The Opinion Pages | Editorial
The Scrambled States of
Immigration
APRIL 1, 2015
A country that
has abandoned all efforts at creating a saner immigration policy has gotten the
result it deserves: not one policy but lots of little ones, acting at cross
purposes and nullifying one another. Not unity but cacophony, a national
incoherence — one well illustrated in a recent report in The Times on the various ways the
states, forsaken by Congress, are adjusting to the millions of unauthorized
immigrants living outside the law.
Some, like
Washington and California, allow such immigrants to earn driver’s licenses,
having concluded that roads are safer when drivers are tested and insured.
Other states balk at any such benefit for people they consider undeserving.
They prefer to tolerate illegal driving to make a point about illegal
immigration.
Twenty-six
states have sued to block President Obama’s executive actions giving some
immigrants work permits and protection from deportation. They argue that the
actions harm them somehow, though they lack evidence, mainly because the
opposite is true. A federal district judge in Texas has sided with
the plaintiffs, blocking the Obama administration’s programs nationwide.
But 14 states
and the District of Columbia have pleaded with the United States Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to let the programs proceed. They understand that
immigrants who are working legally and paying taxes, supporting themselves and
bolstering the economy, are a benefit for all, and that the government is far
better off using its limited resources deporting criminals.
Some states,
notably Arizona and Alabama, have toiled mightily to thwart unauthorized
immigrants at every turn, to make them miserable and unemployable. Others have
decided that undocumented workers and their families are an asset to be
nurtured, with benefits like more access to higher education, through in-state
tuition and financial aid. They understand the reasoning of Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court decision
asserting all children’s right to primary schooling, and have chosen not to
squander their costly investment in an educated population.
California is a
national leader in embracing the potential of its newcomers, with 26 new laws
benefiting the undocumented, including a driver’s license law and one limiting
local law-enforcement involvement in the federal immigration dragnet. New York
City, under Mayor Bill de Blasio and Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito of the City
Council, has made much progress, too, with programs like a municipal ID card.
The message: We want you here.
(New York State
should be a national leader in this swelling immigrant-rights movement, but it
isn’t. Modest reforms, like a bill to grant college financial aid and
scholarships to the undocumented, have languished in its underachieving
Legislature, thwarted by a Republican-led Senate and a governor, Andrew Cuomo,
who gives the issue lip service but has other priorities.)
The federal
government has its own problems with coherence. It spends billions on its
prison-and-deportation pipeline, yet the Homeland Security Department is not on
the same page with itself. It is supposed to be using more discretion in whom
it deports, but it is applying the policy erratically. A man who fits no sane
definition of a threat — Max Villatoro, a Mennonite pastor in Iowa, a father of
four citizen children — was recently deported to Honduras.
Meanwhile, the
leader of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Sarah Saldaña, was recently
asked at a congressional hearing whether she supported changing the law so that
local police departments would be required to hold immigrants in custody for
possible deportation beyond the time they would normally be released. “Amen,”
she said, showing that she either didn’t know or didn’t accept that the
Homeland Security Department actually opposes mandatory detainers. She later issued a clarification bringing her views in line
with those of her boss, Jeh Johnson, the homeland security secretary, calling
mandatory detainers “a highly counterproductive step” that would “lead to more
resistance and less cooperation in our overall efforts to promote public
safety.”
Depending on
how the Fifth Circuit rules on the lawsuit challenging Mr. Obama’s executive
actions, his valiant effort to repair some of the damage to the immigration
system could well be undone, and everybody, families and felons, may get put
back in the shadowy line of potential deportees. Meanwhile, the Army is
expanding and fast-tracking a program to give citizenship to unauthorized
immigrants with special language or medical skills.
Who is on the
right side of this argument — the Army, Mr. Obama, Gov. Jerry Brown of
California, Mr. de Blasio? Or Texas, Alabama, Arizona and the Republicans whose
resistance to reform has left the nation in this mess? Those die-hard opponents
fail to remember that laws and policies that deny rights and promote exclusion
have been the source of shame and regret throughout American history.
Integration and assimilation are the core values of a country that is in danger
of forgetting itself.
A version of
this editorial appears in print on April 2, 2015, on page A26 of the New York
edition with the headline: The Scrambled States of Immigration.