LIBERALS AND IMMIGRATION: How Pro-Immigration Dems Are Hurting Their Cause

Some of the proposed rules are just unfair... some are un-Christian... and most are just un-American.

Like all the other rallies, the Washington rally was overwhelmingly made up of Hispanics, sporting sombreros, displaying banners elegantly painted with Mexico City's Our Lady of Guadalupe, or waving the Salvadoran and Mexican flags that were on sale for three dollars. But white union organizers and clergymen were also on hand, many wearing a plastic set of handcuffs around one wrist. Indeed, though in general only the white protesters were wearing them, the handcuffs were the rally's featured symbol: "Handcuffed Faith Leaders from Across U.S. Join in Prayer, Call for Fair and Just Immigration System," proclaimed the sponsoring organization's press release. The handcuffs were meant to represent their wearers' vow to break the law that would prohibit them from aiding illegal immigrants.

Civil disobedience occupies a powerful place in American history, and among the clergy in particular, especially during the civil rights movement. And churches' unwillingness to abruptly discontinue the social services they provide to undocumented workers is understandable. But in this debate, the call to break the law (which Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles has officially given his parishioners) works, strangely, to confirm one of the hardliners' main arguments: that since illegal immigration is by definition criminal, those who wish to pursue a more open or tolerant policy towards illegal immigrants are revealing that they're generally "not serious," as Tancredo has put it, about upholding the Constitution and the laws of the country. Marching on the Senate wearing plastic handcuffs only exacerbates this impression.

The legal argument, as John B. Judis pointed out recently in TNR, is often a tactical one, deployed to cloak deeper concerns about jobs or about the "Mexicanization" of America. But it has an appealing purism: Who doesn't want to uphold the rule of law? Of course, the point, when made so simply, is silly: One can adore the rule of law and still believe there are some bad laws on the books. Even the Minutemen would agree that America's immigration policies are broken. But the simplicity of the philosophy behind this point, and its apparent application to so many other areas of life, insidiously attracts otherwise moderate people to hardline positions on immigration, as I found when I visited the Herndon Minutemen in Northern Virginia last fall, and can also contribute to the general liberal confusion and malaise over the issue. It has helped create a situation where liberal Americans are unsure of their proper position, knowing vaguely that they do not want to be, or be perceived as, racist, but also feeling that if they support the idea of a law-abiding society, they must accept that illegal immigration has to be dealt with like a crime.

This paralysis among white liberals leaves a pro-immigration rally to be attended only by Hispanics--and a few non-Hispanics who don't seem especially interested in how to find a lawful and humane solution that, within limits, smiles upon legal immigration. The clergymen and activists I spoke to at yesterday's rally were adamant about their opposition to the House bill and their intention to flaunt it, but couldn't go beyond truisms like "workers' rights" to tell me what kind of legislation they would support. "Not to not be for something, but we're here to speak very forcefully against detention," Andrea Black, a demonstrator with the Detention Watch Network, explained. What about McCain-Kennedy? I asked. She regarded me suspiciously. McCain-Kennedy was a little bit better, she said, but still bad, because of enforcement provisions buried inside that would continue to "tear ... families apart." Linda Theophilus, the pastor of a Lutheran church outside Pittsburgh, agreed that no proposed law is good enough. She also estimated that only 20 percent of her suburban congregation was sympathetic to her support of immigrants. The sermon she likes to give to try to win them over, she said, poses a hypothetical: If the baby Jesus tried to immigrate to the United States, what would happen? The baby probably wouldn't get fed, and Joseph and Mary would be lucky to get a translator who speaks Aramaic.

We need to formulate and implement an immigration policy (and laws with teeth) that balances the issues and concerns. So far none of the proposed rule changes, border protection schemes or laws offers such a balance. Wake up congress critters and get your collective acts together.