The People In The Shadows: Immigration Reform

I dislike seeing so many usually like-minded individuals at odds over what is admittedly a complex problem - immigration reform. Putting aside the harsh rhetoric, can't we at least mostly agree that the public trust is important, no matter what the issue? I'd like to suggest that it is not the American or Mexican people who are responsible for the current confrontation over immigration. It is our politicians who have betrayed the public trust on immigration twice now within the past twenty years.

You should read this and a second quote below from ten years later.

President Ronald Reagan 1986: In the past 35 years our nation has been increasingly affected by illegal immigration. This legislation takes a major step toward meeting this challenge to our sovereignty. At the same time, it preserves and enhances the Nation's heritage of legal immigration. I am pleased to sign the bill into law...

In 1981 this administration asked the Congress to pass a comprehensive legislative package, including employer sanctions, other measures to increase enforcement of the immigration laws, and legalization. The act provides these three essential components.

It will remove the incentive for illegal immigration by eliminating the job opportunities which draw illegal aliens here. We have consistently supported a legalization program which is both generous to the alien and fair to the countless thousands of people throughout the world who seek legally to come to America. The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans.

A decade later - fast forward to 1996:

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (the 96 Act) Pub L. 104-208, was enacted on September 30, 1996. It includes increases in criminal penalties for immigration-related offenses, authorization for increases in enforcement personnel, and enhanced enforcement authority. There are a number of measures designed to enhance Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) presence and enforcement at the border. The 96 Act undertakes a comprehensive reorganization of the process of removal for inadmissible and deportable aliens, including a provision for the expedited removal of inadmissible aliens arriving at ports of entry. The 96 Act requires the conducting of three types of employment authorization verification pilot programs. It includes restrictions on the eligibility of aliens for public benefits and imposes new requirements on sponsors of alien relatives for immigration. A brief description of the Act's principal provisions follows.

Now here we are, again - ironically, exactly ten years later. And once again the government would say, trust us. I was taken to task by a friend today for forgetting about representative government in my opposition to what is now being proposed by way of immigration reform. Is that fair?

We have representative government so the people can go about their personal business knowing elected officials are seeing to the people's business in Washington. As much as illegal immigrants are people of the shadows, isn't it also fair to say the same thing of a representative government that, for twenty years, has violated the public trust as soon as the people's backs were turned? A representative government that sought out the shadows when it came time to follow through and enforce our nation's existing immigration laws?

This is not about President Bush. He wasn't in office when it happened before and may not be in office if and when it happens again. Will a next President follow through, even if this one makes a beginning on enforcement after some form of amnesty has been granted?

This is about good, responsive and responsible government which has already let us down and violated our trust for two decades on this very issue.

In 2006, the individuals so strongly opposed to any immigration reform which doesn't first and foremost display a determined and real effort to control the border, don't deserve to have their loyalties or judgments impugned for reacting logically to what they have witnessed, not just once, but twice in the recent past under Presidents from both parties.

Because what they witnessed was a clear and simple violation of the public trust. That public trust represents a primary under-pinning of the representative democratic government we know and love. And without that public trust, that form of government cannot survive.

The people of America do not owe President Bush, the Senate, or even the House our trust on this issue as it stands today. The case could well be made that only a fool would offer it given what has already transpired.

It is time that Americans realize that our politicians can sometimes owe us ... and right now they owe us the kind of serious action designed to win back the public trust, not their respective seats in a government doomed to fail because its stewards once again betrayed the common public trust upon which all good government is founded.

I think we should one day soon debate amnesty of a form and ensure a progressive path to citizenship for all good men and women of the world seeking it, because we are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of representative government expressed through laws designed, to some extent, to maintain the public trust. And now more than ever we've a right to shine the spotlight of due diligence on a representative government which all too easily could seek out the shadows on this issue yet once again. They've certainly done it before.

Ultimately, if this issue again results in a failure for the public to be able to trust, what good will it do to welcome any number of new citizens into a once great country which has lost such a key under-pinning of its structure in the doing of that, or anything else?

Comments

[Rob]

In a nutshell:

Those who are here illegally should be detained or removed and made to apply legally per the existing laws. Those who already have applications in the works who have been following the rules should be given high priority and be higher up in the pipeline. Those who are illegals should not be rewarded for intentionally breaking our laws, but -- they should be given the opportunity to apply legally as the law currently provides, and fromtheir own country.

The system is only broke because we do not enforce our own laws.

As for me, I (an american citizen) am in the Philippines with my Filipino wife going through the legitimate process and making sure we meet all requirements. We have been at this since September and it looks like it will take at least another 12 months for her to gain her US spousal Visa. It saddens us to know that we are doing this the "right" way when millions of others who are latinos have broke the laws and will be given special preferential treatment just because they are already in the US and thus do not have to go through all the scrutiny and provide all of the verifications and clearances of those, like my wife, who wish to be law-abiding and legal.

We realize that 12 million is alot of of people -- but the reality is they are in the US illegally and improperly and should apply legally from thier own country of origin and supply the same verifications and information and clearances and background checks and interviews that the law provides for. Then and only then can this be fair and in the true american spirit of immigration.

[Althor]

Parable:

Imagine you have a beautiful home you are rightly proud of, and that most of your neighbors envy. You take proper care of your home and it shows, while your neighbors' homes are mostly neglected and unkempt, some are real wrecks due to their negligence.

Not that you are particularly "in your face about it", on the contrary, you occasionally invite your neighbors to come over, and even hire them to do chores around the house, which they avidly do since they find your house very pleasant.

One day you leave for work, and unbeknownst to you, one of your neighbors, whom you have often have had over to help you with chores around the house, and whom, until now, you have always considered a friend, sneaks into your house, opens the door, and brings in his family and settles down to live in your house.

When you come home, you find yourself with this "uninvited house guest," who abusing your generosity, not only broke into your home, but has brought his family along with him, they have settled down, are using your belongings, and they are taking food from your refrigerator, and medicines from your medicine cabinet, with total disregard for the fact that it is your home and not theirs - totally unfazed in their blatant insolence!

You ask them to leave, and they tell you, that you were the one that had asked them occasionally to work in the house, that they liked the house better than theirs, and they wanted to make it their home too, that they were here now, and their family were not going anywhere, and then asked you defiantly: "And what are you going to do about it?!?!"

Indignant, you call the police, the patrol comes, and the officers tell you that though it was an unlawful "breaking and entering," and that it was "trespassing" they did not want to enforce the laws since your "unwanted house guests" were not likely to leave peacefully, but would have to be dragged from your home kicking and screaming, and they didn't want to pull them out like that, lest they be accused of "police brutality" and their having forcibly removed them from your house termed "Draconian."

So, instead they tell you to learn to live with them, potty train them, and to write them off as "dependents" in your income taxes, which of course would make them "legal residents" in your home.

You make do the best you can of the situation, been that those in charge of enforcing the law, will not do so, but in the next days, more neighbors kept coming in, aided and abetted by those that came before them, and one day the situation reached critical mass and there was simply not enough room left in the house, and it was decided that someone had to leave so it was put to a vote, and when the votes were cast, guess what? Those that had envied your home, who resented you for it, that had come in surreptitiously, uninvited, all banded together, and voted you out of your house, your home!!!

Does that sound familiar? It should, since the "Jorge Ramoses," and the "Janet Munguias," have already snuck into our home, and brazenly tell us with a condescending smirk on their faces bordering on contempt "We are 12 million strong, we are here, we are not going anywhere, and what can you do about it America?" The arrogance the, insolence, and the unfazedness is unbearable!!!

Read the rest at:

http://www.hyscience.com/archives/2006/05/a_parable.php

Althor

[Stella]

Althor's link to Hyscience led me to a very interesting and thought-provoking letter at Human Events Online: A Letter from a Slave to an Illegal Alien, by Herman Cain Posted May 15, 2006 http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=14794