Saturday, November 25, 2006

Enforcement of Progress?

Today, America must decide what to do about its immigration policy. As America looks forward and contemplates its choices, it is important that it look back at its history and draw from a rich tradition of correcting ills in order to become a greater democracy. An important reference in our history is the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s & 1960’s. What is relevant about this movement to today’s topic of immigration is the manner in which the inadequacies of current policies and the treatment of those adversely affected by those policies were presented to the nation. It reminds us, that just because a law exists, it does not mean that it is a just and fair law. This country’s principles allow us to question laws and regulation and by opposing them, we change them. When a law is broken often, we must make ask ourselves, is it more important to enforce the current law, or to change it? Certainly, not every law that is broken often should be abolished, and the constant violation of a particular law does not always point to its inefficiency. But, sometimes it does. Segregation and the current complex immigration issue are an example of why laws should be questioned.
With Segregation, this country did have a choice to make. It could have resisted the civil rights movement; it could have negated the Supreme Court decisions that essentially mandated desegregation of schools after the 1954 Supreme Court ruling. Instead this country was forced to confront its fears, insecurities, and racism to realize that these ills were institutionalized; therefore establishing policies that suppressed and humiliated a large portion of their population, i.e. Jim Crow laws and other Segregation practices.
. The law at that time mandated the segregation of whites and blacks to the point that a black person could not eat a meal in the same place that white person could. Blacks would send their kids to poorly funded schools and obstacles were placed that prevented them from voting. Were these laws appropriate? They were if you believe that a black person has no right to educate themselves, enjoy a meal or a movie, at the same place as a white person. Racism, an ill-conceived ideology born out of fear, justified these laws.
If you believed that blacks were inferior to whites, then these laws made sense. If you believe that blacks deserved no rights, then these laws were justified. And there were many that argued this. They argued blacks were intellectually inferior to whites and therefore should no go to the same schools as whites because that would only hold white students back. In northern cities, the migration of blacks compelled whites to leave urban areas and into suburban neighborhoods, because they feared blacks and thought that they represented an increase of crime and economic instability. They feared their property values would fall because blacks would move into their neighborhoods and no other whites would want to move there. Because of these fears, segregation persisted well into the 1970’s. Segregation, at that time, was Rule of Law, and many felt the status quo should remain.
But this country changed its law and policy and took the path towards a better democracy. While moving in this direction, the will to continue through rule of law gave way to the hope and promise of democracy: and new laws were passed to guarantee equal opportunity to all to fulfill our dreams.
In order to bring this topic before the consciousness of the nation, a movement began that, as one of its tactics, used civil disobedience and broke laws in order to bring to light the inequality and injustice they created.
The aforementioned justifications of Segregation, illustrates to us that just because a law exists does not mean that it is fair or just. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., eloquently declared this in his remarkable essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In it he gives justification for breaking unjust laws and he uses the following as the criteria of an unjust law “ An unjust law is no law at all…An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with moral law…Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”
Why were segregation and Jim Crow laws legal? The answer is found in the Supreme Court decision of 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson. It argued that separate but equal was not unconstitutional, and that practically facilitated the right to segregate public institutions. (This was later reversed in 1954 with Brown vs. Kansas Board of Education) The Supreme Court decision then paved the way for local governments to then enact and enforce segregation laws. Federal policy that is unrealistic and unjust was enforced through local laws that establish and institutionalize this injustice. Only after the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision, which reversed Plessy v. Ferguson, did federal law change and similarly so did local laws where segregation was legal.
This is relevant to today’s topic of immigration because as much as anti-immigrant proponents deny they are racist, little else explains the fervor that is expressed in their efforts today. Proposition H.R. 4437 has encouraged dozens of communities to propose anti-immigration laws in order to make life difficult for illegal immigrants. Anti-immigration proponents in these neighborhoods admit that the laws are intended to so. “Since mass deportation of illegal immigrants is impractical, then we must make lives as hard as possible on them, so they go back home,” they argue. They go on to argue “we must make sure no one hires them, no one rents to them, ensure that they do not benefit from public schools nor get health care benefits.” Furthermore, many anti-immigrant proponents feel that illegal-immigrants have no rights at all, that because they are not authorized to be in this country that this is justification for mistreatment, exploitation and humiliation of these people, and support laws that would facilitate them to do as much. In recent demonstrations they have chanted, “Rule of Law, rule of Law!”
Now, with immigration there are two different levels of government whose policies affect immigration policy. At the federal level, with regards to immigration, the U.S. government protects our borders and sets up laws that govern who and how many people can come into this country, and what requirements are needed to come into this country. Then there are laws enacted by state and local governments have in the last two decades have been proposed to scare away illegal-immigrants that have already broken the federal law in order to, again, make it difficult for immigrants to live here with the final intent to make them go back to their country.
Most immigrants, legal or illegal, are from Latin America, and the communities where these laws are mainly proposed are where there is an increasing population of Hispanics and peoples of brown skin. This is not a coincidence.
Before we examine our immigration laws, and the accompanying laws that attempt to stop the flow of illegal immigrations, let us ask ourselves: Why are these immigrants here? Why would they risk their lives to come to this country and work some of the most physically demanding and underpaid jobs?
If you are a racist, your answer may be that these people are opportunists who wish to take advantage of our public schools and our healthcare system and have no regard for the law. They are mostly criminals who exhibit criminal behavior and look to strip Americans of their jobs. They are people who are uneducated and therefore can make no significant contribution to this country. The arguments extend to: Since the presence of illegal immigrants is undesirable, then our property values drop. Since many of them don’t speak English, they are deteriorating to our school system.
Some anti-immigrant proponents even argue that the flow of immigrants is one big coordinated plot by the Mexican government (where most immigrants come from) to try to overthrow the U.S. government. If this is how someone feels, then it is no wonder they would enact such laws such as proposition HR 4437. The laws that look to “degrade human personality” are justified because they feel these things about illegal-immigrants and/or Hispanics in general. If illegal immigrants leave a city and take their children who are American citizens with them, would the anti-immigrant proponents care? Not likely. Even though many illegal immigrants have children that were born in the U.S. and are legally in this country, they must too suffer from these laws. And that is ok to most of these anti-immigrant proponents.
But the answer to why immigrants are here must be looked at more reasonably. Immigrants are here because they want to survive. If we look at Mexico, the country where most immigrants (both legal & illegal) come from, it is actually a country that has a very low unemployment rate. According to the CIA handbook, in 2002 Mexico had an unemployment rate of 3.5% (this is an estimate, but important to note is that in 2002 Mexico had a recession, so this number 3.5% is actually during a bad year for Mexico’s economy). Compared to the U.S. current rate of 4.7%, that number is very low. However, the key is that 25% of Mexico’s labor force is UNDERemployed, meaning that they have jobs but it is insufficient to adequately provide for their families, i.e. they live in poverty. This speaks of the Mexican governments’ inability to create a policy that vitalizes their economy. Immigrants believe that if they work hard, they should be adequately reimbursed for their efforts. Mexico simply has not provided their people with enough jobs that can provide for a healthy standard of living. And the United States does. Immigrants want to help their families get ahead; they have the universal belief that they should do everything they can to ensure their kids have a better standard of living then they do, both by providing for them and by showing them an example of willingness to work hard. They feel that by staying in their country, they cannot accomplish this. More importantly immigrants want to be American. They share with us the democratic principles and feel that if they work hard that they can move up in this world. The gap between rich and poor is so great in their country that they have lost faith that they can accomplish a healthy standard of living in their native country. Given the choice between continuing to live in never ending poverty and getting a chance to feed their families and making life better for their kids, breaking an immigration law seems like a very low price to pay for having a chance of the latter.
If we look at the laws that dictate immigration at the federal level, and at the local level; the federal laws are inadequate, and the proposed anti-immigration laws are simply unjust.
As far as the flow of immigrants is concerned, we must consider the following. Everyone would agree that our borders are porous. Essentially we currently have an open border because the federal government has not provided border authorities to adequately shut down our borders. If you agree that our borders are porous, then you must agree that the immigration flow is dictated by supply and demand. This is indeed argued by many economists. Tamar Jacoby, writer with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank (I emphasize the word Conservative here) argues that the economic demands of this country drive the flow of immigration. Consider her assessment from her essay “Immigration Nation.”


“Today’s immigration influx—second in volume only to the wave that arrived a hundred years ago—is not some kind of voluntary experiment that Washington could turn of at will, like a faucet. On the contrary, it is the product of changing U.S. demographics, global development, and the increasingly easy international communications that are shrinking our planet for everyone, rich and poor. Between 2002, and 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy is expected to create some 56 million new jobs, half of which will require no more than a high school education. More than 75 million baby boomers will retire in that period. And declining native born fertility rates will be approaching replacement level. [American] workers, meanwhile, are becoming more educated with every decade. Arguably, the most important statistic for anyone seeking to understand the immigration issue is this: in 1960, half of all American men dropped out of high school to look for unskilled work, whereas less than ten percent do so now.
The resulting shortfall of unskilled labor—estimated to run to hundreds of thousands of workers a year—is showing up in sector after sector. The construction industry creates some 185,000 jobs annually, and although construction workers can earn between $30,000 and $50,000 a year, employers in trades such as masonry and dry-walling report that they cannot find enough young Americans to do the work. The prospects to the restaurants are the nation’s largest private sector employer, and their demand for labor is expected to grow 15 percent between 2005 and 2015. But the native born work force will grow by only ten percent in that period, and the number of 16 to 24 year old job seekers—the key demographic for the restaurant trade—will not expand at all. So unless the share of older Americans willing to bus tables and flip hamburgers increases—and in truth, it is decreasing—without immigrants, the restaurant sector will have trouble growing through the next decade.”

No one is saying that Americans don’t want these jobs, simply that there aren’t enough Americans to fill certain jobs in our growing economy. If this is the case, and many economists agree that it is, then current immigration policy at the federal level is inadequately addressing the needs to the American economy. Consider Jacoby’s assessment of reform necessary for immigration.

“The definitions of a realistic immigration system is one in which the annual legal intake is more or less equal to the flow generated by supply and demand: not the 5000 visas currently issued to year- round unskilled workers but something closer to the 400,000—500, 000 needed to keep the economy growing.”

This is important to consider because it answers the questions as to why they are coming here, why we need them, why are employers willing to break the law (or even go out of the way to verify the validity of documents by certain employees they suspect may be illegal) order to hire illegal-immigrants. Rule of law must be restored only after the reality of the situation is addressed. A government that creates laws without a grasp of reality will not be able to enforce them. Realizing that our current policies are unrealistic should be a call to change immigration policy.
At the local level, governments have felt the need to address illegal-immigration. Some residents of communities claim that the public schools, health care institutions, and crime among other issues have been adversely affected by illegal-immigrants, and in order to solve those problems, we should get rid of them, or better yet enforce federal law, to ameliorate our problems. Some call it attrition through enforcement. It is where the episode of the Civil Rights movement in our history repeats itself.
Segregationist wanted to preserve their laws and strictly enforce them in order to keep status quo. They felt justified because of federal policy, established by Plessy vs. Ferguson, despite the fact that this federal policy was not only unrealistic, but unjust. Similarly, not only do anti-immigrant proponents feel that federal laws are not being enforced, but that more laws should be created at the local level, to accompany this unrealistic federal policy that currently attempts to regulate immigrants. Laws and regulations are being proposed at the local level in order to make life difficult for immigrants and further enforce unrealistic federal policy.
But the tactics have been more about attacks on people for being poor and Hispanic, rather than illegal immigrants. In just about every urban city, or rapidly growing city, in the United States there are always be growing pains. Where there is poor, there will always be the accompanying ills with them.
In areas where the poor live, schools generally do not perform as well as suburban schools or where more affluent students attend. There is a low standard of living which generally means uninsured people who cannot afford proper health care. Crime is usually higher. There is a problem with the devaluation of homes. All these ills are blamed in part because of illegal immigration. In essence, illegal immigrants are contributing to these short comings.
I argue that because illegal immigrants are willing to take low-paying jobs, they often live in poverty. They add to the number of those who live in poverty in this country, but the burden of how to handle is universal and never ending. If we look at poor as people who must be punished, who must pay for their short comings and who don’t deserve as much as their more privileged counterparts, then we will continue to perpetuate the existence of poverty. Urban cities with little to no illegal immigrants also have poor school, little access to health care, high crime rates, and devaluating property rates in areas where the poor live. This is unfortunate, but the solution is not to punish those found living in poverty. Society can only benefit as a democracy if it helps its people with better public education for all, better access to health care, and prevent all from crime better.
Even with these considerations many are still uncomfortable, with allowing so many who have entered this country illegally. They insist, “If they are not here in this country legally they have no rights at all.” Illegal immigrants have broken laws, and are therefore criminals. But what should be the consequence of breaking the laws? A lot of these laws proposed by HR 4437 and some local government are excessive. We have already explored that illegal immigrants fill the void of the economy and therefore federal government is not taking into account the needs of its economy. If laws are unreasonable then we must change them. But how do we punish those who have already broken the law? I cannot see how breaking these unreasonable laws can be punishable by anymore than a substantial fine, and perhaps having them wait longer to become citizens. To me, converting illegal immigrants into felons, and kicking them out of their apartments and not allowing them access to public schools and healthcare is indeed excessive. This is like giving someone 5 years in prison for speeding, or like serving a life long term prison for having an open container of alcohol in your car. If you pass these laws, it sure would cut a lot of speed demons and crushed beer cans in automobiles. But would they be fair in the big scheme of things? To make illegal-immigrants into felons, is putting them in the same category as armed robbers, child molesters, and murderers. Of course, for racists, many Hispanics are just that.
The causes that compel people to break immigration laws cannot be ignored and can be compared to the breaking of Jim Crow Laws of the 1950’s and 1960’s as a statement that policy must be urgently reformed. I do not pretend that the breaking of immigration laws by illegal immigrants is some sort of coordinated effort to demonstrate the absurdity of immigration policy, like the Civil Rights movement did with Jim Crow Laws, but, it does nevertheless call for a reexamination of our policy. Also the divisive nature of recent proposal of HR 4437 and others by local governments in cities such as Farmers Branch, Texas, are an exhibition of racism and fear that use the enforcement of unreasonable laws as an excuse to institutionalize their racism and bigotry. And while examining our policy, we cannot forget the words carved into The Statute of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” Our current policies negate this claim, but it is a principle that it is well worth preserving. And the ills of our poor must be dealt with the progressive forces of our society and not resort to persecution.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Burrocracy

Anti-Poor Principles

During Tom Delay’s speech as he was departing the House for fraud, he made this statement: “it is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrade our public debate, but preening self styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle.” He argues that he and other conservatives are the principled partisans, and liberals and democrats are the preening self styled statesmen. I agree with the principled part of Delay. Last week’s political tactic devised by the GOP, are indicative of what the principles of the conservatives and the Republican Party are. The minimum wage was going to be raised over the next two years, but conservatives tacked on another provision to the bill, the estate taxes that shelter the wealthiest 6600 people in the United States. Conservatives push to include the estate tax provision that would benefit a tiny portion of the American population. This details precisely the need for partisanship, so that the liberal principles of fair taxation can counter-rest the conservative principle of sheltering the rich.
Last week’s back and forth bickering dealt with two different issues. On the one hand, you are dealing with the government not enforcing a minimum wage that is fair and can allow our poorest citizens to prosper and have an opportunity fulfill their lives in the richest country in the world. A person working minimum wage at 40 hours a week still makes $6,000 a year under the standard of poverty.

The issue that the republicans brought up: rich people are being taxed too much. If this tax were to stay, some rich may be only able to afford one Ferrari instead of two. That just sounds like communism to me. What’s next? All joking aside, the principle that people work hard for what they have is important, and should be respected. But we must keep in mind in a prosperous country, it is important to recognize that our greatness has been established by the greatness of our infrastructure. We have all benefited from this, especially the rich. And because they have it is only that a fair portion of their wealth be invested in maintaining this infrastructure. When I say infrastructure I mean all of the government entities that support us. We are all protected by the police, paid by taxes. We have the right to use the judicial system, paid by taxes. We drive on roads, mostly paid by taxes. Also, the rich's enormous bank accounts are protected by a government entity, the FDIC. Government has created an infrastructure that has and should help all. We must participate in this infrastructure, because it is an obligation of the government. At the same time, we must ensure that the infrastructure can be accessed fairly.
It is essential to ensure that we protect the poorest of our citizens.