Politics

 

 

 

Last month, Mexican President Felipe Calderone dramatically joined the anti-Arizona chorus. Addressing a joint session of the United States Congress, Calderone condemned the recent Arizona immigration legislation as “racial profiling” and an assault on shared “core values.”  As President Calderone’s rebuke mirrored President Obama’s hard-hitting rhetoric, we can safely assume that his complaint carried the blessing of the White House.  

 

However, the harsh criticism of an American state operating within the federal system, delivered in a venue built to celebrate representative and divided government, proved injudicious.  The provocative admonishment merely exacerbated an intensely emotional issue and reinforced an emerging problematic perception for the Obama presidency.  

 

Regrettably, the ensuing backlash overshadowed President Calderone’s otherwise constructive remarks on a troublesome issue.  The Mexican President correctly characterized our current immigration policy as “broken and inefficient” and an inconsistent collection of “law that ignores reality.”   The President of Mexico has it right: “comprehensive immigration reform is essential to our common security.”

 

National interest demands that we craft a just and practical system of rules and procedures that secures our border, accommodates businesses and consumers that benefit from immigrant labor, and provides a compassionate and sensible path for hard-working immigrants who want to come to America and begin a new life.  

 

Successful resolution will require both sides to forego self-serving and hyperbolic platitudes.  Disagreement with the administration on immigration does not equal hate speech.  The President and his partisans ought to shelve their hackneyed accusations of racism.  Perhaps, for a very few holdovers from a by-gone era of American history, the immigration question is a stalking horse for deep-seated race-based assumptions and ethnic stereotypes.  However, let us be candid, this tiny and naturally shrinking segment of society has almost nothing to do with conservative opposition on immigration.  Neither are conservatives crypto-fascists, salivating for a police state in which all non-whites are forced to move from checkpoint to checkpoint showing their papers.  These gross and harmful distortions serve only to further pollute an already toxic public conversation.   

 

Likewise, social conservatives must re-examine a set of assumptions that too often yields a misdirected and irrational rage.  Much of the anti-immigrant fervor flows from a sense of impending doom based on a concern that our social safety net and culture of entitlement is breaking the bank.  Basic conservative common sense identifies a “welfare state” and a national policy of open borders as dangerously incompatible, perhaps even suicidal.

 

In addition, conservatives watch CNN as brown-skinned multitudes wave foreign flags and chant defiant slogans in Spanish, and they worry that traditional American culture is under assault.  Conservatives hear about public schools in which diversity overshadows unity, and they fear that the inculcation of American distinctiveness is passé. We are flirting with fiscal insolvency, American nationalism seems increasingly endangered, and our public education system appears broken.  

 

“Blame the illegal aliens!”  

 

Many of the developments enumerated above genuinely point to a serious crisis in need of our attention.  However, anger and frustration with immigrants is an egregious misdiagnosis of the root problem.  The core assumptions of the anti-immigration lobby are distressingly myopic. 

 

The vast majority of immigrants are hard-working would-be Americans with conservative values, who, ironically, come to America precisely because they seek the life conservatives are so anxious to preserve.  These “huddled masses yearning to be free” are not looking to pilfer services from an overly charitable American-style welfare state.  In reality, our so-called social safety net is actually an inhospitable patchwork of inefficient government agencies ineptly disbursing paltry amounts of aid.  These immigrants are generally too proud, too self-reliant, and too intelligent to rely on our meager government programs as a pathway to improvement. 

 

Immigrants are coming for jobs.  Like the myriad pilgrims before them, these immigrants leave their families and hometowns to risk everything on the hope of a better life.  In general, they occupy the lowest rung of the societal ladder and toil diligently at dirty jobs under dismal working conditions at desperately low wages.  Some will go back to the Old Country.  But those who take root are enthusiastic converts.  They are industrious citizens who inevitably produce a succeeding generation of loyal Americans, good Marines, and ambitious achievers with a prodigious work ethic.  

 

Immigration offers an infusion of what we need the most: belief and investment in America as a City on a Hill and a land of opportunity.

 

Lastly, conservatives must see through the false distinction between documented and “illegal” immigrants.  Many on the right intuitively proclaim general approval for immigrants who “follow the rules” but rashly argue vociferously against “illegals.”  This is tautology.  Under our system of self-government, rather than resigning ourselves to ill-fitting regulations imposed from on high, we the people possess the power to draft laws that serve our interest. 

 

Why do illegal immigrants ignore current law?  Because our system seems unreasonable and the benefits of law breaking appear to outnumber the risks.  More importantly, through spotty enforcement, we signal to immigrants our ambivalence about the law.  Politicians, law enforcement agencies, and employers understand that our regulations do not acknowledge market forces or conform to the realities of human nature, and, therefore, those in authority regularly ignore the policy.  We ought to construct new laws, rules, and regulations based on common sense and decency and enforce them. 

 

Moreover, for the sake of our own moral sanity, we ought to stop demonizing an activity we implicitly encourage because it is in our interest to have cheap labor but also in our interest to shower that same labor force with contempt.

 

What is the substantive policy answer?  Good people on the Left must accept a future in which we actually regulate our side of the US-Mexican border, scrupulously monitoring and exerting control over who passes through our “golden door.”  All Americans must accept some sort of efficient and equitable system that brings low-wage immigrant labor together with industry. And, once the system is in place and operating as designed, good Americans on the right must accept a pathway to citizenship for hard-working and law-abiding immigrants.