How a Democracy Works
President Obama, who has spent two and a half years not delivering on his promise to fix immigration, gave a speech in El Paso last month and cloaked his failure in tough statistics — this many new border agents, that much fencing, these thousands of deportations.
As for the other parts of reform — where millions of immigrants get right with the law and get on with becoming Americans, where workers are better protected — he threw up his hands. He said immigration advocates “wish I could just bypass Congress and change the law myself. But that’s not how a democracy works.”
O.K., so maybe it isn’t. But there is a lot President Obama can and should do, using the discretion and authority granted to the executive branch and its agencies to make the system work better:
¶Mr. Obama can bolster public safety by pulling the plug on Secure Communities, a program that sends fingerprints of everyone booked by state or local police to Department of Homeland Security databases to be checked for immigration violations. It was supposed to focus on dangerous felons, but the heavy majority of those it catches are noncriminals or minor offenders — more than 30 percent have no convictions for anything.
The president should listen to the many law enforcement professionals and local officials, like the governors of New York and Illinois, who want nothing to do with Secure Communities. They say it endangers the public by catching the wrong people and stifling community cooperation with law enforcement.
¶The president can push much harder against the noxious anti-immigrant laws proliferating in the national free-for-all. The administration sued to stop Arizona’s radical scheme. But Utah, Alabama, Indiana and Georgia are trying to do the same thing.
¶He can grant relief from deportation to young people who would have qualified for the Dream Act, a filibustered bill that grants legal status to the innocent undocumented who enter college or the military. He can do the same for workers who would qualify for the Power Act, a stalled bill that seeks to prevent employers from using the threat of deportation and immigration raids to retaliate against employees who press for their rights on the job.
¶He can resist Republican lawmakers who want mandatory nationwide use of E-Verify, a flawed hiring database, which would likely lead to thousands of Americans losing their job because of data errors. A December report by the Government Accountability Office warned that E-Verify is plagued by inaccurate records and vulnerable to identity theft and employer fraud.
¶He can order the citizenship agency to keep families intact by making it easier for illegal immigrants who are immediate relatives of American citizens to fix their status without having to leave the country. Many already qualify for green cards but are afraid to risk getting stuck abroad under too-strict laws that could bar their re-entry.
¶He can bolster the civil rights division of the Department of Justice and give the Department of Labor more tools to strengthen protections for all workers and the authority to combat labor trafficking. Such authority now lies with Homeland Security, which means many immigrants are too frightened to speak up when their rights are abused.
As President Obama said in El Paso, the United States needs to address “the real human toll of a broken immigration system.” There’s work to do, Mr. President.
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Immigration issue is rising on the surface once again. President Obama gave a speech in El Paso last month about immigration reform. Arizona was in the middle of a contention when it passed the bill that forced illegal immigrates to give up everything and leave the nation. Other states such as Utah, Alabama and Georgia are trying to do the same thing. On one side of the debate, people claim that illegal immigrants deserve to receive equal treatment just like others. On the other side of the debate, people assert that the potential harms are so big that harsher regulation is necessary.
A problem arises because potential harms and benefits conflict with each other. This is why it is so difficult to satisfy all the people involved in the immigration issue. Let’s first look at the harms of illegal immigrants. There are potential dangers of terrorism and unrest from illegal immigrants. Most of the illegal drugs such as cocaine are imported through illegal immigrants. Homemade bombs and terrorist weapons are also transported via the body of illegal immigrants. This is why the government is trying to closely examine every foreigner who steps into the airport. Also, it is said that illegal immigrants take away the work of low-class workmen. Since illegal immigrants are much cheaper in labor, lowly skilled working men lose the place to stand.
There are also benefits. Unlike the economical harms stated above, the economical benefits we can reap from immigrants are inconceivable. As more people pursue improved quality of living and demand higher wages, not many people are willing to work for dangerous or low-paying jobs. However, such jobs are necessary for the society as a whole. Take for example nannies. Since most of the couples now work at the same time, the nurturing of their children had to be done by someone. Illegal immigrants have done their job decently. Why are illegal immigrants better than ordinary Americans? It’s because illegal immigrants have more positive incentive to work harder. Most of them come to America in the hope of earning more money and leading a better life. Therefore, productivity of illegal immigrants in low-skill sectors is often higher than that of American counterparts. What’s more think about the secondary effect. Illegal immigrants allow mothers who would otherwise be in the house to nurture their children to pursue other productive works in society. This will lead to increased labor supply of high-skilled women in the labor force.
So is a there solvent immigration policy that can balance the harms and the benefits? I believe there are some ways, although it is a matter of question as to how the government will make those ways come true.
To begin with, the Obama administration has to stabilize the political process. The complicated evaluation and discussion process in the Parliamentary system make it very difficult for a sound policy to be passed right away. Because of that time lag, even when a sound policy is passed, it loses effectiveness when it is actually implemented. The Republicans are taking a very tough stance regarding the immigration issue. There are little sings of cooperation between the two parties. Whenever the immigration issue comes up to the table, the question is whether the Democrats are able to find some Republicans who can partner with them and cooperate. Unless there is some mutual concessions and cooperation, nothing can be done before we even see the effects of a certain policy.
Furthermore, the current supervising system should be reformed. States such Arizona has passed a local law that mandates suspicious immigrants to carry their papers at all times, and that police verify the legal status of individuals during the course of traffic stops or other law-enforcement actions. However, this policy can be very discriminatory towards certain races or people. It raises some doubts such as ‘what is the clear standard for the reasonable suspicion?’, ‘can racial profiling be avoided?’ and ‘can it be justified to violate upon people’s individual rights?’ These questions should be explained by the government lucidly before we proceed into any other implementations. The government can change the law by only checking the identification in public places where there is a clear need for it. Also, the government can create a new supervising center that manages immigration issues in a more transparent way. It can introduce education programs for illegal immigrants who can be Americans but don’t know how to do so. The counseling program can be another good way to prevent immigrants from being frightened to speak up when their rights are abused.
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