The House of Representatives passed the DREAM act. (The Senate, being the Senate, will probably never vote on the measure.)
This originally bipartisan bill was first written by Sens. Dick Durbin and Richard Lugard and has been kicking around for about a decade. Columnist Ruben Navarette Jr. offers a useful summary:
The bill targets young people in the country illegally, offering them "conditional permanent residency" if they came to the United States before they were 16 and if they attend college or serve in the military.
Once they either graduate from an institution of higher education, complete two years toward a bachelor's degree or complete their enlistment, they would have been eligible for permanent legal residency with a chance to eventually apply for U.S. citizenship. However, anyone who didn't participate by enrolling in college or joining the military would have been subject to deportation.
This bill would affect about 2.1 million young Americans. For a moving illustration of what it's passage might mean for each of them — and of how frustrating, destructive and stupid it is not to have such a policy — listen to the fourth segment of This American Life: Just One Thing Missing.
Opponents of the bill would insist that these young people are not Americans, but as President Barack Obama said yesterday, this is the only country "they know as their own." An 18-year-old who was brought here by her parents at the age of 2 does not think of herself as a Briton or a Norwegian, she thinks of herself as an American — whether or not America is willing to acknowledge that, that is what she is.
Opponents of this bill, of course, don't really oppose the fair bargain it creates when the young people in question are Britons or Norwegians or any other variety of white Europeans. What they're worried about, or terrified of, are, in Rep. Dana Rohrabacher's phrase, "non-minority Americans." Steve Benen flags the California Republican's explicitly racist* objection to the bill last night:
"… if this act passes, if an illegal immigrant happens to be of a racial or ethnic minority, which the vast majority of illegal immigrants are, that individual, as soon as legal status is granted, will be entitled to all the education, employment, job training, government contract, and other minority preferences that are written into our federal and state laws.
"As a result, the DREAM act would not only put illegal immigrants on par with American citizens, but would in many cases put them ahead of most American citizens and legal immigrants. So those voting for this so-called DREAM act are voting to relegate the position of non-minority American citizens to behind those who are now in this country illegally."
Yeah, that bit. Oppressed whites always getting sent to the back of the bus and all that.
Remind me again, is it scarier if Rohrabacher really believes this hateful nonsense or if he's just cynically appealing to others' propensity for swallowing hateful nonsense?
On a much happier note, I was pleased to see Galen Carey of the National Association of Evangelicals speaking out in favor of the DREAM act "as one step in the immigration reform of our broken system."
"These are children brought here by their parents. We have educated them. It doesn't make sense to leave them in limbo," Carey said. "Why not allow them to be fully productive tax-paying citizens?"
That's a pragmatic argument and a good pragmatic question, but it's also rooted in the NAE's consistent and principled support for immigration reform. The association produced a good summary of that stance in a 2009 "resolution" on immigration that "urged":
That immigrants be treated with respect and mercy by churches. Exemplary treatment of immigrants by Christians can serve as the moral basis to call for government attitudes and legislation to reflect the same virtues.
That the government develop structures and mechanisms that safeguard and monitor the national borders with efficiency and respect for human dignity.
That the government establish more functional legal mechanisms for the annual entry of a reasonable number of immigrant workers and families.
That the government recognize the central importance of the family in society by reconsidering the number and categories of visas available for family reunification, by dedicating more resources to reducing the backlog of cases in process, and by reevaluating the impact of deportation on families.
That the government establish a sound, equitable process toward earned legal status for currently undocumented immigrants, who desire to embrace the responsibilities and privileges that accompany citizenship.
That the government legislate fair labor and civil laws for all residing within the United States that reflect the best of this country’s heritage.
That immigration enforcement be conducted in ways that recognize the importance of due process of law, the sanctity of the human person, and the incomparable value of family.
Not bad.
Immigration policy is a tricky subject for Christian ethics because immigration policy is all about boundaries and borders that we Christians don't regard as ethically significant. States have the duty and obligation to secure, safeguard and regulate their borders. Those charged with that responsibility have to do the difficult job of determining who may enter and who may stay and how many and from where and for how long. All of those decisions are based on the crucial distinction of nationality — a distinction that Christian ethics doesn't easily accommodate because it teaches that this distinction is not ultimately real.
The contribution we Christians can make to this conversation, then, I think arises from this very refusal to accept its basic premise. We can argue that immigration policy must not be constructed according to national boundaries of moral obligation because there is no such thing as a boundary of moral obligation.
Responsibility for and to others is always universal. We cannot escape the constant and difficult task of discerning priorities of obligation — to act is to choose. But working out what our primary and most direct responsibilities are does not allow us to claim irresponsibility toward anyone or anything else. States and lawmakers have a primary responsibility to secure justice for and the welfare of their constituents, but that is only one constituent piece of their larger responsibility.
More concretely, an immigration policy that attempts to do justice for Americans by perpetrating injustice toward Mexicans is based on a lie, on a misunderstanding and a misrepresentation of the universe, on a faulty model. Such a policy cannot work for very long and will not, ultimately, do any good for anyone on either side of any lines we care to draw.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
* I know the current vogue is to never, ever use the term "racist" to describe racist statements, preferring politely dishonest and inaccurate euphemisms, but I've yet to hear a persuasive argument for why such dishonesty and inaccuracy is preferable. As Chris Rock says, "What do you gotta do? Shoot Medgar Evers to be a racist?" I appreciate the pragmatic argument that using the term "racist" with such appropriate precision tends to create a loud and distracting hubbub and some may choose to avoid this predictable harrumphing. But I find this feigned uproar informative and clarifying — more useful than asking for a show of hands. (Ah, so Jim's first reaction is to defend Rohrabacher's statement and suggest it wasn't really "all that bad"? Now we know where Jim is coming from …)
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In