I used to think our immigration law was bad mostly for economic reasons, that society would have more things if we'd loosen the immigration restrictions. But I recently began working with immigrants as an attorney, and I have realized that our immigration laws' effects on people are more . . . personal. The immigration code's flaws affect society's view of immigrants, immigrants' view of themselves, and immigrants' ability to participate fully in society.
My goal with this article is that you'll contact your representatives and encourage them to promote a simpler and less harsh immigration system. There are links to help you do that at the bottom; let's see if I succeed!
The Constitution begins with "We the People," in much larger font than the rest of the document. We revere those words because we think it is important that we are responsible for making our own laws. There are currently some major contradictions between our immigration law and some principles and statements that many of us acknowledge as true and important. I think we should be welcoming to immigrants from a variety of backgrounds, and I think you'll be surprised at how unwelcoming our law is. My intention with this post is to bring to light some of the contradictions between our law and basic good principles like equality, economic freedom, and treating others as we would be treated. I believe that "we the people" can move towards having laws that better reflect our values.
Equality
The poem by Emma Lazarus, which has been at the base of the Statue of Liberty for 120 years, says:
"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!"
However, we the people say you should be less likely to get to be here if you are too young, too old, or too medically needy, and we ask that you or a sponsor in our country have far more money than the average family in the country you come from. (See 22 CFR § 40.41 - Public charge.)
The Declaration of Independence says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
But We the People say that if you are an unmarried 30-year-old Canadian with a permanent resident parent, wait about eight years to get a visa; if you are an unmarried 30-year-old Mexican with a permanent resident parent, wait 22 years. See The Department of State's Visa Bulletin for Feb. 2023.
Jesus "denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female." See The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.
We give high priority to "extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics which has been demonstrated by sustained national or international acclaim and whose achievements have been recognized in the field through extensive documentation." We also give priority to "outstanding professors and researchers," "certain multinational executives and managers," and "members of the professions holding advanced degrees or aliens of exceptional ability." We give no path to citizenship or permanent residence to a "typical" single mother from a poor country who may want to join her son who is living undocumented in the United States so that he can send her enough money to get by. Even if boosting our easily measurable economy was all that mattered, which of course it is not, we do not take account of the fact that a parent who does not fit our ideal employment categories may raise children here who do.
Several parts of The Declaration of Independence make clear that the revolutionists were not making up new rights they thought they should start to have, but that they largely wanted the rights that people in England enjoyed, such as Trial by Jury. Have we slipped back into only caring about our own rights and economic well-being, and ignoring the well-being of the more than ten million undocumented residents? Perhaps the colonists could have moved back to England to more fully enjoy liberty, but that would needlessly inhibit the spread of political and economic freedom.
Economic Freedom
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Many in the Republican party, which is the larger culprit in stopping immigration liberalization, claim to support a free market. Becoming free from England's restrictive economic policies was part of what inspired the revolution and founding of our country. Adam Smith is known as the father of modern economics, with his most-cited idea being that of the "invisible hand." He explained in The Wealth of Nations that a person working as he thinks best (not as the government thinks best) is "directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention." Milton Friedman, a famous economist and advisor to Ronald Reagan, argued that "[u]nderlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."
The immigration code has hundreds or thousands of provisions trying to manipulate and guess about economic situations, giving restrictions and special spots for certain kinds of workers, and it seems nonsense to me to think that the incomprehensible mess has some helpful economic purpose, and many decades after most of the immigration act was passed, perhaps all of us would agree the immigration code is not economically smart. Of course, it creates jobs for immigration lawyers and others who are needed to apply the law, but that is not good economics. Little to no credit is given in the code to the idea that when an immigrant seeks his own best interest, or that of his family, he is "led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention" and is the best for society. I will give just one example from the code that defies free-market economic principles. For certain immigrants to work here, there must be a certification that "the employment of the alien in such labor or services will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of workers in the United States similarly employed." Unless the immigrant is truly an alien from another planet whose skills do not compete with or substitute for the skills of employees already in the United States, an immigrant's labor will ALWAYS, at least in some way or for some period of time, adversely affect the wages or working conditions of workers in the United States. That is simply how markets work: offering labor or other goods will lower the price (wages in the labor market) of what is already in the market, but the benefit of lowered prices to consumers and market as a whole is greater than the harm to the labor and product-sellers that were previously enjoying higher prices/wages. Given the nonsensical standard of not being allowed to have any adverse effect on wages, the line between those who can and cannot come to work must be arbitrary. I think there is "a lack of belief in freedom," specifically, a lack of belief that current workers here can adapt and learn new skills to adjust to a change that may occur if we have a free market that allows immigrants. If more people are given freedom to immigrate to the United States, individuals will adapt and innovation and efficiencies will occur. This will eventually result in lower prices and more products. For example, some immigrants may be able and willing to make food at a lower cost, and may fuse cooking ideas from their country with ours.
The Golden Rule: Loving Others as Ourselves
Jesus said to "love thy neighbor as thyself." Matthew 22:39. The basic rule of our immigration system is to allow immigrants only through a route intended to benefit a close family member already here or an employer. This means that somebody already lawfully here must petition for somebody to come, and that is just the beginning of the restrictions on admission. A common bar to admission comes from being here without documents authorizing an immigrant's presence here. If an immigrant comes here and stays for more than a year, then even if the immigrant marries a U.S. citizen the immigrant must, unless he or she gets a special waiver, leave the country for 10 years before becoming a lawful permanent resident. Getting a waiver requires showing that there would be extreme hardship to somebody who is a "qualifying relative," which would be a lawful permanent resident spouse or parent. So when a lawful citizen petitions for her husband to become a resident and he has been here unlawfully for over a year, they must show that denying residence to the husband would create extreme hardship to the citizen wife in order to avoid the husband needing to wait outside the U.S. for 10 years prior to obtaining residence, and hardship to anybody else is not considered. To make this clear, a line from the policy manual of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services says to "consider an applicant who is married to a U.S. citizen with whom she has a 5-year-old child with a disability. Unless the relevant waiver allows for her child to serve as a qualifying relative, the USCIS officer may not consider the hardship to the child if the applicant is denied admission." Related hardship to a "qualifying relative" can be considered, but wouldn't we want hardship to ourselves and our child considered if we were in the immigrant's shoes or citizen child's shoes? If by some means we ended up in a country without documents and without the right to vote, either because our parents took us there or because we chose to come long ago to achieve a better life, wouldn't we want the neighbors around us, voters, laws, and government officials to consider our plight?
Jesus set an example of praying with loving words like "forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." He taught that ". . . of you it is required to forgive all men." The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints defines forgiveness between mortals like this: "As people forgive each other, they treat one another with Christlike love and have no bad feelings toward those who have offended them."
We say that if you came without documents and lived peacefully here for decades, you must leave our country for ten years before gaining status, with exceptions only for those with citizen or lawful permanent resident spouses or parents (as mentioned above, hardship to a citizen child receives no consideration) who would face extreme hardship if you were deported. If you did more than come once, like say you went back to your home country to visit a dying parent and then came back, then you are permanently barred from obtaining legal status here. It does not matter that you have children who were born here, you must choose between 1) uprooting them to go to a country where they have never been and may not be welcome, 2) abandoning them, or 3) continuing to live here undocumented.
All of the immigration laws that I have referenced in this post involve no criminal convictions whatsoever. This means that there has been no showing of mens rea (evil/bad intent or knowledge) and no jury of one's peers to make factual determinations. So, similar to how sometimes I "forgive" my wife to overcome my own negative feelings, and in hindsight I realize she did nothing wrong at all, it may not be accurate to say we should "forgive" immigrants when wrongdoing has not been well-proven. But even if you think something wrong was done, does that make a 10-year family separation or uprooting the right answer?
Cruel and unusual punishment could surely deter certain actions, but that doesn't make it right.
If you think some penalty should be paid for an illegal entry decades ago, perhaps it could be financial. Or perhaps we just forgive it altogether. Do I think that it is wrong to punish crime? No. But like I said, the immigration penalties I have mentioned do not involve proving any crime. And while this may not be very scientific, use the "straight-face" test regarding the definition of forgiveness I mentioned earlier. I could say with a straight face to somebody who crashed into my car while under the influence, "I forgive you and do not have bad feelings towards you, but I do think a jail or probation penalty should be served." I do not think we could say with a straight face, "I do not have any bad feelings towards you, but I think that because you came here without documents 20 years ago you should leave your five U.S. citizen children here for ten years and then you can try to come back." I especially could not say that to a friend, or to the parents of my kids' friends. You might think, "well, that makes it sound more personal than it really is, government officials are the ones who enforce the law." But We the People make the law and are responsible for it. It is personal. These laws affect real people. These people live with anxiety about their status, they are often viewed differently and are less included socially, they can't vote or serve on juries, progressing careers is difficult, and in some states they do not have driver's licenses.
Perhaps you think that more legal routes should exist, but in the meantime laws are laws and must be followed. Instead of punishing somebody for violating an unjust law, why not change the law to make it more just? If a child rashly demands that her sibling comply with their assigned role in a game of pretend or get smacked, do we tell the child "you better follow through with what you threatened" or ask the child to apologize for making the threat? (Or would it be okay to pretend I don't hear . . . ?) Our bad immigration laws did not come from above, but from We the People, and we have the responsibility to change them. If "ye have no king; [then] if these people commit sins and iniquities they shall be answered upon their own heads." Mosiah 29:30.
All this said, I know it's not my role to try to guilt people into doing what I think is best; I'm just trying to give a new viewpoint by emphasizing the power of "We the People." Reasonable people may disagree, and if you find this more divisive than helpful, please comment and share your views! If you agree with me on any of these points, just spend 5 minutes writing your U.S. representative or one of your two U.S. senators (or 10 minutes to send to all three!). It could be as simple as "I think the immigration system should be simpler, less harsh, and less restrictive." Some conservative representatives may want the system to be simpler, but are afraid of lowering restrictions, and maybe some letters from constituents will help. I have had a few occasions where it is clear that at least somebody in the office had actually read my letter. If you feel extra passionate, doing a paper copy and cc'ing the legislative assistant over immigration will help your viewpoint get to the relevant people.
Here are some links that might help you (and just Google search if the links don't work😁):
U.S. Congressman Simpson, for Idaho's 2nd District (Mini-Cassia, Twin Falls, eastern Idaho, and some of Treasure Valley): https://simpson.house.gov/contact/
U.S. Senator Crapo for Idaho: https://www.crapo.senate.gov/contact/email-me
U.S. Senator Risch for Idaho: https://www.risch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact?p=Email
Find your representatives in the Idaho legislature (for issues like the recent Republican proposal to give a driver's license to anybody who passes the driving test or amendments to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution): https://legislature.idaho.gov/legislators/whosmylegislator/
Not in Idaho?
Find U.S. representative: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Find U.S. senator: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
If you do reach out to a representative, please comment on this blog or on my Facebook post so that I can tell if posts like this do any good! : )
