“ONE GAME AT A TIMEâ€
GAVEL GAMUTÂ By Jim Redwine
Gentle Reader, should you have read last week’s Gavel Gamut you may recall that another reader, Dr. Michael Jordan of Osage County, Oklahoma, sent a letter to the editor asking that I address the topic of immigration. No, I do not know why, but after a couple of minutes of reflection I thought, “Why not?†So here goes. Our current immigration mess should not be any more challenging than Winston Churchill’s view of the old Soviet Union that he called, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigmaâ€. A few quick paragraphs ought to suffice. Let’s start back in the 1960’s when our national immigration policy began to gradually change from one based on admitting immigrants based on entrepreneurial or economic qualifications, that is, what does the immigrant have to offer, versus admitting family members to reunite with previous family immigrants already in America.
According to George Mason law professor F.H. Buckley:
“U.S. immigration policies were radically changed in 1965 when national origins quotas were replaced with preferences for family reunification. People from countries that had recently supplied immigrants were given a leg up, while those from countries that had supplied immigrants centuries before found it much harder to get in.Â
In the 1950s two-thirds of legal immigrants came from Europe or Canada, by the 1990s that figure had fallen to 16%. During that same period, the percentage of legal immigrants from Latin America and Asia rose from 31% to 81%.â€
See The American Illness, Essays on the Rule of LawÂ
By F.H. Buckley at p.51.
Buckley has written extensively about immigration to America. Ironically, Buckley is himself an immigrant from Canada. That aside, in his above-referenced book, Buckley posits that part of the immigration solution is for the United States to return to our pre-1965 immigration policies. Buckley avers that USA law used to determine admittance of immigrants on a general policy based on national origin quotas and economic benefits to America, but changed to a policy of family reunification being the main factor. This led to a change from the long-time admission of immigrants mainly from Europe and Canada to those mainly from Latin America and Asia. Buckley states:
“What is uncontroversial is that the United States could do a better job of competing for the highly qualified immigrants who are more likely to confer economic benefits on natives. America is exceptional in the way in which, more than any other first world OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operational and Development) country, it favors family-based immigration and admits relatively few employment-based immigrants.
“A move to a more entrepreneurial immigration system would likely offer non-economic spillover benefits. Economic immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or to rely on the welfare system, and for countries that favor them, immigration is less contentious. The natives are more likely to welcome immigrants, who in turn are more likely to assimilate to the natives.â€
Buckley: pp. 51-53
Buckley’s book was published in 2013, but it has an eerie prescience to today’s southern border crisis of children being dropped over walls and left alone in the desert in hopes of somehow uniting with their family members already in the United States.Â
Of course, this does not resolve the immediate situation. We must follow our Constitution and provide due process to those who are legitimately seeking asylum. We have the means to provide humanitarian relief as we abide by the laws and policies we established until we change them. Deserving immigrants should be welcomed without prejudice as to national origin, race, ethnicity and faith or lack thereof and without encouraging the breakup of families. A gradual, fair return to an entrepreneurial immigration policy should begin now. And before anyone projects a conclusion that Buckley or anyone else is saying Canadians and Europeans are superior to Latin Americans or Asians, let us be clear. It is not one’s race, ethnicity or national origin that should determine whether an individual is admitted into our country. The criteria should be mainly whether the aspiring immigrant can be a benefit to America.
Through the fog of one of my undergraduate psychology courses at Indiana University I loosely grasped the concept of projection. One aspect of Sigmund Freud’s theory of projection is that we humans subconsciously cast upon others our own failings as a self-defense mechanism. When it comes to America’s approaches to the problems of immigrations and debates that have raged since at least 1620 and Plymouth Rock, I submit Dr. Freud would diagnose many of us as projectionists. But before we address what Emma Lazarus called the Mother of Exiles, the Statue of Liberty, and the “…[H]uddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shoreâ€, let me suggest an analogy between immigration and environmentalism based on an old adage.
In the simplest of terms, the green debate is between those who want to build a house in the woods and those who already own a house in the woods. And with immigration, the competing positions are often those held by we whose ancestors immigrated here versus those who would like to become ancestors for those who may later immigrate here. And while we have certainly managed to maintain many raging controversies about whether certain classes of peoples, Irish, Catholics, Chinese, Muslims, Italians, even people indigenous to North America, and numerous other groups, have a right to exist in the United States, our current concentration involves our southern border.
Some of us might project our own fears, prejudices, and greed onto one side or the other of the issues. However, as with every extremely complex problem, it may require much more time, effort, and goodwill than most of us care to invest. It is easier for us to simply say those who disagree with us are motivated by hate or ignorance. Hard work is never as appealing as harsh rhetoric. Facts are the enemy of bombast. Knowledge of the facts on immigration is vital to constructively addressing the problem. Just as catcher Crash Davis advised in the movie Bull Durham, we need to concentrate on the here and now and take things one “game†at a time.
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There are three types of people in the United States, and Jim is writing this article focused on those people:
1. Native people who’s descendents were living here before the US was founded. You know, the people who built things like the Angel’s Mounds settlement.
2. People whose families came to the US originally as immigrants.
3. People whose families came here originally as immigrants, who are white nationalists, and who pretend their families were never immigrants.
The white nationalists pretend they are Republicans. They hate corporate business, are anti-business growth, and I can’t for the life of me, figure out why they think they are Republicans.
George W. Bush, Republican, and the 43rd President of the United States wrote this, this week, about the United States of America. It is accurate, good policy, and it ignores the self-hating white nationalists who pretend their families were never immigrants. Here it is:
GEORGE W. BUSH, Republican 43’rd President of the United States:
“Next week, I’m proud to publish a story, to share some portraits of immigrants, each with a remarkable story I try to tell, and to humanize the debate on immigration and reform.
New Americans are just as much a force for good now, with their energy, idealism and love of country, as they have always been.
I write about a champion runner who barely survived ethnic violence in East Africa, and who told me, “America has given me everything I dreamed of as a boy.†I share the story of a young man from France who followed his dream to become an American soldier, and went on to earn the Medal of Honor. And readers may recognize two distinguished citizens who fled prewar Europe as children, and who each became U.S. secretary of state.
The backgrounds are varied, but readers won’t have to search hard for a common theme. It’s gratitude. So many immigrants are filled with appreciation, a spirit nicely summed up by a Cuban American friend who said: “If I live for a hundred years, I could never repay what this country has done for me.â€
The help and respect historically accorded to new arrivals is one reason so many people still aspire and wait to become Americans. So how is it that in a country more generous to new arrivals than any other, immigration policy is the source of so much rancor and ill will? The short answer is that the issue has been exploited in ways that do little credit to either party. And no proposal on immigration will have credibility without confidence that our laws are carried out consistently and in good faith.
“Out of Many, One†is not a brief for any specific set of policies, which I leave to the political leaders of today. However, the book — along with the George W. Bush Presidential Center — does set forth principles for reform that can restore the people’s confidence in an immigration system that serves both our values and our interests.
One place to start is DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). Americans who favor a path to citizenship for those brought here as children, known as “dreamers,” are not advocating open borders. They just recognize that young men and women who grew up in the United States, and who never knew any other place as home, are fundamentally American. And they ought not be punished for choices made by their parents.
Another opportunity for agreement is the border. I have long said that we can be both a lawful and a welcoming nation at the same time. We need a secure and efficient border, and we should apply all the necessary resources — manpower, physical barriers, advanced technology, streamlined and efficient ports of entry, and a robust legal immigration system — to assure it.
Effective border management starts well beyond the border, so we must work with our neighbors to help them build freedom and opportunity so their citizens can thrive at home. We cannot rely on enforcement alone to prevent the untenable and so often heartbreaking scenes that come with large-scale migration.
We also need a modernized asylum system that provides humanitarian support and appropriate legal channels for refugees to pursue their cases in a timely manner. The rules for asylum should be reformed by Congress to guard against unmerited entry and reserve that vital status for its intended recipients.
Increased legal immigration, focused on employment and skills, is also a choice that both parties should be able to get behind. The United States is better off when talented people bring their ideas and aspirations here. We could also improve our temporary entry program, so that seasonal and other short-term jobs can more readily be filled by guest workers who help our economy, support their families and then return home.
As for the millions of undocumented men and women currently living in the United States, a grant of amnesty would be fundamentally unfair to those who came legally or are still waiting their turn to become citizens. But undocumented immigrants should be brought out of the shadows through a gradual process in which legal residency and citizenship must be earned, as for anyone else applying for the privilege. Requirements should include proof of work history, payment of a fine and back taxes, English proficiency and knowledge of U.S. history and civics, and a clean background check. We should never forget that the desire to live in the United States — a worldwide and as powerful an aspiration as ever — is an affirmation of our country and what we stand for. Over the years, our instincts have always tended toward fairness and generosity. The reward has been generations of grateful, hard-working, self-reliant, patriotic Americans who came here by choice.
If we trust those instincts in the current debate, then bipartisan reform is possible. And we will again see immigration for what it is: not a problem and source of discord, but a great and defining asset of the United States.”
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