US immigration

The current United States government offers so many perplexities and outrages that it is difficult to react or reach out to policymakers about all of them. Or most of them. Even closely following a handful of issues can be daunting as legislation and DT’s mind often change markedly over the course of a few hours.

One of the most critical issues at the moment is immigration. DT has insisted since his campaign began that he would build a wall across our southern border and deport undocumented people. He also wanted to restrict Muslims from entering the country, even though that clearly violates the US Constitution and laws.

As president, he has succeeded in restricting visas from some majority Muslim nations and has been deporting some undocumented people who had been allowed previously to stay. In recent months, problems have intensified for people who were brought to the United States as children, known as Dreamers. Then-President Barack Obama had signed an executive order on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2012, protecting some of the Dreamers until Congress could pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill. The Senate did so in 2013, but the House of Representatives failed to consider it, so DACA stayed in place until DT rescinded it in September 2017, calling on Congress to put a law in place to deal with the issue within six months. At the moment, there is the threat of a government shutdown because the budget still hasn’t passed and a replacement for DACA has been drawn into the negotiations.

It’s actually even more complicated than that, but I’ll spare you any more details.

The general upshot is that the current US immigration system is broken and has been for a long time. Some of the same people who rail against immigrants are exploiting immigrant labor, either undocumented people or those brought in as guest workers. For example, DT’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida has for years used H-2B visas to bring in foreign workers, even though there are Floridians available to take those jobs.

Immigration issues are sometimes used as cover for discrimination, prejudice, and racist attitudes. The most blatant recent example is DT’s disparaging Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries while asking why we don’t have more immigrants from Norway, a country with less than 10% people of color.

The vast majority of United States citizens are either immigrants themselves or have forebears who were immigrants. Many of those people came here to escape poverty or oppression in their home countries, the same reasons many current immigrants come here. Others came here to join family members.

It is hypocritical for people in government to disparage current immigrants when people in their families followed the same pattern in settling here.

It is true that our immigration procedures are desperately in need of updating. Processing times are also very slow, partly due to outdated procedures and quotas.

As some readers may recall, my daughter E’s spouse is British. They met in grad school and married and now have a daughter. At the moment, E and the baby are living in the US with us; L had to return to the UK after his student visa expired. They hope that E will be able to get a spousal visa in the UK later this year. Despite the uncertainties caused by Brexit, it is much easier, faster, and cheaper for E to get a UK visa than for L to get a US green card. I’m sad to say that there are some in the US who might use L’s immigration status, even though it would be legal, as a covert means of racial discrimination.

It has been heartbreaking to see families being broken apart as parents are deported away from their citizen children or children leave the only country they know to go to a parent’s country of origin where they may not even speak or write the language.

Congress and the President have the power to show compassion, justice, and welcome to immigrants by instituting a new system with an earned path to citizenship, similar to the path their ancestors followed in setting here.

Enough of the name-calling and threatening and divisiveness.

It’s time to protect the Dreamers, those under temporary protected status, and all immigrants, regardless of current documentation status. As Emma Lazarus wrote in “The New Colossus” which is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

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