. Instead, their plan seems to be to declare the President’s action unconstitutional, while offering nothing positive in return.

Rest assured, the executive order by the President is constitutional.  Without a doubt.   It was also constitutional two years ago when he, by executive order, granted deferred action to childhood arrivals (the “Dreamers”) to stay their deportations.  About 500,000 deserving immigrants benefitted from this.  Two times the constitutionality was challenged in the courts (in Texas and Florida).  Both times, courts found it constitutional, and the program continued.

If lawsuits are filed again, they will fail again.  Fox News commentator, Geraldo Rivera, stated on Fox News that he would stake “his mortgage” on the constitutionality of the executive action.  While I can’t afford that kind of wager, I feel the same.  By the way, there is a good 33 page legal opinion from legal counsel for the White House explaining the constitutionality of the action, and why they didn’t go as far as we might have wanted in the action.

So apart from lawsuits challenging constitutionality, what can critics do?  If everything short of deportation is “amnesty,” what to do?  That’s the problem.  They have said paying fines and staying is amnesty, long paths to legalization (17 years in the Senate bill) is amnesty, etc.  Anything except immediate removal from the country, regardless of how much social and economic damage that may do, is amnesty.   

In 2010, the Center for American Progress studied the effects and costs of mass deportation verses a comprehensive immigration strategy that provided a path to legalization.  The direct costs of deportation were about $285 billion (if it could even be done).  There would be a resulting economic impact in reducing our gross domestic product by $2.5 trillion over a ten year period.  In contrast, a program of legalization could increase GDP by a cumulative total of $1.5 trillion over that same ten year period.  Other studies have confirmed this impact as well.

That’s the economic impact of a “no amnesty” stance.  The social impact is much worse as families are torn apart and exploited.  Neither our economy nor our national character can take a hit of this magnitude.

Yet we all know that amnesty is unacceptable, or is it?

A wonderful friend from church told me once that he loved immigrants, but could never accept amnesty.  And I said, “why not?” “What is your problem with forgiveness?”  I’m still wondering that.  Christians believe in forgiveness (and if we don’t, then we don’t have much to offer the world).  “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  “Trespass” is an appropriate word to use in the Lord’s Prayer in this context.  Apparently, we have a really hard time forgiving those who trespass over that which we have trespassed before them.

Whatever flaws there are in the executive action (and it’s certainly no complete or lasting solution to the immigration issues), Congress can supersede the President’s action by enacting positive legislation in the area. 

Congress, it’s time to grow up and work on a solution that recognizes the dignity of the good people that work among us, marry our children, and worship with us, while setting future policy that meets the needs of families, workers, and employers in the U.S.