To here the activists tell it, Congress ought to, indeed has the moral obligation, to pass a “clean DREAM Act” — a bill which gives permanent residence to individuals who were brought to the United States without legal authorization, as minors. (Here’s the ACLU, here’s a Newsweek opinion piece, here’s a The Hill article citing various Democratic leaders making that demand.) There should be no conditions of any kind — no wall, no e-verify or other enforcement increases, no cuts in the ability of immigrants to sponsor parents and siblings, nothing that “harms” other illegal immigrants, now or in the future. Some activists (sorry, I don’t have any quotes at the moment) go even further to demanding that it be an all-or-nothing and the parents and other family members of “Dreamers” be given legalization as well.
But consider the message of the “Dream Act” and those arguing for its passage:
Any person brought to the United States as a minor has a moral right to stay here.
This is setting an incredible precedent. Does an minor-arrived illegal immigrant, who crossed the border or overstayed a visa, this year, or who will do so next year or the year after, have, in such a case, any less of a moral right? Would they not, upon reaching adulthood, and seeking to attend college with financial aid, or simply seeking to work legally, insist that they have just as much moral right to legal residence here as the prior cohort did? And what reasonable argument would persuade them otherwise — if, indeed, activists even wished to do so?
Now, to be sure, I’ve said that I support provision of legal residency for these minor-arrivals, but I’ve always said that what I believe is this
Any person brought to the United States as a minor, in a period of time when our own government’s policy was de facto tolerance of illegal immigration and when the length of time since their arrival means they would face particular hardship in returning home, has a moral right to stay here.
This means that there is a second moral obligation:
Our government has the moral obligation to enforce its own laws uniformly and reliably, rather than arbitrarily or not at all. In particular, it is immoral for legislators to craft laws without suitable enforcement mechanisms and for administrators of the law to ignore legislation, in order to intentionally create a second-class set of individuals to meet the desires of the rich, and certain employers, for a low-paid, compliant workforce, or to create a second, uncontrolled immigration pathway.
If the government fails in its duty in this regard, while establishing as the norm via a “Dream Act” that minor-arrived illegal immigrants get residency, then we’ve essentially issued an invitation to anyone who wants to make a go of it, that they can obtain residency for their children, and invite them into the American Dream, by making their way here and working under the table or with false ID.
And, yes, I know that there are claims that illegal immigration is a non-issue because arrivals have leveled off. I don’t buy this; in the first place, there continues to be plenty of new illegal immigration; that the number of illegal immigrants (according to counts by Pew, for instance) remain steady is due to a combination of some returning home and others finding their way towards legal status, and, even if the number of illegal immigrants isn’t growing, it remains a problem to have 12 million such people, living and working with forged IDs or under the table. But what’s more crucial is that the number of new arrivals each year is likely to substantially increase when the popular belief among prospective immigrants is that we have, in our laws, openly stated that “kids get to stay” — because immigrants do pay attention to this, the ease of making one’s way in the US is a real “pull factor,” and they’re not going to buy politicians’ protestations that “this was a one-time deal” if nothing in our laws affirm this to be the case by any changes in how we operate our immigration system.
So let’s pass some sort of legalization for minor-arrivals; but we also need to pass something that will ensure that future arrivals will say, “dude, I heard from so-and-so that the trip there isn’t worth it.”
Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ret0dd/5708625905
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