Immigration policy: a matter of faith!

Immigration Reform in Committee

The U. S. Senate Judiciary Committee leads the current discussion regarding immigration reform.  To see a listing of the committee members click here.

The 18 members of this committee are considering possible amendments to the bipartisan “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act” that was introduced a few weeks ago.  

The amendment process is incredibly important: it provides the opportunity to make improvements to the bill before it goes to a vote, but it also provides an opportunity to introduce elements to a carefully negotiated compromise bill that could cause bipartisan support to be limited going forward.

If one of your senators is a member of this committee, I urge you to contact him/her and express your support for comprehensive immigration reform, and ask that it be wrapped up this coming summer for the sake of the millions of people who are adversely affected by current policies.  

So many of our neighbors need the relief that strong reform would provide.  

Standards of treatment a must. . .

"9500 Liberty"--free screening

Please join Central Dallas Ministries for a private screening

When: Thursday, October 21, 2010

6:30 pm Check In -- 7:00 pm Doors Open

7:15 pm Movie Begins

Followed by Town Hall-style Discussion

Angelika Film Center & Cafe

5321 East Mockingbird Lane, Suite 230, Dallas, TX 75206

RSVP Tuesday, October 19, 2010 to

jdavila@CentralDallasMinistries.org

214.303.2146

Prince William County, Virginia becomes ground zero in America’s explosive battle over immigration policy when elected officials adopt a law requiring police officers to question anyone they have "probable cause" to suspect is an undocumented immigrant.

9500 Liberty reveals the startling vulnerability of a local government, targeted by national anti-immigration networks using the Internet to frighten and intimidate lawmakers and citizens. Alarmed by a climate of fear and racial division, residents form a resistance using YouTube videos and virtual townhalls, setting up a real-life showdown in the seat of county government.

The devastating social and economic impact of the “Immigration Resolution” is felt in the lives of real people in homes and in local businesses. But the ferocious fight to adopt and then reverse this policy unfolds inside government chambers, on the streets, and on the Internet. 9500 Liberty provides a front row seat to all three battlegrounds.

Must-see TV: "Faces of America"

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is out with an amazing documentary treating the immigrant heritage of our nation entitled, the "Faces of America."

Here's how the PBS program notes read: 

About the Program

What made America? What makes us? These two questions are at the heart of the new PBS series Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Harvard scholar turns to the latest tools of genealogy and genetics to explore the family histories of 12 renowned Americans — professor and poet Elizabeth Alexander, chef Mario Batali, comedian Stephen Colbert, novelist Louise Erdrich, journalist Malcolm Gladwell, actress Eva Longoria, musician Yo-Yo Ma, director Mike Nichols, Her Majesty Queen Noor, television host/heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, actress Meryl Streep, and figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi.
 
The program provides amazing insight into the history of our nation of immigrants.  It also makes clear just how connected we are to one another now and across the generations.  
 
I regard it as "must see TV."
 
To watch click here.

14th Amendment

Now some members of Congress are suggesting that in order to properly reform and control immigration to the United States we should repeal the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. 

Setting aside the facts that such a process could take years and cost millions of dollars, is this really good policy given the history and significance of this amendment to our history and subsequent national life?  This amendment has provided an objective, agreed upon standard for citizenship since it was ratified in 1868 in the difficult aftermath of a bloody civil war. 

It is hard to imagine just how such a process would work. 

I can envision a situation in which immigrants, even those with documentation, bearing children in the U. S. would in essence create an entire new underclass or "other-class."  Furthermore, the process would take away much of the strength and promise of immigrant populations for the future growth and stability of the nation. 

Repealing the basic standard of citizenship that has served us so well for so long seems a desperate attempt to avoid the heart of the matter when it comes to effective, comprehensive immigration reform. 

Read the amendment and tell me what you think.

Amendment 14 - Citizenship Rights. Ratified 7/9/1868.

1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Hear Randall Kennedy of Harvard Law School discuss the 14th Amendment on The Takeway below:

Border Fence No Answer

You may have seen Peter Schrag's opinion piece in The Dallas Morning News on Sunday, August 1, 2010.  You don't have to agree with him on all points to recognize he makes good sense about his main point:   the answer for our borders will not be discovered in building a fence.  See if you agree.

Why good fences make bad policy

Even before 2007, when the last attempt at comprehensive immigration reform was killed in the Senate, immigration restrictionists made "sealing" the U.S.-Mexican border a precondition for supporting legalization of the more than 11 million illegal immigrants already in the United States. For a lot of Americans, this idea has been orthodoxy ever since.

Now, with immigration reform again on the table, President Barack Obama has duly taken up the call for a stronger border. In his speech on immigration last month, he lamented the "porous" and "broken" state of U.S. borders, and he described controlling them as an "obligation" and a "responsibility," arguing that the nation has "more boots on the ground near the Southwest border than at any time in our history."

More than 670 miles of border fences, walls, bollards and spikes that Congress decreed in 2006 at an estimated cost of $4 billion (plus future maintenance) are almost completed. The Border Patrol, which was increased from 9,000 agents in 2001 to 20,000 in 2009, costs an estimated $4 billion annually.

Throw in the cost of occasional deployments of the National Guard, as Obama has ordered again; the cost of electronic sensors, surveillance aircraft, training of local police; the cost of detaining, incarcerating and deporting illegal immigrants; and the countless other expenses associated with border security, and the bill runs us nearly $10 billion a year.

But will more boots really seal the border? Immigration reform has a long history of unintended consequences: More than two decades of increased enforcement since the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, or IRCA, has done little to reduce the number of illegal immigrants. In fact, it seems to have increased their numbers. Meanwhile, the question of jobs, which are the true driver of legal and illegal immigration, has been largely neglected.

Princeton University sociologist Douglas Massey pointed out nearly a decade ago that measures to secure the border seemed to produce almost the opposite of what was intended. By making the northward crossing more dangerous and expensive, Massey and co-authors Jorge Durand and Nolan J. Malone wrote in 2002, the border buildup discouraged seasonal laborers from going back to Mexico when they were not working.

With increasing border enforcement, workers who used to shuttle between jobs in California or Texas and home in Zacatecas or Michoacan simply began to stay put and sent for their families, becoming permanent, if sometimes reluctant, residents. According to Massey, post-IRCA border enforcement may have increased the size of the permanent Mexican population in the United States by a factor of nearly four.

More unintended consequences: The anti-immigrant backlash that sparked Arizona's string of anti-illegal-immigration legislation was produced in large part by tighter border controls in Texas and California. That enforcement squeezed the smuggling of immigrants and drugs into Arizona's Sonoran Desert and mountains.

As noted by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, among many others, the element missing from this picture is that immigration, both legal and illegal, is driven more by the economy than it is restrained by border enforcement.

That's not all that different from the immigration patterns of the past century and a half, when immigration levels were almost invariably trailing indicators of the U.S. economy and its sometimes severe worker shortages. One hundred fifty years ago, after the dislocations and slaughter of the Civil War, some states even sent agents to Europe to recruit workers. When times were good, we beckoned to immigrants; when they were bad, we tried to expel them.

"We wanted workers," says Philip Martin, an immigration economist in California, "but we got people."

Americans have historically been ambivalent about new arrivals. Ever since colonial days, immigration and immigration restriction have been tightly wound around each other like a double helix. In the same polls in which Americans express support for Arizona's immigration legislation, they also say that by paying fines and back taxes (which most already pay) immigrants should have the right to be legalized.

Some places accept, even welcome, illegal immigrants. Some try to expel them. My state of California grants illegal immigrants relatively low in-state college tuition but denies them driver's licenses.

In the past three years, the U.S. population of illegal immigrants has declined, perhaps by as much as 10 percent, from about 12 million to 11 million. Anti-immigration groups such as the Center for Immigration Studies credit tougher border and workplace enforcement for much of that decline. But some, if not most, has almost certainly been driven by the recession, beginning in the construction industry and continuing in many other sectors that employ large numbers of immigrants. During those three years, more immigrants returned to Mexico than came north.

None of this means giving up on border control, especially if it's focused on drugs and other criminal activities. But if the objective is to reduce the attraction of U.S. jobs for undocumented workers – about a third to half of whom, in any case, have overstayed their visas, not crossed the border illegally – it requires different strategies.

Click here to read the entire essay.

Immigration solutions--Part 2

So, what should be the major components of any effective, comprehensive immigration reform plan? 

Here's what I think.

1.  Establish a clear, efficient guest worker registration plan that would be administered at the border for those who seek entry into the U. S. for jobs, on the job for those already at work in the U. S. and in labor and/or community centers (including non-profit organizations and churches) in major population centers inside the U. S.  Such a plan would not extend amnesty, unless you consider the "pass" it provides employers who have hired undocumented workers already.  The plan would be a way to register workers and eliminate the need to cross the borders under the cover of night or in unsafe cargo vans and trucks.  In short, this or some variation of such a plan must be developed that allows the 12 million plus undocumented immigrants to receive the documentation they need to remain in the country and on the job.  Any future immigrants would be required to register upon entry to the country. 

2.  Secure the southern border by investing the funds necessary to do so.  With registration being the backbone of this new security system, a new culture of documentation would emerge that eliminates fear and secrecy.  Any workable security plan must involve cooperation with Mexico and other nations south of our borders to share real time criminal records and identity documents.  Any deficiency in technical infrastructure must be addressed as a part of the border security plan.  This approach works on our northern border.  There is no reason to think it would not work on our southern border.

3.  Differentiate basic border security related to the movement of honest labor from drug enforcement and national security concerns.  Declare war on drug cartels and government corruption south of the border rather than on innocent persons who seek only a better life for themselves through hard work.  Upgrade intelligence gathering and apply protocols designed to identify potential terrorists and other extremists, a process that should be made easier by the requirement that all workers register and by the almost certain cooperation of legitimate workers. 

4.  Establish a new working relationship with nations south of the border, especially Mexico, to stimulate those national economies in ways that are mutually beneficial.  Included in any plan should be incentives to U. S. corporations who decide to move jobs outside the U. S. to make those moves south to create more jobs inside those nations closest to the U. S.  Included in any plan for economic development in Mexico should be green collar jobs and industries. 

5.  Place current undocumented immigrants who desire U. S. citizenship to "go to the back of the line" behind those who've been playing by the rules back home in the nation of their origins.  However, there would be no requirement that these workers be forced to leave the U. S. or their current employment.

6.  Include passage of the DREAM Act that would provide documentation to young people who were brought to the U. S. while dependent children and who finish high school, maintain good moral character, and go on to seek a college degree or serve in the U. S. Armed Services.  Allowing these young people to remain in the U. S., to work and to contribute to our economy and to enter a path to citizenship, if they so choose, is best for everyone. 

7.  Reclaim the federal responsibility to enforce border process and security from the states who now feel desperate due to federal inaction.