Vassar Pundit: Immigration law flawed in text, not principle

Arizona is an exciting state. John McCain's transformation from maverick to partisan would have been this month's greatest transformation, but follow the headlines and you'll see that Arizona has suddenly become a land of hatred against Hispanics. A new law on the books is getting people up in a frenzy, so much that the media is making it seem as though it's now a crime to be Hispanic.

Naturally, this is a gross exaggeration. This bill simply requires people—everyone—whom the police suspect may be undocumented to provide some proof of legal residence. Yes, residing in this country illegally is still illegal if you don't have the proper identification.
But it would indeed be somewhat ignorant to assume this isn't going to lead to racial profiling. This is the wrong way to go about dealing with this issue. Is the law inherently racist? Certainly not. It's an expansion of enforcement of immigration laws already on the books. You have to have immigration laws, after all, and that's why the crowd that gets whooped up and yells "There are no illegal people!" have entirely rejected reality for an ideology based in philosophical principle.

I'll defend immigration laws thusly: Having a nation means defining what it means to be a citizen of said nation. Almost all nation-states have restrictions as to who can be allowed in. Sure, I'd love to live in a world where everyone is part of the human community. But we can't. We have to protect American interests first. The government is the coming together of the people. People coming into this country against the will of that government, and assuming a lifestyle equivalent to that of an American citizen, is an affront to my identity as an American citizen.

Now that the public is starting to understand the racist current underlying the Tea Party agenda, it's easy to see this Arizona law as just another one of many of the racist reactions taken by hard right-wingers. And granted, there are a lot of wackos out there. The true right-wingers are insane when they propose deporting tens of millions of illegal immigrants, or gunning them down at the border. Yes, we have illegal immigrants, but there are far too many to kick them all out. And we need many for our economy.

That's it, really: The problem with illegal immigration isn't that they're taking our jobs. They're taking jobs picking fruit in the hot sun. It's notable that no one connects the fact that our orange juice costs $1.50 a bottle with the migrant workers who live under the radar. The belief that they're not assimilating is also ridiculous. It took the Irish a while to assimilate. It took the Germans a while to do so too. But the children and grandchildren of immigrants—of which I am one—end up becoming just as loyal to this nation as someone whose ancestry can be traced back to the original Boston Tea Party.

The immigrants are here to stay, which will be a problem is if the hostile, bigoted environment towards Hispanic people continues. This immigration law will probably alienate the Hispanic community. Putting Minutemen on the border will really make us look a little too exclusive. And I don't want that to be the face of America, because if it is, the children and grandchildren of these illegal immigrants will have no loyalty to this country.
As it stands now, Arizona does have an illegal immigration problem—there are 460,000 undocumented people in the state. And it's also clear that Arizona's law could be abused in many ways. This all means that the law should have been delayed for a little while until they can determine if it can be implemented effectively and fairly.

But first, we need to expand the definition of legal residence. The Democrats ought to fight for guest worker programs so that illegal aliens can come out of the shadows. What concerns me as an American citizen isn't the fact that Hispanic growth is larger than Caucasian growth. Whatever. People are people, and I expect to lose none of my rights as an American if I'm in the racial minority.

What concerns me is flagrant disregard for the legal immigration process. I'd have no problem with making it even easier to become an American citizen, or at least to have legal residence—even temporary residence. Yes, this might be amnesty. But it's better than keeping communities in the shadows. And it puts a burden on our law enforcement to force them to go after the tens of millions of undocumented workers simply because they look Hispanic, rather than going after the threats to the Republic that could cross our porous border. And it gives illegal immigrants an incentive not to work with law enforcement officials when they investigate true crimes.

We're supposed to be the beacon of hope for the world's huddled masses; that means lighting up communities by making citizenship or residence more inclusive. Let's stop defining people as illegal. Let's invite them to contribute to this nation because our the immigrant tradition is what makes us great.

-Steve Keller '11 is a political science major editorializing on American politics this semester.