Common Sense Political Thought

Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer had a fairly sympathetic story concerning Carlos, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, who did not give his last name due to his immigration status.

A family’s roots in Philadelphia grow less sure
He and his family risked perilous treks to build lives here. Now he fears what’s ahead.
By Gaiutra Bahadur, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

At 34, a magnetic man with hazel eyes and a muscular build, he is a leader in the city’s 12,000-strong Mexican community. He is an ambassador for illegal immigrants to the police, meeting monthly with precinct captains since a rash of armed robberies began last summer against restaurant workers walking or bicycling home from late-night shifts in Center City.

“He’s a great guy,” said Philadelphia Police Capt. Joseph Zaffino, commanding officer for the Fourth District. “He shows true concern for the Mexican community.”

I’ve got to ask: if Carlos’ immigration status is such that he is afraid to give his last name, for fear he will be deported, how can the Philadelphia Police Department know him and work with him?

The story tells us how Carlos works double-shifts, six days a week,

8 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday – making pastries at two of Center City’s swankiest restaurants for a total of $600 a week, after he pays taxes.

Assuming that he gets about an hour off between those two jobs, he’s working 80 hours a week; that’s a hard-working man! (I’ve written previously about how hard-working Mexicans are.) Further assuming that he’s losing about a quarter of his earnings to taxes, he’s making somewhere around $10.00 an hour, and about $40,000 a year.

If Carlos is the kind of man the Inquirer described him to be, he’s the kind of man we’d be proud to have as a legal immigrant, on his way to becoming a citizen. Trouble is, he’s not a legal immigrant; the Inquirer told us that he Arizona’s Sonora Desert with a human smuggler in 1998. He wound up in Philadelphia,

where his cousins were making a decent living washing dishes in the city’s budding off-the-books economy. Carlos, too, assumed the life of an illegal laborer 2,000 miles from home.

By 2002, his separation from his wife and daughter were unbearable, so Carlos returned to Mexico — to bring them back to Philly! Another illegal border crossing, a harrowing trip, and

a four-day trip, crammed tight with two dozen other illegal immigrants in a van from Arizona to Philadelphia,

and Carlos had his family with him.

That family is now larger:

He and his wife had another daughter, now 4, and then a son, now 14 months old, whose christening Zaffino attended.

Which means, of course, that the younger daughter and son were born in this country, and are American citizens. Captain Zaffino of the Philadelphia Police Department, who obviously knew that Carlos and his family were here illegally, was right there, attending the christening of the son.

The older daughter is now 12, and attends public school in South Philly.

Now, what do you do about situations like these? The Inquirer noted the statistics:

If the answer is to deport them all, you will have to either make a very large exception (at least 3.1 million adults, and quite probably many more, out of a guesstimated 11 million illegal immigrants) for the parents of children who are legally American citizens, even though their parents were here illegally, or you have to take 3.1 million children away from their families, or you have to, in effect, deport 3.1 million American citizens!

Many of my conservative friends will balk at the notion that we are going to excuse the illegality of the immigrants actions, but the fact is that we already have! Just from the story in the Inquirer, the Philadelphia Police know who Carlos is, know that he is here illegally, and interact with him regularly in a positive way, because they find him helpful. Further, not only are the police overlooking Carlos’ being here, but it’s apparent that they are overlooking “the city’s budding off-the-books economy.” (Carlos might no longer be working for an off-the-books company; the article noted that he is paying taxes.)

It’s not like the police don’t already ignore laws, plenty of laws, that the public find it inconvenient to enforce. We don’t enforce the speed limits, unless a driver is seriously speeding; if you drive at the 65 MPH speed limit on Interstates 64 or 95 in Virginia, you are going to be passed by everybody in sight, including the state troopers, or, in here in the Keystone state, by the Governor’s limosine doing 100 MPH on the turnpike. The mayor of my small hometown, Jim Thorpe, announced that the local police are going to start cracking down on people speeding and failing to come to a complete stop at stop signs — which means that they have been pretty much ignoring those violations previously. The police usually ignore prostitution, unless conditions get bad enough in a particular neighborhood, or some politician is running for reelection, that there’s a crackdown for a few days. The police generally ignore drug use and possession, and only go after dealers, dealers who would not exist if the police were cracking down on possession and use.

Well, we ignore immigration laws as well. Think just how many public school officials know about the children of illegal immigrants, children who are, in many cases, here illegally themselves, and they don’t do anything along the lines of notifying Citizenship and Immigration Services. How many social service agencies, including drivers licensing departments, welfare agencies and emergency rooms, actually notify law enforcement when they discover that someone seeking services is here illegally? Heck, the city of San Francisco has an ordinance which prohibits city resources or funds from being used to enforce federal immigration laws, or to gather or pass on information regarding the status of residents. San Francisco’s idiot mayor, Gavin Newsom, said in April that his city will not comply with any federal laws which criminalizes efforts to help illegal immigrants, and

denounced a bipartisan congressional proposal that would beef up border security and allow as many as 12 million illegal immigrants to gain legal status.

That legislation (which did not pass) would have wound up providing an amnesty program for people already here illegally, and even that was too much for Mr. Newsom. Arizona Governess Janet Napolitano made some political waves last fall, when she declared a state of emergency concerning all of the illegals making their way through her state, but when it came time for action, Mrs. Napolitano blinked.

We need to face a serious fact: we don’t always enforce the laws, and the decision not to enforce certain laws strictly is one that stems from police and prosecutors and politicians recognizing that the public in general do not want certain laws enforced strictly. (Remember, the 65 MPH speed limit exists because politicians finally recognized that the American people were voting with their right feet against the old 55 MPH speed limit.)

Well, the Philadelphia Police have recognized that it is to the advantage of public order not to enforce the laws on illegal immigration strictly, at least not in the case of Carlos; they find him helpful. And the owners of the tony restaurants in Center City certainly aren’t interested in enforcing such laws: not only do they hire people like Carlos, but, apparently, some of them are doing just fine running off-the-books operations for some of their staff. And please, don’t think that Mayor John Street or District Attorney Lynn Abraham or Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson never patronize such restaurants.

Among the larger public, there are a significant number of people (I think it fairly safe to mention Art Downs, who writes on this site frequently, and Hank Dagny of Liberal Quicksand) who want the laws just flat enforced, deport them all! But even conservative blogger Patterico recognizes that isn’t going to happen, and is interested primarily in targeting violent illegals:

We will never deport the millions of illegals currently residing in the country.

That, of course, is something recognized by President Bush as well, which was why he was interested in a “guest worker” program in any immigration bill.

One great truth: there is no simple solution to illegal immigration, because no matter what we do, some people, some fairly large number of people, are going to be pissed.

Gordo, who runs the Appletree blog and also writes frequently for The Liberal Avenger, made the proposal that:

the first step in a workable solution to illegal immigration would be to issue more work permits to Mexicans.

In other words, the solution to illegal immigration is to make it legal!

This would help alleviate the problems associated with illegal crossings, including destruction of property along the border, the use of border crossers as drug carriers, the cost of patrolling the border, and the impact that undocumented workers have on wages and work conditions.

Well, yeah, making the illegal immigration perfectly legal would certainly solve the problem of it being illegal! But, if actually enforced, it could make a difference: if we issued serious work permits (pretty much similar to President Bush’s guest worker program), we could better tax the economic activity of the immigrants, and by providing sufficient numbers of legal immigrant workers, provide an incentive for employers to report those who hold such work permits and quit working.

The seriousness of any guest worker or increased work permit program has to be in the tracking of those permits, and the requirement that the holders of those permits actually work. It would require that such permit holders be issued Social Security numbers, and that Social Security taxes on those permit holders be paid; any time that there are no Social Security taxes paid by a given permit holder over a specified period (say, one month), the Social Security Administration would have to notify CIS, and strict enforcement action would have to be taken to locate the permit holder and deport him.

Unfortunately, there’s one huge hole in that theory: to go the work permit route, the potential immigrants would have to already have a job here! If someone in Mexico already has the promise of a job, that’s easy enough. But if we are going to issue work permits for people without a job, with the requirement that they have to find a job within, say, three months, or be deported, there will be little incentive to apply for the permits; why sign a post-dated deportation agreement when it’s less risky to simply come illegally? The work permit idea only works if you agree that people already here, whether legally or not, can apply for the permits without fear. Even then, there must be a value to holding the permit that outweighs the fear of being deported if the holder loses his job.

And that has to mean that dreaded word, amnesty. My conservative friends are screaming, >”No!” at the top of their lungs right now, but there are three, and only three possibilities here:

1. Deport every illegal immigrant;
2. Give the immigrants some form of legal status; or
3. Do nothing at all, and let the situation fester.

And, let’s face facts: option #1 is not seriously on the table. We are not going to find and deport every illegal immigrant (given that we don’t deport most of them that we do find), and everybody who is not willing to lie to himself knows it. That leaves only options two and three. We could go with option #3: do nothing about the situation. After all, it’s been working as well as anything else — and it’s certainly the option we’ve tried. But if we want to even try to get a handle on the problem, we have to consider some form of legal status — and that means amnesty in some form.

Mr. Downs wrote about amnesty previously:

Some advocate an ‘amnesty’ that would provide illegal aliens a shortcut to citizenship. This would give them an advantage over persons who played by the rules. What in our traditions says that we should give bonus points to cheaters and line jumpers.

He is exactly correct: any amnesty program is going to reward those who broke the law, and give them an advantage over those who obeyed the law. Such a fact sticks in the throat of any conservative, including me. But, as distasteful as that fact is, sometimes the bitter medicine must be swallowed. The fact is that the illegal immigrants are here, and we are not going to deport them on anything other than a case-by-case basis. Unless we actually do deport them, we have already rewarded them for breaking the law; the reward that they seek is to live in the United States, and as long as we allow that to happen, the reward is granted.

Mr. Downs did specify seven proposals, most of which make sense:

1. Make any subsequent illegal entry a felony that would create a permanent debarment from future entry.
2. Create a program allowing documented guest worker status that would be valid for a fixed and limited number of years. Such persons would be allowed to take steps to attain full citizenship but would confer no advantage over other applicants.
3. Grant a form of limited amnesty for all persons now illegally in the United States. It would mandate registration within a fixed period. Failure to register would be grounds for deportation and prohibit any future entry. Such amnesty would require that said persons would return the their place of origin after a fixed period and reapply for subsequent re-entry.
4. Require that a demonstrated proficiency in English be mandatory for new citizens.
5. End ‘birthright’ citizenship to the offspring of illegal immigrants.
6. Assure that any criminal penalties applicable to native born citizens be deemed appropriate for immigrants. There should be no exemptions.
7. Impose fiscal penalties on firms or individuals who knowingly hire illegal aliens. This would help end an attractive exploitation.

While I like, emotionally, Mr. Downs’ third point, I don’t see it as practical: to require the amnestied individuals to return home and then reapply for admission is a burden significant enough that very few would opt in to the program. Mr. Downs’ fifth suggestion would require amending the Constitution, specifically the Fourteenth Amendment, and that just isn’t going to happen.

Mr. Downs’ final point makes a lot of sense — but only if serious steps are taken which would make the counterfeiting of immigration documents and identity cards very difficult. And that, unfortunately, leads to another problem, one I had hoped to avoid, and one which might be a deal-breaker for any legal solution: I do not see how, in a practical sense, such could be done without the concomitant creation of an extremely difficult to counterfeit, government issued national identity card.

Why? I’m an American citizen, native-born. To prove my citizenship, all that I need is a copy of my birth certificate. But a birth certificate is easy to counterfeit; the only one I have, buried in a drawer somewhere, is a notarized copy of an old Department of Vital Statistics document from fifty-three years ago. Unless all American citizens are going to be issued national identity cards, then any immigrant who has a reason to try to dodge difficult to counterfeit immigration cards would simply go the easier route of a counterfeit birth certificate.

But the politician who seriously proposes such a national identity card is going to be immediately targeted with caricatures of Nazi soldiers saying, “Ve vant to see your papers.”

So, what can we do? I hate to say it, but maybe we can’t do anything. We aren’t going to deport the illegals, and any practical amnesty solution is going to impose burdens which are going to be a little too police state for many Americans.

Update: Gordo suggested that I add a link to the first part, The Immigration Conundrum, so there it is.