Debating the Morality of Immigration Reform: The Politics of Compassion by Robert Gittelson

Debating the Morality of Immigration Reform: The Politics of Compassion

 

The other day, I treated myself to a round of golf. My playing partner was a well known Minister, (and former UCLA and L.A. Rams football star), here in the Los Angeles area. As we were finishing up the round, (and I was about to blow a pretty good score with a double bogey on the final hole), we talked about our work. He asked what I did? I explained that I was semi-retired from the apparel business, but that my focus was on my work – or my calling – as an advocate for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. He then asked me a very simple question, but the question gave me pause. For a brief moment, I was actually at a loss for words, (and for those that know me, they would realize just how unusual that circumstance would be). He asked me the question; do I want to make it harder or easier?

 

Now, for someone like myself, who writes about, speaks about, and thinks about CIR basically 24/7, how could this most basic of questions leave me perplexed? The fact of the matter is, I had never considered this issued on those exact grounds. The issue of CIR is complicated and nuanced. There are so many particulars, and so much ground to cover. However, certainly I had to have a position on this question? Was I for making it harder or easier, and for whom? Well, I make it a point to try to be as straightforward as I can be, particularly when I am speaking to a man of God. So, I answered the man’s question. I said, “Well, in a way, I am for making it harder, but in a way that finds actual solutions to the problems that certainly exist as the system stands now.” Okay, I admit that my answer was slightly nuanced, but as it turned out, he agreed with my position 100%.

 

This is a complicated problem, requiring a multi-faceted solution. Any legislation that has over 600 pages has to address many thorny issues. Upon further explanation, I explained that I was for making legal immigration easier to navigate, and especially I wanted to shorten the process for family unification, because their was no moral argument for keeping parents separated from children for as much as two decades. On the other hand, I advocate for making future illegal immigration much harder. However, on a fundamental level, certainly we can all agree that on the issues that touch on questions of morality and compassion, the United States will always come down on the side of morality and compassion. Or will we?

 

It seems that somehow, the political far right has twisted this issue into knots. Somehow, they have managed to conflate compassion with being un-patriotic. How did this happen? The other day, I spoke at a rally. Actually, it was more of a counter protest to a “Save-our State” anti-immigration rally. Someone from the John Birch Society, (and I note that the John Birch Society was a main sponsor of the recent C-PAC convention in Washington DC), came up to me and shouted, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself! If you love Mexicans so much, why don’t you move to Mexico!”

 

I have to wonder how our country has strayed so far from our values on this issue? I have to say that I was proud of our country when we came to the aid of Haiti after their recent earthquake. Similarly, I was proud of our country, when we were the first responders to the earthquake crisis in Chili just this week. This is who we are, and this is what we do. We are a nation founded upon the principals of compassion and inclusiveness. When did we change that position? Did I miss a meeting or a memo?

Certainly our compassion doesn’t “start at the waters edge,” does it? Is our position now going to be, we have compassion for people in other countries, but not for those that live within our shores? Doesn’t anyone else see the disconnect here? The undocumented, at the end of the day, are guilty of wanting to be Americans. Certainly, if there was ever a crime that warranted a degree of leniency from Americans, the desire to be one of us should be at or near the top of the list, shouldn’t it?

 

I have to tell it like I see it. This past decade has served to bring our worst traits to the forefront of our national psyche. Perhaps a lot of that has to do with 9/11. Perhaps it has to do with the shrinking of our “real” wages. It seems that prior to 9/11, the issue of illegal immigration was considered more of a nuisance than a threat. We tolerated the undocumented because they provided a necessary service to our growing economy. We had a national sense of, for lack of a better word, entitlement. We were the invincible U.S. of A.

 

However, all of a sudden, we weren’t so invincible after all. Suddenly, we were vulnerable. Our safe cocoon of freedom from terrorist attacks was exposed as a façade. That place in our minds that made us feel economically superior to the “others” around the world somehow didn’t seem to be adding up any longer. Making ends meet became a struggle that too many of us couldn’t keep pace with.

Truth be told, the “post” 1986 amnesty or IRCA landscape shifted in dramatic ways when it became the post 9/11/01 landscape. When President Reagan decided not to increase the size of government so that we could have enforced the Simpson–Mazzoli Act regulations, (thus allowing our businesses in many economic sectors to grow and prosper), people in and out of government for the most part accepted, (with a wink and a nod), the status quo as being our little secret. Nobody wanted to say that undocumented labor served a national purpose, but we almost universally recognized that it did. The downside to millions of undocumented residents was considered the cost of doing business.

All of a sudden, post 9/11, our country woke up to the fact that perhaps having millions of unknown people among us wasn’t the best idea in the world, when it came to national security. Furthermore, when we started to realize that undocumented workers wanted to improve their lot in life, and actually try to earn more money in, say, construction jobs, as opposed to gardening and lettuce picking, we felt that they were getting uppity. After all, we didn’t want to have to compete with the undocumented for work. They were here to do the jobs that we didn’t want to do. When good jobs became scarce, we pushed back, essentially saying, “Hey, the free market and the laws of supply and demand need to be regulated, perhaps not for us, but certainly for them.”

 

So, now we find ourselves in a pickle, and a sour dill one at that. We need most of the undocumented to keep doing their jobs, and supporting our economy, but we don’t want undocumented “illegals” living here. What to do, what to do?

 

Well, we have no shortage of bad ideas from which to choose, and the only good ones are unpalatable to the “Joe the Plumbers” and the “tea partiers.” So, how do we navigate through this seemingly impassable impasse? Perhaps a good way to start would be to step back and take a deep breath.

 

We have to take stock of where we are, how we got here, and where we want to be.

 

We have to look at this through the lens of reality. First of all, we need to address the economic realities. Do we or don’t we need these 12,000,000 people here? Morally, do we want them? Where do we want to place the importance of our values in this argument, and for that matter, what are our values in this argument?

 

Economically, as Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda of UCLA has recently reminded us, legalizing the status of these undocumented people adds $1.5 trillion to our economy over the next 10 years, and deporting these people costs our economy $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years, for a difference of $4.1 trillion dollars. FYI, a $4.1 trillion dollar stimulus to our GDP will add many millions of new U.S. jobs for the CITIZENS of our country, which we most desperately do need. It would seem that the pro-CIR case for the economics involved in this argument is iron-clad and open-and-shut. There is no getting around the fact that having these people here is much more profitable to our free-market economy, (not to mention – so I’ll mention it – of urgent importance to our trade deficit imbalance), so when given a chance to speak, (if not falling on deaf ears), the economics of CIR speaks for itself.

 

The sticky and tricky arguments have to do with morals, ethics, and compassion. Yes, these people went around the law. Of course, since there was no actual way to come here legally for most of the undocumented, particularly the Latin-Americans, there was no “right way” to come here. These people were starving, and they needed to feed their families. They made a pro-active decision to come to America. Can we fault their logic? Wouldn’t we come to America if we couldn’t survive in our home countries? Oh wait; we did.

 

Let us not for a minute forget that we had a hand in their coming, and more importantly, in their staying. We welcomed them with open arms, by giving them our lousiest jobs. They gladly worked long and hard hours doing those jobs, and still do. We should not forget for a minute that these people do the most physically difficult work that we need, at the lowest wages that we can legally pay, (and we often pay less, since they are, after all, undocumented). That has to count for something, doesn’t it? We had a shared responsibility in their coming and staying. Even the most ardent anti-immigrant or anti-illegal-immigrant folks admit that we – meaning our businesses and our government – were responsible up to our eyeballs. Therefore, since we are a country that believes in personal responsibility, shouldn’t we fess up to our personal responsibility on this issue? If we had a share of responsibility, (and we had more than our share), than morally and ethically, do we not own a share of responsibility for the solution? Of course we do.

 

I have a problem with the concept of institutionalizing a “love/hate” relationship with my country. We are now told that in order to love our country, we have to hate our government. If we are to believe the right, we have to fundamentally distrust any effort to make an effort. If their only solution is to avoid any attempt at a solution, then what is the point of hope?

 

We’re told by our leaders on the right that if we have to hope for something, we should hope that the government fails. That sounds to me to be a call for hopelessness. If the best outcome to hope for is for nothing, to trust that everyone who is an insider should be an outsider, and that only outsiders would make good insiders, that up is down, and down is up, that night is day, and day is night, is quite simply, not to point too fine a point on it, as stupid as it sounds.

 

Of course we shouldn’t hope for failure. Of course we shouldn’t accept the status quo of a broken system, or that the concept that advocating for change is somehow unpatriotic. We must wake up and smell the dysfunctionalism. Since when did the concept of trying to solve a problem somehow make us evil? As a stated before, we must all take a deep breath. The word “chill” comes to mind.

 

Pointing out that it is problematic to have 12,000,000 undocumented residents is the easy part. Figuring out a pathway toward a resolution that doesn’t undermine our values and our economy is the harder part. Unfortunately, the hardest part seems to be to bring everyone on board with the concept that we shouldn’t accept failure. Actually, figuring out why that is the hardest part might very well be the hardest part. I go back to the question that the Minister asked me; am I for making it harder or easier? If the easy part is to do nothing, and the hard part is to try, than by all means, let’s do it the hard way and try. Doing nothing isn’t a value, it’s a copout. If we are to make any attempt at advocating for a moral solution, certainly the moral solution is to right a wrong. If righting the wrongs inherent in our broken immigration system puts us on the side of, dare I say it, “compassion,” then we must not be afraid to show compassion. Compassion doesn’t make us weak; it means that we want to make things better. Weakness is when we ignore our compassion or our empathy, because doing something about it requires action. Are we now supposed to embrace weakness and settle for failure? Really? Is that really a solution?

 

I’m here to say that the politics of failure is a false solution. The politics of compassion is real. I note that this Thursday, the President will be meeting at the White House with Senators Schumer and Graham to try to gauge the possibility of forging a common-sense pathway forward on CIR. Certainly, their talk will touch on many of the hot button issues that could present obstacles along this pathway.

 

Let us hope that these visionary politicians can put their collective minds together and forge a solution to what is universally recognized as a problem that can and should be fixed this year. National security and our economy require a pragmatic solution on immigration reform. However, the need for compassion on this issue is an American imperative.