A nation of laws
Laws regarding immigration to the United States have been a heated political issue for as long as there have been any laws about it at all. Immigration Acts date back to the Reconstruction era, but that’s too much to cover in one blog post. Ellis Island opened in 1892 and its storied history is engrained in our culture. The World Wars led to increasing trepidation of foreigners entering the country and to the Immigration Act of 1917, which imposed quotas. Despite quotas being abolished by the Hart-Cellar act of 1965, restricting the number of immigrants continues to be central to the debate.
Fundamental to the discussion is that we are a nation of laws. There should be no debate about that. Ideas about open borders are up for discussion, but until we design and implement laws that can promote that idea and maintain a safe and civil society, we need to operate within the laws we have. There are other aspects of this discussion that are sometimes brought up but are not covered by laws. We don’t have a law that requires anyone to speak a certain language. We don’t have laws that require patriotic statements or participation in patriotic rituals. We have a law that says you are free to practice religion however you want. There is no test for how much you love America. There is a civics test for immigrants that many natural born citizens would find challenging.
A law that is central to the current debate is how a non-citizen gets into the country. To cross the border, you must use a designated US immigration border inspection point or port of entry. To do otherwise is a misdemeanor offense. Repeated attempts can carry stiffer penalties. A misdemeanor is not a crime that automatically results in deportation. The classification “misdemeanor” includes hunting on a wildlife refuge, assault, using counterfeit money, desecration of the flag, parading without a permit, and possession of illegal drugs. These can result in jail time, but often don’t. The consequences of crossing the border can also vary. There are also a wide variety of visas and permits that allow people to work, study and live here for limited times. When those expire, technically, they are in violation of the law if they don’t return to their home country.
A little more complicated is the law regarding requests for asylum. If you aren’t already in the country legally and you try to make the case that you fear going back to your home country, it can come down to the judgment of one Customs and Border Protection officer and you could be refused entry, or you could be detained. These actions are discretionary under the law and recent Presidents have varied widely in their policies regarding who they detain, why, and for how long.
We are a nation of laws, and that includes due process under that law and it extends to non-citizens. A young citizen of the US accused of assault would most likely be allowed to continue their education and their work while they awaited trial. They are more likely to receive counseling and do community service rather than jail time. A person who crosses the border because they fear for their life would most likely not be able to find any legal help or be given time to prepare their case and get a fair hearing. That is how the law currently works.
The scenario I referred to above applies mainly to our southern border, a border that can be accessed via foot and is not far from countries where we know violence is occurring. Those in countries farther away can register as refugees. They will then go through background checks, extensive interviews and even biological screening involving multiple law enforcement, intelligence and security agencies. This can take up to 2 years. Only a few of these are referred for resettlement.
When looking at a single instance and making assumptions about the innocence of the people involved, it’s easy to find flaws in the system. But there are larger issues, and policies need to be designed to protect everyone, not skewed toward a particular group. To determine if that is what is happening, we need to open up the conversation to questions of how immigrants affect our economy including our crime rates. Are they in fact, “taking our jobs”?
Who is coming to the US?
Estimates of immigrants living in the US illegally are somewhere around 12 million. That’s about 3.5% of the total population. 12 million is also the number of people who arrived through Ellis Island. When it closed in 1954, our population was half what it is now. That brings us back a couple generations. According to the US census, 3/4 of the population today identifies as at least a 3rd generation immigrant. I don’t see much argument about the fact that everyone descended from immigrants (except the native population that can trace its history back thousands of years). The current immigration debate tends to be more centered on demographics such as the few percentage points shift toward more 1st and 2nd generation immigrants that has occurred since 1998.
This shift is a reversal of the trend of the last half of the 20th century but similar to the trend of the first half. One difference is where the immigrants of those few generations ago came from versus those from the current generation; Europe as opposed to Latin America and Asia. These are all factors that contribute to the perception of the current generation of immigrants, legal or otherwise. It would be difficult to sort out the contributions of millions of people and trace the impact of immigration from 100 years ago and compare it to recent immigration. I can however address current talking points. There is ample anecdotal evidence of crime committed by people born in Latin American countries and acts of terrorism committed by Middle Eastern immigrants. There are stories of high crime and high unemployment in some areas and stories of 1st generation immigrants working as laborers as well as owning businesses and even fighting and dying in the US military. There are stories of young Spanish speaking people having babies and dropping out of school.
What I can’t find is data that says crime rates or teenage birth rates or drug abuse occur at higher rates in immigrant populations than they do in the population as a whole. Even acts of terrorism, that is, someone killing or plotting to kill people they don’t know, are committed by legal citizens of European descent. Nor can I correlate unemployment rates to the rise in illegal immigrant population. The current rate is lower compared to before that population began rising in the 1970’s and it has fluctuated while that rise has occurred.
Controlling the southern border
Some data can support actions. The rise in border crossings on the southern border from a quarter million in 1970 to over 1 million per year during most of the 80’s and 90’s was a problem for people living along that border. A sparsely populated region can’t respond to a situation of that magnitude with its normal level of law enforcement. Serious efforts to secure the southern border began under Bill Clinton and continued with the Secure Fence Act of 2006, signed by George W Bush and voted for by then Senators Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Apprehensions at the border have since returned to 1970 levels.
Meanwhile the population of Mexican-born people now in the US has steadily risen from under 1 million to over 12 million. It might be that tightening the border has led to this, since it is now harder to cross back and forth. Whereas before, people came and worked temporarily, now they stay rather than risk another crossing. Also noteworthy is that annual immigration from Mexico has declined sharply since 2005, long before talk of extensive additions to border security. The policies enacted since then may be reacting to problems that no longer exist or that could be dealt with in new ways.
Economic policies
There is no question that millions of people work in the US without proper documentation. There are also gangs that consist largely of foreign born members. There are high profile cases of people living here legally who have participated in horrific crimes in the name of their religion or ideologies that are mostly foreign to our way of life. The connection I can’t make is to how additional restrictions of immigration would alter the overall data. The elimination of a class of people to reduce problem behaviors means also eliminating workers, entrepreneurs, military personnel and others who contribute to the economy. I would need to see how those contributions can be sorted out from the problems. Is their country of origin a cause, or are crimes rates the same in all groups and better correlated to age or economic status?
There is more than anecdotal evidence that immigrants use the social services provided by our government. It is a separate debate, but many of these services began around the same time we began restricting immigration. As Econofact.org states it, since we have been running at a deficit, “essentially everyone receives more in public expenditures than they pay in taxes”. So, questions about socialism aside, are immigrants causing these deficits? Do they take more than they contribute? This is a complicated question. I can’t make a case that they are a cause, but I would need more understanding of economics to make the case against it.
What is an American?
Putting all the dry data about economics aside, a key issue for many is the question of just what this country “is”, what is our essence, who are we? I’ll avoid mining our history for quotes from founding fathers because support for our Christian roots can be found just as easily as quotes about keeping government and religion separate. There is more to this than our 1st amendment and even if I provided case law that supports the separation, there are still those who feel those laws should be changed. The complicated nature of our identity as a nation of immigrants and one that desires purity can be found in our Declaration of Independence, where it is stated that King George,
“has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
This appears to be a response to the Royal Proclamation of 1763 that said although the colonists had participated in defeating the French, who fought along with natives, they could not expand their boundaries into the territory they had won, across the Appalachian Mountains. This could be seen as just one of the ways we wanted to be free from British rule, but the language is unmistakable, we felt we were superior and had a right to that territory. To be clear, when I say “we”, I’m referring to a group of white male land owners from a long time ago. We can’t know the pulse of the entire population at the time. We are not beholden to every thought of the men that signed that Declaration. It is however one of our most important founding documents and something we should fully understand and come to terms with.
Conclusions
We are a nation of laws, and currently our laws restrict immigration to a degree that many more people want to become citizens than are becoming citizens. Since we export food and have experienced unprecedented economic growth over the last century, I see no reason to believe we are at any kind of a limit to capacity. It seems rather we need more people willing to come to places that are experiencing growth and are in need of people ready to contribute.
We are a nation of laws and those laws include traditions of restricting others from crossing our borders and of welcoming others. Our Constitution is designed to allow for change because our founders knew they could not anticipate the changes that have occurred in the last 250 years. I think the best question to ask ourselves is, who do we want to be?
A comment from Richard Carrier:
ReplyDeleteI have received one entrant so far in my Free Tickets to MythCon contest (details at: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14238; entries are still being accepted!), from Lausten North at Religious Deviant / Religious Atheism: http://winter60.blogspot.com/2018/08/immigration.html. It's pretty good as a short essay, and meets the requirements; I'd say what it most lacks are links to supporting evidence for all its key statements--although none of them should be controversial, "critics" might not believe such statements without evidence (or believe contrary statements), so we would need more steel manning of either side in terms of evidence, where it exists (and even claims that evidence doesn't exist, need support). But back on the positive side, the conclusion may be correct and is a useful re-frame of the debate. Illegal immigration might really just be about identity politics, which is only being rationalized by fears of purported dangers that evidence doesn't really establish exist. For example, the dangers posed by undocumented immigrants, do not actually statistically differ from those posed by native born citizens (e.g., I think focusing on "immigrants are bad" in the Tibbetts case mistakes what it actually evinces, which is that "men who don't respect women are dangerous," a problem actually more prevalent in native born men than foreign born men). But I'd like to see an essay proving that, including tackling attempts to prove the contrary and weighing and testing their merit, too. North's essay works at a more abstract level, pointing out that *if* we can't establish any such statistical difference, *then* the opposition is really only arguing for a particular racial and cultural composition of America, and perhaps should just be honest about that so we can have that debate. Although other debates can be had, too. For example, the costs of our underfunding the processing of refugees, or a cost-benefit analysis of "a wall" vs. alternative approaches to reducing illegal immigration, such as helping improve border nation economies and expanding worker visa programs to make public and accountable what corporations are already doing in secret; and so on.