For the Justice Department to be challenging various new state immigration laws in court is an unusual step.
Undoubtedly the decision to do so has political roots. The Obama administration would like to reinforce its credentials as the chief defender of the rights of immigrants (and it must be stressed, of all immigrants - not just "illegals" but the many more numerous legals). Certainly the current challenges should do that, demonstrating a clear distinction between our two major parties. And the political motivation, even if brazen, is unassailable since most of the laws in question are being passed by mostly Republican state legislators for the purpose of political pandering to their pasty constituents.
Yet while the legal challenge may serve the administration's political ends, it does so by serving its stated policy goals and philosophy of government. Its first strength is to remind us what our heritage is. Politicians have long loved to describe us as a "nation of immigrants," which is certainly true, or a "melting pot," which is far less honest.
A digression: "Cookie dough" is a more apt metaphor - ethnic groups have usually remained in clusters or lumps, like the bits in a chocolate chip cookie, melting only slightly on the edges at first, perhaps dissolving entirely over many years (we don't know what cookies do over longer periods, since they seldom survive that long).
Far from dragging down the economy, our nation's ability to attract those huddled masses has always served to rejuvenate our population and bolster our economy. That is no different today, and we need to keep in mind how many in our country are either naturalized citizens, or first-generation natives, who can nolens volens be detrimentally affected by restrictions supposedly intended only for "illegal" aliens.
The second strength is that what the DoJ is doing should also serve to reinforce our common sense of what we want the country to be. Other common tropes we have long used to describe ourselves are "a nation of laws" and "a nation of equality." I would not argue that immigrants, especially illegal ones, ought to have all the same rights as citizens - there can be some legitimate differences in status.
But surely one of the places where there can't be differences is in the equal application of the law to everyone. This is an important international principle of human rights. Further, if we fail to provide it, we contribute to the breakdown of society; those who see that the law discriminates against them, those who must fear any encounter with law-enforcement officials even if they haven't "done" anything, won't develop the habits of good citizenship that we (used to) expect.
"Used to" is a key phrase because the third strength of this legal jousting over immigration is to help clarify our thinking about whether we want America looking forward, or whether we want to reverse the progress of a century or more and return to the mid-1950s for our models of immigration, assimilation, and social and legal justice.
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