I think Federal Judge Bolton ruled correctly in barring the implementation of several elements of the proposed new Arizona state law on immigrants. It was clear, to anyone with a modicum of background in our U.S. system of legal protections and constitutional guarantees, that a lot of the proposed legislation was just plain overstepping by the government of a state whose voters have established an unenviable reputation for putting extremists in office. Other elements of the new law, if challenged, may also eventually prove untenable.
I don't condemn Arizona unqualifiedly, however, for its radical proposal to fix our broken immigration system. Arizona is on the front line in this battle, and copes not just with the influx of illegal aliens moving into and through the state, but also with growing concerns about being contaminated by the drug violence across the border. If immigration and border control are the province of the federal government (and they are), the exasperation of states at "Washington's" failure to deal with the issues that have gone so long unsolved is understandable.
Our problem with immigration in the U.S. is that there are truths no one wants to tell; we debate the problem superficially but hate to admit the messy actuality at its core, somewhat like talking about an egg by describing its shell and ignoring all that messy, sticky stuff inside.
If we break the egg, the first thing to ooze out is the hypocrisy all of us share. An old adage has it that "in the long run, we're all dead." It might also be said, in the U.S., that in the long run, looking backward rather than forward, we're all immigrants. Even the people we call Native Americans arrived here a historically scant 50,000 years ago and ever since, those who were here have tried to make life difficult for those who tried to come later. We may pride ourselves on being a "nation of immigrants," but we haven't always welcomed them with open arms.
The thing we can all learn from this is that even as we all realize uncontrolled borders could be an economic and security disaster, there's a humanitarian element involved in how we deal with those who do manage to get here. On this aspect, I recommend the novel The Tortilla Curtain, by T.C. Boyle; it's apparently out of print now though copies can be found online, or at your library. The Arizona law fails this basic humanitarian test, whatever its legal justifications.
Other hypocrisies relate to the question that our current situation begs: How did it get this way, and why isn't anything ever done fix it? There are many answers but some of the key ones lie in contradictions between what we say we want, and what we really want:
We should be able to control our borders and prevent people from entering the country illegally. Yes, of course that's true. But the unmentioned factor is that we don't really want to pay for it. When one of our major parties propagates the notion that no tax is a good tax, and no government is the best government, who will vote for the increased cost of more border agents, better technology, and the other measures that might be required? Then there's the corollary: The idea that a border as long and in most places remote as the U.S.-Mexico frontier can really be closed off like a bunker door is just plain unrealistic; we can spend billions, but there will still be gaps.
We should be able to find illegal immigrants who do manage to get into the U.S., keep them from working, deport them, prevent their getting benefits. Maybe, though the humanitarian element arises here. The hypocrisy, though, is that while we say immigrants ought to be able to produce documentation to show they're here legally, this collides unpleasantly with our concept that those of us who arrived here earlier have an absolute right NOT to have to identify themselves. The question of a "national identity card" has been frequently raised, and just as quickly batted down by a host of opponents ranging across the political spectrum. On this question, I like today's post from fellow blogger GabbyGeezer (http://www.gabbygeezer.blogspot.com - see "Profile Please," dated July 29.
Labor unions protest that we don't want immigrants flooding the market taking jobs that Americans could have. There may be a bit of truth in that in these hard economic times, when people are looking for any work at all. But the deeper truth is that the immigrants don't really compete for the same jobs. They're doing work, from cleaning toilets to picking fruit, that earlier-arriving immigrants (U.S. citizens) consider beneath them. And increasingly, by the way, a trend I've noticed is that second-generation immigrants, like their predecessors of previous generations, are gradually filling in higher levels on the scale, like many of the technical service jobs -- the furnace repairman, the pest control technician, the dry cleaner, the mason, the electrician, even the retail clerk -- that again, except in the hardest times, well-settled Americans with their often valueless college degrees won't take. This group takes those jobs, and gradually will own the service businesses that perform them; they're probably mostly legal, but I wouldn't be surprised if many were born to "illegal" parents. And where would we be without them?
Illegal immigrants shouldn't be able to work. Hah! The biggest hypocrisy centers on this question of gainful employment. If we really cracked down and didn't allow anyone to work without appropriate evidence of legal status, the flow of illegals would stop. That's what most of them come for. But we don't, and we probably won't. As noted above, both politicians and employers (the latter by strongly but often invisibly lobbying the former) have turned a blind eye to law enforcement because they know that we need those people -- need them to steal those jobs from Americans who won't take them (above). Denying jobs to illegals could work very effectively if there were solid sanctions on employers for hiring them, or strictly enforced regulations requiring hirers to ask for documentation. But this self-evident fact isn't evident to the employers who dearly love a supply of inexpensive laborers who don't ask too many questions. Those employers and their organizations have resisted tooth-and-nail the least suggestion that they should have any responsibility for checking the status of those they hire. Too much trouble! Too much time! And civil rights activists join them, concerned that an employer trying to carry out his responsibilities under such a law, might accidentally offend an Earlier American.
Finally, there is a citizenship issue. I don't believe that very many foreigners come to the U.S. just to have a baby who would automatically become an American citizen. There is evidence that some do this - i.e. a recent revelation about some Chinese groups -- but not by the hundreds of thousands. If this is seen as a problem, though, we could simply alter our citizenship law -- very few countries use the physical place of birth as a determinant of citizenship. Again, though, I suspect a move to change this longstanding practice would run into serious resistance.
Ultimately, to solve our immigration problem, some of our ideas about ourselves are going to have to change...or at least, become more honest.
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