"I applaud them moving out of the shadows and into the light because of the human rights issues involved," Mr. Walters said of illegal immigrants. "I've given my entire life to issues of social justice as an activist and an academic. In that sense, I'm with them.
"But they also represent a powerful ingredient to the perpetuation of our struggle," he said. "We have a problem where half of black males are unemployed in several cities. I can't ignore that and simply be my old progressive self and say it's not an issue. It is an issue."
Mere days ago, we were outraged to learn that Bush had violated on the order of 750 laws. We expect him to obey the law. Shouldn't we likewise expect all immigrants to arrive here legally? If not, why do we have laws? If so, why don't we lobby to change the law?
I ask you to read what I think the problems are and to suggest concrete solutions. If you've already decided that I'm racist, I'm a Republican troll, etc., we won't have much of a dialog, so goodbye.
I'm an immigrant. My wife is an immigrant. All of my relatives came here legally. I got a fellowship specifically for immigrants or their children; one condition is that applicants must be naturalized. Many of my friends and colleagues are immigrants. I'm neither cold-hearted nor racist, but I oppose illegal immigration, and I have yet to hear of a coherent solution that will not exacerbate the problem.
The passage above is from the NYT, which I urge you to read. The article talks about a thought I had just this morning while reading an LTE in the local paper. The letter coopted the civil rights movement on behalf of illegal immigrants, and misled by suggested that all immigrants are villified. How one can rationally link the disenfranchised descendants of slaves, born here, with employed immigrants, born elsewhere and here by choice, is beyond me.
There are people who do indeed villify all immigrants, legal and illegal. I'm not one of them, and I bet you some people who are would be less intolerant if illegal immigration were not such a significant problem. But there are others, Kosmopolitans including myself among them, who are for immigration: legal immigration.
Here's are two fundamental problems, from my perspective, that I never, ever hear addressed:
1. if we were to grant amnesty to all illegal immigrants currently here, we would give a green light to millions more. It doesn't matter if we claim that we'll never grant another amnesty, even if it's true. It will lead to millions more arriving, year after year, and we'd be at the very same point with low median wages and declining health coverage, etc..
2. what's the point of having laws if we don't respect them? We're outraged that Bush doesn't follow the law. If you want to argue about scale and the number of people affected, well, the millions of illegal immigrants affect us in a very real way.
No, the subtext is not, "let's deport them all". I don't know what the solution is, but apparently, noone else does either. Instead, both parties seem to be vying for the votes of the naturalized brethren of illegal immigrants. To me, that's similar in spirit to increasing the debt: let's exploit today and let future generations worry about the problems we're creating.
I've thought for a while that a mass amnesty won't take place, for the same reason why laws against illegal immigration aren't enforced: businesses love to pay their workers as cheaply as possible. That's why an amnesty would backfire. In fact, imagine someone having to pay a fine to become a legal citizen, only to lose his or her job to a new illegal immigrant.
But it was only while reading the article above that I began to link the poor economic conditions of many of our citizens to this exploitation by businesses of the cheapest possible labor. Why aren't we outraged that so many of our fellow citizens are unemployed? Because they don't have political clout? Why don't we connect cheap labor with median wages stagnant or declining year after year? From 2001 to now, the percentage of low- to middle-income people of working age without insurance has increase from 28 to a shocking 41. Naturalizing millions of illegal immigrants, and thereby inviting millions more, will not address that problem, or countless others, but will probably exacerbate them.
One possibility is of course to start enforcing laws AFTER an amnesty. That strikes me as odd. Why don't we enforce them in the first place?
Rational thoughts welcome.