Immigration continues to be one of the ugliest issues in America. My views are generally pro-immigrant, and I've taken a blast or two from people who told me I couldn't call myself a conservative if I didn't want to forcibly exile about 10 million illegal immigrants in a 21st-century trail of tears.
I received a telephone call once from someone who had some furniture to donate to charity. I suggested Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement, and he asked if the organization would give the furniture to illegal immigrants. I told him they were most famous for sponsoring legal immigrants from religious persecution in countries such as Iran. He was disappointed, nonetheless, that I didn't know if the charity checked immigrants' papers.
The problem is that Jesus did not. The Good Samaritan was shocking in its time because Jews liked Samaritans about as much as the Hezbollah like Jews today.
I think most Americans underestimate the desperation of immigrants from Latin America. Those contemplating a crossing of our borders are not like American teenagers thinking about shoplifting or smoking cigarettes. They are living at a time of declining agricultural prices and high birth rates. The median age south of the border is less than sixteen. Unemployment in the U.S. has been less than 7% for more than a decade.
If we are serious about controlling immigration, we will make our laws reflect rather than defy the labor markets of the Western Hemisphere. We will monitor and guard the borders. We will charge prohibitive fines to employers who hire illegal aliens. We will deport illegal aliens who have violated any laws other than immigration and employment laws. We will figure a system by which illegal aliens can become citizens through military service, public service, payment of taxes, home ownership, educational achievements, literacy in English, and the purchase of health and automobile insurance.
I can think of no worse economic, social, political, and diplomatic disaster than to exile at bayonet point 10 million illegal immigrants. If 1 million are thugs and criminals, 2 million are hardworking women and mothers, 3 million are children, and 4 million are hardworking men. It would be the ugliest social policy since Jim Crow.
Friday, January 11, 2008
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2 comments:
A brave and moral post. My church growing up (in notoriously liberal diocese was very involved in the Sanctuary moveement, and it's been dismaying to me to see that so many conservative Catholics express such bile against desperately poor -- and Catholic -- immigrants. I tend to think it's an example of the heresy of Americanism, with a hint of xenophobia in the mix. We need realistic laws, not media-driven shows of strength like the raid of a Massachusetts factory (with a big Dept. of Defense contract, no less) last March that separated nursing mothers from their babies. The economy of speculation and greed that has driven my own city into a frenzy is utterly dependent on the labor of these shadow workers.
It never fails to amaze me that when "conservative" radio talk show hosts (and callers) get wound up about being for either "amnesty or enforcement", that nobody brings up the logical extension that, being "for enforcement" (and therefore against "amnesty") they then must be in favor of rounding up and deporting 12 to 15 million people. Aside from the obvious moral issues with accomplishing this feat, there would be significant practical issues too, not the least of which would be finding them and arranging for the necessary transportation. The mind boggles thinking of nightly news casts repleat with pictures of crying people being loaded on to trains and buses.
My point is that we are simply not going to round up and deport 12 to 15 million people. It isn't going to happen for BOTH moral and practical reasons. I do agree with Peggy Noonan, however, that we need to have a pause at this point, while we get our borders secure and assimilate those already here. You also make a great point that our immegration laws can not exist in a vacuum from economic reality.
My concern, however, is that many of the people have come here with no apparent intention of becoming Americans and seemingly want to import their culture, rather than assimilating into ours. Europe is and will be dealing with the downside of this issue for many years to come.
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