As an advocate for comprehensive immigration reform and a champion of immigrant rights, I am often asked how I can sanction the breaking of U.S. law.
Clearly, the 12 to 15 million people living in the U.S. without documents broke the law when they entered the U.S. without authorization. Or, as is the case with an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the undocumented, they broke the law when they overstayed their visas.
So, some people will ask me, “What is it about the word ‘illegal’ that you don’t understand?”
The question merits an answer, but first requires a brief history lesson.
When Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, one of the most contentious provisions was the one calling for employer sanctions. The U.S. Chambers of Commerce and other influential business lobbies opposed any such provision … until, that is, a simple phrase with a key word was inserted. The word was “knowing” and it appeared this way in the legislation: “It is unlawful for a person or other entity to hire, or to recruit or refer for a fee, for employment in the United States an alien knowing the alien is an unauthorized alien.”
The word “knowing” is the loophole through which American employers have been merrily skipping for the past quarter century. It provides an “affirmative defense,” effectively releasing employers from the obligation of making a good-faith effort to check the authenticity of documents presented to them by their employees.
The game is well-known and oft-played: employees present a reasonable-looking document and a social security number with the right number of digits, and the employer — who, after all, can’t be expected to be an expert in these things — accepts them as verifying eligibility to work.
Whether as employers who accept false documents or as customers who look the other way, most Americans are ambivalent (the harsher descriptor is “hypocritical”) when it comes to illegal immigration. We do not like it in the abstract, but we think the mechanic who gives us such a good rate on our oil change is a pretty decent guy. The same goes for the bricklayer who patched our patio last winter and the nice young woman who is so attentive at our toddler’s church-run pre-school.
This is what I do not understand about the word “illegal.”
If illegality is truly what alarms us, why have we not allocated billions of dollars and mobilized thousands of federal law enforcement officers to identify employers who hire undocumented workers? If illegality is truly what offends us, why are we not angry with our neighbor’s gardener and our neighbor? Why are we not angry at the owner of our preferred barbershop … and at ourselves for returning time after time for the $7 Tuesday special?
Again and again people insist that what offends them about illegal immigration – their outrage is palpable – is the sheer illegality of it all.
So when will these same people join me in advocating that we triple the number of legal work visas we offer to Mexican nationals next year? Why, if it means that we could close the illegality gap, should we not increase the number of legal visas by a factor of eight? Or 10? Or 20?
That this suggestion is, on the face of it, so implausible, makes clear that much more underlies most objections to illegal immigration from Mexico than a concern with illegality.
Which is a shame.
Because if we made it legal for Mexican workers to come to the U.S. in a number befitting supply and demand, we could then take the extraordinary enforcement resources the federal government has mobilized on the U.S.-Mexico border and allocate them far more efficiently: in ways that would take a lucrative trade in smuggling immigrants away from the international criminal enterprises we insist we are waging war against; in ways that would improve our relations with our allies, most of whom consider our treatment of Mexican migrants deplorable; in ways that would enhance our national security by focusing on our real vulnerabilities.
We could, in other words, turn our attention away from people who want little more than a decent wage, and we could turn it instead toward the people who really are engaged in serious criminal activity, who really would like to do us harm.
To do this would make perfect, utter commonsense if our real concern were the illegality of Mexican immigration to the U.S.
But to do this we would also have to take a good, long hard look in the mirror and admit what we have been up to these last 25 years. We have been inviting Mexicans to come into our country without the requisite documentation … to wash our cars, harvest our crops, bus our tables and nurse our youngest and oldest generations.
And we have been inviting them to do so knowingly.
Clearly, the 12 to 15 million people living in the U.S. without documents broke the law when they entered the U.S. without authorization. Or, as is the case with an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the undocumented, they broke the law when they overstayed their visas.
So, some people will ask me, “What is it about the word ‘illegal’ that you don’t understand?”
The question merits an answer, but first requires a brief history lesson.
When Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, one of the most contentious provisions was the one calling for employer sanctions. The U.S. Chambers of Commerce and other influential business lobbies opposed any such provision … until, that is, a simple phrase with a key word was inserted. The word was “knowing” and it appeared this way in the legislation: “It is unlawful for a person or other entity to hire, or to recruit or refer for a fee, for employment in the United States an alien knowing the alien is an unauthorized alien.”
The word “knowing” is the loophole through which American employers have been merrily skipping for the past quarter century. It provides an “affirmative defense,” effectively releasing employers from the obligation of making a good-faith effort to check the authenticity of documents presented to them by their employees.
The game is well-known and oft-played: employees present a reasonable-looking document and a social security number with the right number of digits, and the employer — who, after all, can’t be expected to be an expert in these things — accepts them as verifying eligibility to work.
Whether as employers who accept false documents or as customers who look the other way, most Americans are ambivalent (the harsher descriptor is “hypocritical”) when it comes to illegal immigration. We do not like it in the abstract, but we think the mechanic who gives us such a good rate on our oil change is a pretty decent guy. The same goes for the bricklayer who patched our patio last winter and the nice young woman who is so attentive at our toddler’s church-run pre-school.
This is what I do not understand about the word “illegal.”
If illegality is truly what alarms us, why have we not allocated billions of dollars and mobilized thousands of federal law enforcement officers to identify employers who hire undocumented workers? If illegality is truly what offends us, why are we not angry with our neighbor’s gardener and our neighbor? Why are we not angry at the owner of our preferred barbershop … and at ourselves for returning time after time for the $7 Tuesday special?
Again and again people insist that what offends them about illegal immigration – their outrage is palpable – is the sheer illegality of it all.
So when will these same people join me in advocating that we triple the number of legal work visas we offer to Mexican nationals next year? Why, if it means that we could close the illegality gap, should we not increase the number of legal visas by a factor of eight? Or 10? Or 20?
That this suggestion is, on the face of it, so implausible, makes clear that much more underlies most objections to illegal immigration from Mexico than a concern with illegality.
Which is a shame.
Because if we made it legal for Mexican workers to come to the U.S. in a number befitting supply and demand, we could then take the extraordinary enforcement resources the federal government has mobilized on the U.S.-Mexico border and allocate them far more efficiently: in ways that would take a lucrative trade in smuggling immigrants away from the international criminal enterprises we insist we are waging war against; in ways that would improve our relations with our allies, most of whom consider our treatment of Mexican migrants deplorable; in ways that would enhance our national security by focusing on our real vulnerabilities.
We could, in other words, turn our attention away from people who want little more than a decent wage, and we could turn it instead toward the people who really are engaged in serious criminal activity, who really would like to do us harm.
To do this would make perfect, utter commonsense if our real concern were the illegality of Mexican immigration to the U.S.
But to do this we would also have to take a good, long hard look in the mirror and admit what we have been up to these last 25 years. We have been inviting Mexicans to come into our country without the requisite documentation … to wash our cars, harvest our crops, bus our tables and nurse our youngest and oldest generations.
And we have been inviting them to do so knowingly.
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