Congress now has a window of opportunity to enact meaningful immigration reform before the next election cycle. It is important for us to grasp the issues, consider the solutions, and contact our elected representatives with our opinions.
President Bush has always been right on his proposition that the only meaningful solution is a guest worker program. Some want to debate whether this amounts to an "amnesty" on undocumented people. A semantic battle, however, at this point is simply a diversion. Regardless of how one comes down on the immigration issue, we can all agree something has to change. The present paralysis is producing no long-term solution.I believe the following will work. We need to offer to all undocumented the opportunity to come forward and identify themselves and their family members. They need to enroll in a system that provides them a temporary work status with the opportunity to convert to a permanent status or citizenship with time. Alternatively, the status would terminate and they would be required to return home. Identifications would be issued and these person would pay taxes and otherwise participate in our society. They could obtain drivers' licenses, auto insurance, and take part in all the things we take for granted.
Very fair questions exist on the timing, fees to be assessed, cut-off dates and the like. Simultaneous with such a program we should vigorously enforce deportation of violent and dangerous aliens and we should continue to strengthen our borders. Once we commit to solving the problem these things are resolvable.
The alternative to a plan like this is to forcibly remove 11 million people from the country. How would this happen?
First, we would need to seriously invest in our transportation infrastructure. Humane deportation of such a vast number is a staggering challenge. Food and water would have to be provided as well as temporary to semi-permanent holding facilities. Many more immigration workers would need to be hired and there would be high security and liability issues. The children born here are by law U.S. citizens. They would be separated from their parents pending the laborious process of obtaining visas to travel to another country with their parents. Orphanages would need to be built and managed and the courts would be required to appoint guardians for the children in some cases.
The effect of transporting this number of people and forcing them into Central and South American countries carries with it great danger of extreme human suffering - disease, exploitation, poverty, hunger, psychological trauma, crime and more. Historic examples of forced relocation of vast numbers of humans are typically brutal and tragic. Early in Soviet Russia, Josef Stalin forced the relocation of millions of small farmers. Many died or were eventually mass murdered. Adolf Hitler collected and transported millions of Jews, gypsies, slavs and others his criminal government deemed undesirables. Our own history of forced relocations of native Americans is a shame we cannot wipe away. Think of the Trail of Tears where we forcibly removed the Cherokee people from North Carolina to Oklahoma. Are we truly prepared to deal with the consequences of evicting 11 people?
These are our choices. Perhaps there are others and now is the time to speak up and work at solutions. Otherwise, the present course of doing nothing is guaranteed to net us one sure result - nothing.
