release

Today is May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, since the cold war best known to U.S. citizens as the day communist nations celebrate their social and military accomplishments on behalf of their citizens.

Today is also the day that immigration activists here in the United States have chosen to put on large-scale demonstrations of various kinds, from the traditional rally-in-the-town-square with speeches and banners to the “Day Without…” which has gone through at least a couple of name iterations after some embarrassing initial attempts. The goal of most of these demonstrations is to support so-called “immigrant rights” in the face of the current immigration policy debate in the halls of Congress. It is still unknown whether Ted Kennedy will make an appearance like he did a few weeks ago, pandering en Español to crowds who might someday have the right to vote Democrat for the rest of their naturalized lives, but one thing we know will be on the agenda is a massive boycott in which immigrants will walk out on their jobs and classes in order to demonstrate their importance to U.S. society.

The linkage between today’s demonstrations and the historical celebration of the global workers’ movement is not free from irony. Although the immigrant-rights movement is closely tied with the U.S. labor movement, who seeks new sources of membership in the face of dwindling numbers, the immigrant cause is closely allied with businesses who rely on less-expensive immigrant labor, and who are lobbying for immigration amnesty provisions in our nation’s capital. In a classic example of the strange bedfellow axiom, employers and employees (at least those recently immigrated and low-wage employees) are tucked in neatly together.

But all is not rosy in the labor camp on this issue. Immigration pits newly-arrived, low wage workers against established workers with higher wage expectations, who see the new wave as competition. But the most important facet in this debate isn’t about the wages that they get, or the government benefits they may or may not seek, or anything else related to money. This debate is all about amnesty for illegal immigrants, and what form it should take if any at all.

The United States of America has always been a nation of immigrants. Even American Indian tribes descend from migrant populations that crossed a land bridge or possibly survived a fantastic sea voyage from the other side of an ocean. Americans, collectively, are the mutts of the world, with a little bit of everything from everywhere. Many of us are mutts as individuals - throw a dart at a map of Eastern Europe and someone in my family tree lived there once. Throughout history, masses of people have moved across the globe to reach our shores in search of a better life than the ones they left. For most of that time, we have welcomed them with open arms, much to our benefit.

They came in waves as war, famine, poverty and persecution drove them from their old homes. They came to find not a perfect society, but a better one than they left. And each wave we have taken in has made our society richer, both economically and culturally. Some of those who came were undesirables in their old homes and stayed that way upon arrival, but most who came were simply folks who wanted to make their own way in the world.

This is my roundabout way of saying that I think immigration, done legally, is a good thing. I believe that wee should have a liberal - no, scratch that - a generous immigration policy for those who are coming here to find a better life. It benefits them and it benefit us. So long as we take basic measures to ensure that those coming in aren’t a health risk or a terror risk, let them come and let them plant roots.

But what of the illegals? Today’s protesters would have us ignore the fact that people coming here without the legal right to do so have broken our laws. Some, in the protests and even in the halls of Congress, would have us wash that away and allow those people to become citizens if they’ve been here long enough. We’re not talking about giving them green cards - we’re talking about granting them the full privileges and protections of U.S. citizenship.

Much of the illegal immigration problem is our own fault. To the extent we’ve had an immigration policy at all, it’s been weak and poorly enforced. We’ve turned a blind eye to enforcement here, implicitly accepting illegal immigrants because, after all, our economy loves cheap labor. Crossing the border without papers has become the federal equivalent of breaking the speed limit. Everybody speeds, and enforcement is revenue-geared rather than compliance geared. Immigration policy has long been the same way.

Given that temptation and the lack of consequences, who can blame Mexico’s poor - because we are talking almost exclusively about illegal immigrants from Mexico - from flooding across our borders? Jobs, schooling, a better quality of life even at the fringes, and almost no risk of anything more serious than getting sent right back to where you started. Sure, they made the choice to come, and they chose to break our laws, but we are at least partly to blame. There’s no reason to expect foreigners to take our laws more seriously than we do.

The core of the solution is obvious and comes in two parts. First, make it easier to immigrate legally. All those who are free of serious disease, substantial criminal history, and ties to terror should be allowed to move here, live, work, and eventually qualify for citizenship. Restrict government benefits for a probation period, if we must, and ship back the ones who fail to meet our expectations of lawfulness, but give them a shot. Second, illegal immigration should be much harder. Make the words “Border Patrol” means something. Enforce employment restrictions. Kick ‘em out when we find ‘em.

What about the illegals who are already here? How should we handle them? Because we share a large portion of the blame for them being here, and their primary crime is wanting to be American at any cost, we should give those folks the same chance we’d give their kin back home. Let them start the road to citizenship. We should punish them no more than refusing to give them credit for their time on the wrong side of the law. Those who would otherwise qualify, allow them to live and work here and after time apply for citizenship. Those who wouldn’t have gotten in anyway shouldn’t be allowed to stay just because they happened to dodge detection for so long.

Ultimately, those who want to come here for the right reasons will do so through legal channels if we are appropriately open to them. Illegal status will become more than a badge of mere desperation - it will become an actual stigma, borne only by those who shouldn’t be here in the first place. It will no longer be consistent with the redeeming qualities that many immigrants, legal and otherwise, currently possess. Most important, it will help us return to our roots as a nation of people who come from somewhere else.