Fair-minded Americans might not know what to make of the furor set off by Arizona’s recent law directed against illegal immigrants. The law requires state and local law enforcement officials to determine the immigration status of any individual whom they “stop, detain, or arrest” and about whose status they have a “reasonable suspicion.” This new law may not prove workable or effective, and it may not pass constitutional muster. But for the benefit of those who find themselves caught between the over-heated extremes in this debate, it is worth considering that the proponents and the opponents of this law are not really competing on the same terrain or, indeed, playing the same game.
The Arizona law is only the latest phase of a long-smoldering and backward-looking popular reaction to mass migration that seeks to restore some semblance of the way things used to be. Such restrictionism is invariably out-organized by well-funded and sophisticated immigrant advocates, allied with business and others elites who benefit from on-going high levels of immigration. Grasping intuitively that deeply rooted demographic and economic forces are on their side, this expansionist coalition has for more than two decades grown accustomed to evasive and dilatory tactics. The result has been inexorably rising levels of both legal and illegal immigration, despite most Americans’ continuing unease and opposition.
Today in Arizona popular anxieties have reached a boiling point, as the uproar there now involves much more than illegal immigration. Drug smuggling has become enmeshed with alien smuggling, and the criminality and violence associated with drugs now taints immigrants. As home invasions, kidnappings, and murders spill out into the broader population, Arizonans are dealing with the consequences of what looks like Mexico’s descent into a failed state.
Urgent though these concerns may be, they do not necessarily justify the new law. Yet this is not really the point. It is not clear that immigrant advocates and their allies will accept any measures addressing the concerns of Arizonans and other Americans. For example, expansionists have also resisted attempts to control immigration directly at the border with physical or electronic barriers and increased manpower. To be sure, such policies are of limited effectiveness, but they have the virtue of being less disruptive to all Americans and therefore less controversial than the alternatives.
Expansionists have been all the more opposed to policies critically needed to exert control in the nation’s interior. Long before the present controversy, they opposed the federal government’s efforts to enlist the help of state and local law enforcement to address the problem of illegal immigrants. The “287(g) program,” passed by Congress in 1996 to encourage and formalize such cooperation, has been vilified as misguided and unworkable.
More dramatically, expansionists charge that 287(g) infringes on the civil liberties of immigrants. To make their case, they habitually cite two government evaluations of the program, one by the General Accounting Office and the other by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General. Yet neither study actually presents any evidence of civil liberties violations—only vague and unsubstantiated “concerns” expressed by unidentified “members of the communities.” Nevertheless, just last month, the New York Times repeated the charge, condemned 287(g) as a “dangerous experiment,” and called upon homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano to abolish it.
Expansionists have also fought efforts to enforce sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrants. Back in the 1980s, immigrant advocates blocked legislation in Congress that would have imposed meaningful penalties on such employers, measures that would have mandated reliance on secure means of identification resistant to counterfeiting. Advocates argued that these would lead to discrimination against “all brown-skinned workers.” Ever since, expansionists have consistently opposed efforts to make sanctions effective through more reliable and sophisticated identification procedures that greatly reduce the possibility of mistakes. But again and again, innovative programs have been resisted, typically out of concern that “false positives” would lead to legal immigrants being inaccurately identified as illegal. The outcome is today’s pitiful policy, which prohibits employers from hiring illegal immigrants but effectively allows them to hire anyone who provides an array of easily forged documents.
This is not to say that the objections of expansionists have been groundless. They tapped into deeply American concerns about privacy and fairness and have forced some improvements in proposed policies. But immigrant advocates and their elite allies have also demonstrated a stubborn unwillingness to consider not only the costs of reducing illegal immigration but the benefits as well.
This undercuts the credibility of expansionist claims that Arizona’s law will infringe on the civil liberties of citizens and non-citizens alike. It might. But the critical question, given the increasing mayhem along the border, is this: At what point will expansionists be prepared to sacrifice some infringements on our liberties in order to secure our safety? Because their answer has consistently been “never,” they have less and less credibility in these debates.
Similar doubts arise about claims that the Arizona law will lead to racial profiling. It could. But once again, there is a larger point. While espousing a fervent belief in diversity, immigrant advocates and their allies have presided over a policy regime that has produced one of the least diverse migration streams in our history. One result is the growing Hispanic population, whose overall size and geographic concentration in the Southwest pose challenges that are not insurmountable but are nonetheless real.
The genuinely troubling fact is that at least three-fourths of illegal immigrants are Hispanics. And while over eighty percent of Hispanics are in the United States legally, it is hardly surprising that the public has begun to equate being Hispanic with being illegal. This stereotyping is a genuine cause for concern. But when immigrant advocates now object that efforts to address illegal immigration have racial overtones, their concerns ring hollow – because for over twenty years they have so consistently and repeatedly condemned anyone prepared to raise questions about the racial and ethnic composition of the current influx.
Racism and elitism has long been a volatile brew in our politics. Today, the admixture of condescension and guilt among elite proponents of expansionist policies is particularly noxious. On the one hand, they condescend to ordinary Americans who express any anxieties about those policies; on the other, they feel guilty toward socially and economically marginal immigrants.
At this point, it behooves us to stop and consider what any economist will affirm about economic migrants, legal or illegal, to America or any other country: they are the clear and indisputable winners in this scenario. Mexican immigrants, for example, increase their earnings several fold by crossing the border to work here.
Of course, immigrants also undertake considerable risks, including exploitation by unscrupulous employers, and—yes—mistreatment by over-zealous or abusive law enforcement officials. In an important sense, one of the challenges posed by immigrants is that they are more prepared than most Americans to take risks—and that the outcomes of that risk-taking often generate problems for immigrants and non-immigrants alike. Nevertheless, expansionists persist in ascribing to immigrants the status of victims—heroic to be sure, but victims all the same.
This makes it all the easier for expansionists to dismiss the concerns of so many Americans. Yet the failure here is even more fundamental—a failure of moral imagination, evident in the pervasive and naive ethic of intentions routinely invoked to explain and justify the arrival of ever more immigrants. We are told over and over that immigrants “just come here to work,” which is not incorrect. But advocates and their allies neglect to mention that immigrants also typically intend not to remain here, but to work hard, save money, and then return home.
Of course, many of these, like their predecessors a century ago, end up staying—despite their intentions. In the interim, their continuing ambivalence and indecision about remaining here complicates life for them, their children, and the rest of us. One such complication is that immigrants—legal as well as illegal—are hard to organize into labor unions, community organizations, and myriad other collective endeavors. Another is that immigrants, including illegal ones, are willing to put up with hard work at several jobs and tolerate living conditions below their own standards and means. Needless to say, such complicating factors do not enter into the simplified moralism of immigrant advocates and their allies.
Moralists of course need high priests, and for immigration expansionists this is literally the case. Just about any member of the American Catholic hierarchy will fill the bill. One prominent bishop I heard at a retreat for immi
gration policy analysts echoed the familiar refrain that the defense of illegal immigrants is today’s equivalent of the black civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. To the extent that Church leaders were on the right side of that struggle, I can understand why they invoke this analogy.
Nevertheless, the plight of today’s illegal immigrants—and make no mistake, it is a plight—is an entirely different case. The civil rights movement was all about including American citizens who had been excluded from our social and political life. Today, the controversy over illegal immigrants poses a more difficult issue about how we are to deal with large numbers of aliens we have allowed into our country but about whose future we can now find no agreement. The plight of African Americans may have been politically challenging, but morally it was straightforward. The situation of illegal immigrants is much more challenging and complex, both morally and politically.
I assume Cardinal Mahoney, archbishop of Los Angeles, would not agree. As he recently declared to a crowd in Los Angeles protesting the Arizona law, “Everyone in God’s eyes is legal.”
If a Muslim said this, he would be accused of trying to impose Sharia law on the rest of us. The cardinal had no such thing in mind. But he and his expansionist allies do need to come down to earth where the rest of us are, and join in a real debate about what kind of immigration policy will work for all Americans.
Peter Skerry teaches political science at Boston College and is a co-convener of the Brookings-Duke Immigration Policy Roundtable, which has published Breaking the Immigration Stalemate.
RESOURCES
Mary Anne Glendon, “Principled Immigration”
Peter Meilaender, “Immigration: Citizens and Strangers”
Michael Scaperlanda, “Immigration and the Bishops”
Michael Scaperlanda and William Chip, “The Ethics of Immigration: An Exchange”
Peter Meilaender, “Defending the Innocent: Arizona and Immigration”
Comments:
As it stands, the debate is really between those who consume unskilled labor, and those who supply it. Those who supply it, self-interestedly would like to reduce the supply. Those who consume it, also self-interestedly would like to increase it.
The immigrants want to work, and employers want to hire them. Those people with the good luck to be born into this world on American soil, seem to feel that they deserve a premium wage for that fact alone, and demand the Congress and the Border Patrol extract the economic rent for them.
That said, it would be nice if the Left didn't cast all opponents of immigration as racists. Prior to integration of baseball, the players were dead set against it, not because they were racists, but because the increased supply of quality players would reduce their value.
To speak to the earlier commenter, that entering here illegally is breaking the commandment, 'Thou shall not steal' -- in what possible way is that true? What has been taken, and from whom?
How can the Arizona law not be unconstitutional, unless all ID, including my
requirement to produce my drivers license by local authorities is also not
Constitutional. Fair and legal, apparently are still important distinctions to
the majority of US citizens, and rightfully so. Even, if the social justice crowd
chooses to ignore some parts.
http://www.fredoneverything.net/TacImmigration.shtml
If I have have food and you are starving then I have an obligation to feed you.
If I have clothes and you are naked then I have an obligation to clothe you.
However, it seems to me...
If I have meat and you have beans then I have no obligation to feed you.
If I have new clothes and you have old clothes then I have no obligation to clothe you.
As Christians we are obligated to save the lives of our brothers but we are not obligated to give them a free lifestyle upgrade. We may choose to but we are not obligated. And we certainly have no right to impose this obligation on our non-Christian fellow citizens.
There are many places in the world where people are forced to emigrate because they are starving or persecuted. Mexico is NOT one of those places!
Mexico has no natural disaster, no drought, no famine, no plague, no war and no genocide.
Actually, Mexico is something of a paradise compared to much of the third world.
Most of the illegal immigrants from Mexico already had food and homes and jobs.
Their food and homes and jobs may not have been as nice as ours but that's just life.
I live very modestly. I bet your home and your food and your job are much nicer than mine. If I show up at your doorstep are you obligated to upgrade my lifestyle? I don't think so but that is EXACTLY what illegal immigrants from Mexico think.
Illegal immigration from Mexico is a lifestyle choice. We do not owe them a free upgrade.
We should not allow anyone, Catholic leaders or otherwise, to make us feel guilty about enforcing our country's laws.
Because public policy is a different matter than private charity. The government's primary duty here is to secure the border and defend our national sovereignty. This must be the first step in developing a "comprehensive" immigration policy. If I choose to give charity to the alien, it is none of my business to support forcing my neighbor to do the same through government coercion.
Having said all of the above, in my opinion we (through government) are partly culpable for the mess that the illegal alien problem has become. By cynically putting laws on the books which are not enforceable, and which we do not intend to enforce in any consistent and meaningful manner, we "invite" people to come in and, as I say, break the commandment not to steal. The second step, after securing the border, must be to adjust the laws and quotas in a way which reflects demographic and economic reality, AND make proper provision for the laws to be realistically and evenhandedly enforced.
For these reasons, I am very sympathetic to Arizona's new laws, and I hope they succeed. They can be a model for the rest of us.
Margaret´s argument reveals a lack of knowledge of the situation of many Latin American “illegal” people who want to escape from poverty and find new opportunities in the United States as millions of immigrants did so in the past. People from Italy, Germany, Ireland, Russia and many other countries went to the United States not only to escape from starvation but to improve their economic position. They brought with them their virtues and their vices and contributed to the astonishing development of your nation.
What is the difference with Hispanics? Well, perhaps you think that most of them are neither white nor "civilized". For you they are just "aliens" who bring vice and misery to a prosperous, marvelous and law-abiding country.
Let me tell you that if there are illegal immigrants it is because your sophisticate people just don’t want to do some "lower" jobs. It is because you are just short of manpower and the law of market is playing its part.
This is an interesting statement. On the one hand, compare it with the famous claim of Benjamin Franklin: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Franklin's answer to the author's question was evidently "never," but he's revered for the statement, not someone who has lost credibility.
Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, not to mention racial profiling, is certainly an essential liberty, and perhaps this is why "expansionists" think they occupy the moral high ground of a venerable American tradition.
On the other hand, I wonder if the author of this piece, if he rejects Franklin's claim, would be willing to face the logical extension of his argument to another realm, the realm of 200 million handguns and the much, much larger threat to public safety represented by the cult of self-defense by way of personal gun ownership (a cult that, incidentally, directly contradicts the just-war tradition's reading of Romans 12 and 13). So why not say this:
"At what point will [gun rights' enthusiasts] be prepared to sacrifice some infringements on our liberties in order to secure our safety?"
To understand why undocumented employment is theft, you need to understand some of the burdens of being a business owner. As a law-abiding business owner, my father pays municipal earnings tax on the wages of his workers. He also pays into the state Unemployment and Workmen's Compensation Funds.
The tax on earnings helps provide upkeep on infrastructure required both by private citizens and businesses. The Unemployment provides a social safety net for workers if he has to downsize or fire someone. Workmen's Compensation provides aid if someone is injured on the job, irregardless if the injury was inflicted through employer negligence or employee stupidity.
These are all features of a socially just employer.
Because of the expense of providing for these common goods, my father, an honest and good man who puts in 50-70 hour work weeks--longer than any of his employees--is at a disadvantage against unscrupulous competitors who are willing to hire illegals.
Because they are here illegally and thus have no recourse under the law, competitors can exploit illegal workers and my father's honesty to gain market share, edge him out of business, and destroy the benefits competition brings to the market (innovation, lower prices).
Consider:
1) They can pay the illegal worker below minimum wage.
2) They aren't paying into Unemployment, meaning the worker will get nothing if/when he is fired. Given that he's already making less, this puts a greater strain on the illegal immigrant.
3) No Workmen's Compensation contributions, meaning the worker is left similarly helpless in the event of on-the-job injury. Incidentally, state workmen comp budgets have been operating at deficits for years--in part because of illegal employment.
4) No or little contributions to Social Security or Medicare by illegal workers. As I've posted in Mr. Meilander's articles, at $7 million in "illegal" contributions annually, it's less than $0.50 per illegal.
Societies are built on social contracts. Common goods and social safety nets are rendered from common contributions. Most illegals circumvent these, and they are MORE vulnerable because these practices are allowed. It IS theft, from the honest, and from those illegals who've worked and get no help from unscrupulous employers.
It is a vote against being a member of the society, and in the absence of appropriate contributions and commitment--irregardless of whether one is a native born American or an illegal immigrant--it should mean deportation.
Finally, consider if war were to befall us to the point the draft would be reinstituted. Illegals, lacking documentation, also lack registration for selective service. In such a scenario, they'd be cheating in such a manner they're essentially robbing American servicemen and women of their lives.
Is that fair? Just?
It is rightly said that the damage attributed to immigrants is widely overstated.
Economically, they contribute as much as any productive person. If their freely negotiated wage is below what natives are asking, then the natives ought to improve their game. Those who say they are inflicting costs on others must prove their case.
Nevertheless, a massive influx of poor desperate people, no matter how deserving or industrious will have consequences in American political life. Previous waves of immigrants were successfully integrated into the United States largely because of its traditions of a minimal state and de jure property rights. Those wishing to make political use of immigrants had fewer and less destructive means of buying their perpetual loyalty. Now that identity politics and rent seeking are national past times, it seems unlikely that deprived newcomers will be especially likely to reject nanny state candy.
I would like to propose that you change the title of your article to "The Crude Strawmen of Academic Sophists". What angers me about your article is less the arguments themselves than your reliance on vaguely pejorative generalizations as props. I might even not care about that enough to comment if you were some second rate newspaper columnist trying to make a deadline. But, you, "professor", have absolutely no excuse for the kind of careless intellectual laziness that you display in this article. I looked you up on the Boston College website because I wondered if maybe you were a part time adjunct or scrambling on the tenure track. Maybe you are just too busy to write a well-reasoned article that relies on data rather than repeated allusions to strawmen? But, nope, according to the college website, you are an honest to god actual professor at a private Jesuit institute of higher learning. You are paid to engage in research, writing and teaching - full time, with benefits, and a CV with publications up the wazoo to match. You apparently specialize in immigration policy. For you to write such drivel is an abuse of your position and the privileges you enjoy.
Let's start with the term "elite". In current political parlance, "elite" is a term used by those on the right to refer to those on the left in the same manner that those on the left use the term "wingnut" to refer to those on the right. These terms are used as thought stoppers, as a shorthand way of saying that no sane, "fair minded" (to quote the first two words in this article) person would ever want to be associated with them or identified as one. But, as you well know, you are an "elite". So, for that matter, are Keith Olberman and Hillary Clinton, or Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, the guy who owns Coors beer and Barbara Streisand. So what? You all have power, privilege and influence, regardless of your political viewpoints.
And let's play Bash the Bishops. As someone who is sometimes on the "right" (abortion) and sometimes on the "left"(immigration) I am fascinated by how so many Catholics will praise the clergy when they agree with them politically and then question their intelligence, fidelity and right to speak out when they disagree with them. Politicians and activists of any stripe will rush to have their pictures taken with a member of the clergy who supports their cause and then attack them for meddling in affairs of state and public policy when they disagree. You know full well that the comments by church leaders making comparisons to the Civil Rights Movement or saying that no human being is illegal in God's eyes are forms of the argument that there are moral laws that no civil law or civil authority can violate. The same basic type of argument has been used in opposition to slavery, abortion, racial segregation and, yes, immigration laws that have no correlation to historic or economic realities and which cause disproportionate suffering. Even if you do not agree with its application in a particular case, you should at least be intellectually honest enough to recognize the argument for what it is. Your comparison of Cardinal Mahoney's statement to Sharia is just asinine. Unless you are some sort of intellectually constipated legal positivist you know full well that any law can be challenged on the grounds that it is unjust or immoral.
And the term "Illegals". Why is this term, implying some permanent state of illegitimacy or corruption applied only to those individuals who cross an international boundary without prior approval? Is a minor who goes out to the bars every night an illegal drinker? Is someone who drives ten miles over the speed limit every day when going to work an illegal driver? What about a truck driver who consistently carries improperly secured and overweight cargo? I know that you could accuse me of making faulty analogies here or even engaging in a kind of, what?, moral relativism or slippery slope thinking? My real point relates to why do we shrug, wink or turn a blind eye to certain offenses while treating others as if they create a permanent stain on one's very being. Why the disproportionate penalties for unlawful entry? I refer here not just to deportation itself, but to the bars on re-entry and the near impossibility of adjusting your legal status once you have been so branded.
Call me an "expansionist" if you like, but from my perspective I just want our immigration laws to be sane, fair and, yes, to the extent possible, humane. Of course most of the people coming here illegally are Hispanics (Latinos, whatever . . .). They live next door. Our countries have long been intertwined economically, culturally and, to varying degrees, politically. Our southern border, created after the Mexican American War, is, almost literally, a line in the sand. It is not some Atzlan fantasy to point out that the two sides of the border are almost indistinguishable geographically and culturally. People were crossing back and forth across it without much impediment for a long time. Later, people would cross to work in the crops and the border patrol would leave them alone until after harvest was done. Plaster me with whatever stereotype you like, but do we expect to build maquiladoras right at the border for cheap labor and lax envioronmental laws and not expect some of the people drawn there to jump over a shallow river? Can we implement NAFTA and expect the free flow of commerce not to blur the borders and not to bring some people along with it? Can we expect to send cheap subsidized U.S. corn to Mexico and not expect it to drive some farmers from their livelihoods? Am I allowed to mention our support of brutal Central American regimes under the pretext of fighting communism resulting in thousands of refugees? Or does that put me beyond the pale of being counted among the "fair minded"? Feel free to dispute any of these assertions, but am I permitted to ask about these things without you dismissing me as some lackey of the Mexican government, Maldef, IBP or the restaurant industry association?
You state that the vast majority of Hispanics are here legally, but you fail to mention that many (most?) immigrant families from Latin America have a mix of members of varying degrees of "legality" (for lack of a better term). Most of the immigrants from Latin America who I know are decent people, whatever their immigration status. They had a lot to do with my returning to the Catholic faith and I am sick of people who stereotype them or people like me who want some kind of immigration system that treats them like human beings who have, in one way or another, always been here. Our current immigration system makes too many people have to choose between providing for their families or being with their families, and I am sick of Catholics who claim to understand the importance of family who will not at least recognize this basic human dilemma.
My grandfather came here in the late 1920's, after the passage of the ethnic preference immigration law. I and my family are probably lucky that he came from Ireland, one of the more favored countries under that system. Immigration law has never been particularly fair or consistent. There is no constitutional requirement that it be so.
Oh, and the Arizona law. If you are willing to say that you support the creation of a national id which we would all have to produce at the request of law enforcement, regardless of our citizenship or immigration status or risk detention until we could prove our status, then I might accept your statement about "fair minded" people. Right now, all I need produce is my state drivers' license. I do not have to dig out my Social Security Card or a certified copy of my birth certificate. That is the functional equivalent of what a law enforcement officer could demand of someone in response to that officer's "reasonable suspicion". And, somehow, I just don't trust Sherriff Joe Arapio and his deputies to apply the "reasonable" part of that equation.
Basically, I find this to be a piece of sophistry. You adopt a "reasonable" tone at the same time you employ a variety of rhetorical tactics to get away with shallow arguments while denigrating those who might disagree with you. I really don't care if any of what I have said is ad hominem, incomplete or unsupported. I had to say something in response to this piece. I am tired of academics, regardless of their political viewpoint, who use their title, but not their discipline, to score cheap propaganda points.
Another problem with the above essay is that it completely overlooks an element that is central to the moral analysis that the “expansionists” consider, and thus refers to “expansionists” “crude moralism” without actually being fair to the entirety of that moral analysis: what to do with the 11 or so million people that are already here illegally? Many have been here for years, they have families (many of which are mixed status), they are established in communities with neighbors and friends, and they go to work or school every day. The Church looks at this situation and, I would argue, recognizes that it would be contrary to the common good to either deport them directly (not possible) or engage in what has become popular in some circles, a deportation through attrition strategy… in other words, make life as miserable as possible so people "deport" themselves. Such an approach is morally questionable, if for no other reason than it cannot be effectively targeted against only those who are here illegally. This leads to the issue of enforcement legislations:
1. You state: "expansionists have also resisted attempts to control immigration directly at the border with physical or electronic barriers and increased manpower." Certainly, "expansionists" have opposed enforcement legislation, but this is only half the story. What most, (the bishops included) typically opposed is enforcement only legislation that failed to address the issue of the 11 million people who are here illegally, many of whom have been here for years and lived in communities with families and friends... etc. etc. Just take a look at reaction to the "The Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005," perhaps better known as the "Sensenbrenner Bill." Yes, there was opposition to the bill. The bishops, again to use them as an example (primarily because you harp about them at the end of your essay), opposed it but their opposition was based in large part because on its enforcement only character. (http://www.usccb.org/mrs/hr4437.shtml) The bishops themselves are not against enforcement measures but are against enforcement only measures, and rightfully so. They haven’t worked all that well and they address only a narrow slice of the problem.
2. You state: "restrictionism is invariably out-organized by well-funded and sophisticated immigrant advocates, allied with business and others elites who benefit from on-going high levels of immigration." Talk to anyone in the "expansionist" community and you will quickly realize that this is quite simply a false statement. One of the fundamental reasons that CIR failed to pass in 2006 and 2007 is because the pro-CIR crowd was woefully underorganized. Restrictionists, on the other hand, were very effective in pressuring Congress to vote against the bill... through faxes and phone calls, emails and letters. Whether you look at conservative talk radio, which tended (to say the least) to be anti-CIR or organizations like FAIR, the Center for Immigration Studies, or NumbersUSA…. say what you will about them, they are very well organized and aren’t poor either.
3. You write in regard to the recent DHS study that it does not present "any evidence of civil liberties violations—only vague and unsubstantiated “concerns” expressed by unidentified “members of the communities.” Again, that is only half the story. In fact, the DHS study expressed concerns that in the application process to become a 287(g) participant there were no formal procedures that analyzed past civil rights abuses, law suits, or complaints against law enforcement agencies being considered. The necessity for this is important because, as the report also notes, two law enforcement agencies currently enrolled in the program were involved in past racial profiling lawsuits and another is subject to a racial profiling lawsuit connected to 287(g) program activities and alleged abuse of a detained alien. DHS is also a defendant in the case of yet another 287(g) officer accused officer of unlawful detention and deportation of a U.S. citizen. Further still, ICE does not currently collect information that would help determine whether a civil rights violation such as profiling occurred, nor do they provide any clear process through which someone can file a complaint. Hence, the need for better oversight to make sure that racial profiling is not occurring. Finally, while not directly related to the 287(g) program (but rather another local/federal enforcement program), the University of Berkeley Law School recent conducted a study titled “The C.A.P Effect: Racial Profiling in the ICE Criminal Alien Program,” in which they argued that there is empirical evidence that racial profiling has occurred in at least one of the programs, located in Irving Texas, involved with CAP (http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/policybrief_irving_FINAL.pdf). Thus, there is clearly more to this concern than just “vague and unsubstantiated “concerns” expressed by unidentified “members of the communities.”
Do you think Hispanics come to the United States for charity? Don’t insult us. We contribute to the greatness of this nation with our culture and hard work. As the fetus, we Hispanics are human beings. I am a human being and I deserve respect for that. Besides, as most Hispanics, I am not a criminal. It is not coherent to say that you fight for a culture of life and at the same time you support laws that treat us worse than cows or monkeys. An “illegal alien” who come to look for better opportunities is not a criminal. We don’t want charity, we want the opportunity to show our value in a great nation where fortunately not everyone think like you.
Certainly neither the Pope nor the American bishops support this racist and narrow minded view and if they don’t is because it isn’t a Christian view. Take off your mask and don’t call you Catholics or Christians but white supremacists or social Darwinists.
It seems that you don’t know anything about your own history, nothing about the tales, sufferings and achievements of immigrants who helped to build this nation. Perhaps the only difference between nineteenth century immigrants and Hispanic immigrants is that most of the present south-western United States once rightfully belonged to Mexico and they are coming back.
I work for a Mexican who is now an American citizen, but his first language is clearly Spanish. I acknowledge that he is one of the fairest and best bosses I've ever had. He's also the first non-Anglo boss I've ever had. We work together very well.
I am the only Anglo in our small department; everyone else is Hispanic. The laws which I espouse are every bit as much for their protection and well-being as mine. I love my colleagues. (Don't you dare tell me I don't.) They are wonderful people and good workers. We are all made in God's image.
One of my colleagues is a Colombian who immigrated here, in large part, as one seeking political asylum of sorts. He is more upset about the illegal alien issue than I am, and for good reason. In large part because of the illegals, he has had incredible difficulty with his own arduous process of legally establishing himself as a permanent resident here.
My points have nothing to do with race, and everything to do with fairness and real social justice. We need to establish an enforceable rule of law, requiring both a change in laws and a change in how the laws are applied. It would help the process to avoid, on the way there, what I call "selective social justice" and ad hominem attacks.
Yours sincerely, José
Behind every honest person like yourself there are a hundred people making a case for lax immigration policies who try to disguise their anger and hatred under a veneer of charity or theology or patriotism and that just makes the discussion confusing for everyone.
We need more people to come right out and blame this whole mess on racism. We need to hear that you regard the southwest part of our country as belonging rightfully to Mexico. We need to hear that you make no distinction between legal and illegal acts. We need to hear devout, decent thoughtful men denounced as white supremacists and social Darwinists. We need to hear you make your demands and your threats against us.
Please, keep posting. Because your every word makes it easier for us to see the situation more clearly and to make the hard decisions that we are about to make.
You said "every word makes it easier for us to see the situation more clearly and to make the hard decisions that we are about to make". Is this a threat? Well, perhaps devout, decent and thoughtful people like you will succeed in implementing new American-style Nuremberg laws and deport many low income immigrants branded as criminals. However your country would not be a model of liberty and democracy anymore.
Your prejudices against immigrants are clearly revealed: “Behind every honest person like yourself there are a hundred people making a case for lax immigration policies” Are you saying that most “illegal aliens” are criminals?
José DeVet,
My apologies for labeling you so quickly. But I think that your support of the laws of Arizona and is misguided.
And anyone within 7 miles of the border should be required to carry documents that show they have permission to be here and forget about p c.
As Skerry is wrong on so many counts it's hard to know where to start to disabuse him of his errors. For example, he appears not to know that many immigrants in the U.S. have good reason to be "ambivalent and indecisive" about returning home. Indeed, our current "pitiful policy" has left illegal immigrants little choice but to remain in the U.S. That's because for the past two decades, our government has pursued a contradictory policy pursuing commercial integration through the North American Free Trade Agreement while seeking to unilaterally curb the flow of labor across the U.S.-Mexican border. That policy has not only failed to reduce illegal immigration; it has actually made the problem worse. Increased border enforcement has only succeeded in pushing immigration flows into more remote regions such as Arizona's.
Then there's Skerry's scaremongering about "safety," which suggests he's repeating some of the worst of the nativist anti-immigrant propaganda. The myth of immigrant lawlessness is unfortunately helping bolster support for SB 1070 and similar anti-immigrant laws. In fact, as Skerry must know, U.S.-born men are much more likely to be incarcerated than are their foreign-born peers. And, as Linda Chavez and other responsible persons have pointed out, while the number of illegal immigrants in the country doubled between 1994 and 2005, violent crime and property crimes declined dramatically over the same period, as they did in Arizona. In California, destination cities such as Los Angeles have seen their crime rates fall further than cities with a lower influx of illegal immigrants. Ron Unz, publisher of The American Conservative, has written that "Restrictionists can provide numerous completely legitimate arguments in favor of their position, ranging from economic competition and cultural conflict to national overpopulation and environmental degradation. But they will discredit these by including unsubstantiated claims about crime." Some of these "unsubstantiated claims" are mere lies aimed primarily at demonization.
Skerry asks: "At what point will expansionists be prepared to sacrifice some infringements on our liberties in order to secure our safety?" Arizona's law doesn't serve as a model for a trade off. You have to wonder what has infected the minds of otherwise intelligent and decent people when they are willing to accept and rationalize a law such as SB 1070. The law's defect lies in its effect, not its intent--although it ought to go without saying that bad intent can produce bad effect, such as stereotyping. Precisely because Hispanics make up the majority of illegal immigrants in Arizona, innocent Hispanics and members of other minorities are likely to be subjected disproportionately to the hassle, embarrassment and perhaps even danger of encounters with police--even well-intentioned police. Law-enforcement actions that result in netting a disproportionate share of Hispanics--even if the only reason they do is that Hispanics make up the majority of illegal immigrants--are likely to net a disproportionate share of innocent Hispanics. How is it that so many American political elites believe that is a price worth paying for effective law enforcement? And by Skerry's bizarre logic, if only we had fewer illegal immigrants of Hispanic descent the public might stop equating "being Hispanic with being illegal."
Skerry may teach at Boston College but he appears to reject the first principle of Catholic social thought regarding immigration: there is a right to immigrate. The vast majority of immigrants--legal and illegal--arrive in the U.S. to work, feed their families, live in freedom from fear and want, educate their children for a better future than their own, although most would prefer to eventually return home with enough money to buy a home or start a business. The Church understands that the primary impetus behind migration is the search for human dignity. Accordingly, nations have a duty to receive immigrants.
The impulse to limit immigration is a manifestation of economic protectionism and bad for the U.S. economy and economies of its neighbors. Hostility and discrimination against immigrants, which Skerry declines to explicitly condemn, are antithetical to U.S. traditions and interests. The U.S. needs a new and humane approach to managing migration, one that recognizes reality and that creates legal pathways for foreign labor to enter the country and fill jobs Americans won't do anymore. By trying to protect society from the perceived threat of immigration, we are actually harming ourselves—curtailing freedom, hurting racial comity, fostering injustice, and undermining law and order by misusing law enforcement resources.
Not a Catholic, John Kenneth Galbraith once said: "Migration is the oldest weapon against poverty. It selects those who most want help. It is good for the country to which they go. It helps break the equilibrium of poverty in the country from which they come. What is the perversity in the human soul that causes people to resist so obvious a good?"
Very interesting.
Allow me also to observe that, in my experience, people who go around accusing others of being "racists" or "bigots" are often the very people who are both racists and bigots themselves. I guess the old saying is true, "It takes one to know one."
was posted by me (Artaban). I guess I messed up and put "Ricardo" in the name (since it was a response to him), rather than my own nametag.
Consider, if the "gift of creation"--the land on which your current residence stands--cannot be restricted in any way, what prevents me from claiming a right to reside there and kicking you out? No, even the Bible speaks of rights to private property, and the legitimate claims of "human authorities".
Government, and by extension its citizens, are responsible for the system of roads, and the expensive maintenance, lighting, and repair that allows rapid mass transit to take place. They are well within their rights to demand something (i.e. taxes, licensing, etc) of those who partake of their benefits. As are those who provide transit services.
Your logic is flawed or in need of considerable explication. Governments are not "stealing" from immigrants by limiting their movement. People gain or lose their liberty all the time based on their actions (why we deprive criminals of their right of movement when convicted of heinous crimes), necessarily so.
You are right. I do have a bias against the position of people who pretend to impose totalitarian rules over innocent human beings and against human dignity. I do have a bias against the attitudes of those who act like the devout, decent, law-abiding and thoughtful people who claimed for the crucifixion of the Saviour and whose arguments resemble to those extremely educated and sensible people who supported the laws of the Third Reich in order to be free of uncomfortable "aliens".
I was in Arizona recently, and my temptation now as olive-skin man with a clearly Spanish last name is to tell the policeman to go to Hell if I am asked about my immigration status. The fact that my mother was an immigrant from Mexico and my father is fourth generation Mexican American, or that I was born on American soil, is not something I need documented in my wallet. Am I now obligated to take my birth certificate everywhere I go, lest my driver’s license is just a clever forgery? I think the only way this law will be defeated is if we Latinos down there perform some form of civil disobedience. Then maybe this law will be exposed as the ill-conceived tripe that it really is.
It seems to me they need to walk this ground much more carefully, and with more balance, than many of them do, including, notoriously, Cardinal Mahoney.
Clearly enough, those who come here illegally are, objectively speaking, breaking the commandment "Thou shalt not steal"--a "First Thing" of social justice. This fact, however, seems to be overlooked. One suspects that our leaders are applying principles of "social justice" selectively, choosing who will be the favored groups to receive "justice" at the expense of unfavored groups. In so doing, they risk material, and in some cases formal, cooperation with evil, ie, aiding and abetting the stealing which the illegal immigrants do.
The leaders may respond that another principle of social justice is a "preferential option for the poor." However, in practice it would seem that in practice, they observe a preferential option for the Left!