It's a massive understatement to say that immigration is the most controversial and divisive political issue of our time. It's a mistake, however, to say that the modern era is the first time the country has been bitterly divided by this issue, or to think that it can be laid to rest once and for all with some sort of legislative "silver bullet" that has not been previously considered, debated, and/or voted upon. As this article from the New York Times shows, much of the previous century was focused on heated debates over various aspects of immigration, and various attempts to resolve those debates by enacting new laws and bureaucracies. The significant thing about all of these attempts is that all of them were attempts to "definitively" resolve the "problem" of "illegal immigration." And all of them failed.
Why? Has it been simply a question of poorly-drafted legislation, or poorly-thought-our responses to the issue? Has it been an unwillingness to spend enough tax dollars? Has it been the willingness of the American public to look the proverbial "other way" when it comes to utilizing immigrants for a variety of purposes, in spite of the knowledge that, in at least some instances, doing so meant breaking the law?
No to all of the above.
I think that it might surprise a number of today's conservatives, in particular those who advocate reducing the annual number of visas currently available as well as adopting some sort of "merit-based" system of attracting people from abroad, that, in trying to "regulate and restrict" what has been recognized by the Supreme Court as one of the most fundamental of rights--the right to travel
--they have essentially been engaged in a form of centralized economic planning.
Conservatives, at least in theory, are supposed to abhor this. They claim to be defined by the fealty to the concept that the best, most productive, most innovative economy is one that has the fewest possible restrictions. Logically, that should include not only the free, unfettered movement of money, but also the free, unfettered movement of people who make it, invest it, and spend it. In theory, therefore, if a conservative vision of immigration were to be consistent with its vision more generally of how political economy works, it would favor open immigration with no restrictions except for individuals with a history of criminal activity and/or terrorism.
Such a system would, by definition, be a less expensive system, one that relies heavily on records that already exist to serve other public purposes, such as law enforcement. To argue against my self-interest (and that of my wife/law partner), such a system would also require fewer attorneys, since it would be far simpler to apply for and obtain a visa through an embassy. But, above all, and again taking an orthodox conservative point of view, such a system would be truer to Adam Smith by letting the marketplace sort out the question of who should (and shouldn't) come to the U.S.. And, by being less bureaucratic and less restrictive, there would be few, if any, official "mistakes" in the form of undocumented individuals.
This, in fact, is precisely the point that the Times article is making. Put simply, it states that all of our efforts to legally restrict the presence of immigrants within our borders does nothing except to create a class of people who have no authorized identity, and could arguably said to have no authorized existence. This in turn simply makes it easier for demagoguery to play a prominent role in the immigration debate, by using demeaning and even inhumane rhetoric to describe men and women who are effectively in the position of not having a country. The class of immigrants who have been the object of efforts to enact the so-called DREAM Act, or "Dreamers," individuals brought here as children by their undocumented parents, are a currently-prominent example of such people.
And yet, despite the failure of restrictions to solve the "problem" that the restrictions have largely created in the first place, conservatives go on advocating their further and greater use. Even more amazingly, they attempt to fortify their objections with economic rationales: immigrants take jobs away from citizens and consume resources needed for those same citizens, despite study after study showing that neither rationale is rational, or even true.
When you pair these facts with America's long and troubled history in the area of race, along with the increasingly racial tinge of the anti-immigration rhetoric, it becomes impossible to see today's conservative restrictionists as being motivated by anything except racial animosity, and the hypocrisy that characterizes that animosity. Consider: the U.S. is the by-product of white Europeans displacing dark-skinned Native Americans, and then importing dark-skinned Africans to perform all of the tasks needed for living but despised by the Europeans, who did not so much believe in the right to travel as they did the right to conquer and dominate. It is that belief that lives on today in the vile racial language of our current President, and many of his supporters.
That racial animosity is precisely why any so-called "merit-based" system is doomed to be enforced in an inherently corrupt way. Those who are in charge of enforcing it will be quick to find fault with applicants whose main offense will be a lack of paleness. That animosity is what will undoubtedly cost this nation the gift of people who are not obvious gems, but who nevertheless prove to be diamonds in the rough. Harry Pangemanan is one such person, as are many of the people who currently can obtain green cards through the so-called "diversity lottery."
And, in fact, that animosity is precisely why the current debate, from the Republican perspective, needs to continue without a resolution, so that the party's voter base will continue to be "fired up" and vote, time after time, against its own interests in promoting a welcoming society and not one that treats itself as a prison. In consequence, this is why I believe this story to be painfully true.
So long as we fail to account for the need of every human being to move about in search of a better life, so long as we fail to allow the whole human race (criminals and terrorists excepted) to sort out their personal and economic interests, so long as our bitterly racist souls allow us to attempt to formulate immigration policy that is at odds with our economic realities, so long will we be not only a nation of immigrants, but also a nation of undocumented immigrants. We will be surrounded by people who are people in the eyes of everyone but the law.
Whose interests does this serve? Only the interests of bigots. Those are the people we should be the most afraid of. In their short-sighted inhumanity, they're the most un-American of all of us.
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