Yesterday in Maryland a second grader asked First Lady Michelle Obama whether the President was going to “take away” people who didn’t have “papers”. Apparently, the child’s mother had expressed some fear in the privacy of their home.
Michelle Obama, who is also the nation’s “First Mom” handled the question beautifully, assuring the little girl that the broken immigration law was a problem Congress would “have to fix”. http://bit.ly/cCxXxN
Can you imagine if this exchange had occurred in Arizona, rather than Maryland? Did the child’s question raise “reasonable suspicion” of her family’s unauthorized immigration status under Arizona’s new “show me your papers” law?
Asked and answered. See 5/21 post replying to identical posted text.
It would have been nice if the First Lady would have said she would take the matter up with the President as well. But given surprise, you can not expect a complete answer.
Laurence, if one is to read your post more or less literally, there’s no disputing what you are (perhaps) stating. It certainly is controversial, in this immigration context, what illegal behavior one is willing to excuse. No one can argue with that. It is controversial. But if, which I find implicit in this context, you mean to suggest that what is, or what you think ought to be, most significant about the Michelle Obama/Maryland news story is that it raises that undoubtedly controversial question, I must disagree. No doubt the question may be raised on this story. But what I’m trying to say is, there is a different, but in this context very much related and important question that for policy reasons ought to be raised first, and really instead of the one you pose: “What ought the laws, which determine what’s legal and what’s illegal immigration behavior, to be?” The framing of the question, and the choice whether to focus primarily on the one you pose rather than the one I pose is, I suggest to you, itself revelatory of conviction or policy preference. View the story as one that raises the question of enforcement alone, and anyone who is here in violation of current immigration law is perforce out of luck. If the issue is framed in those terms, such persons are going to lose the argument. I bring this up persistently because I think it’s vitally important to note that there is nothing about this new story that requires the enforcement question to be given primacy, given that immigration reform (legal reform) so desperately cries out for being addressed. Our laws are subject to policy change. Michelle Obama herself, however sincere you may believe her to be, makes reference to that very fact.
I don’t see the story as being one that should be considered firstly or fundamentally about enforcement. I do see it as one that is and ought to be about what the law (which determines legality or illegality, and which cries out for change) ought to be.
I may well seem to be quibbling here – but I do so because this point comes up constantly when I have discussed news events like this one with people who, though they have really not thought it through much, are quite cozy with the idea of deporting all and sundry – those here illegally, sure, but without the slightest thought (until I bring it up) that like as not they themselves are here because their forebears were permitted to immigrate hear under different and more welcoming laws. I’m not saying you share the views of such people, and as you are an immigration lawyer it’s a good bet that you don’t. Rather, it’s these other conversations I’ve had over the years that incline me to persist a bit on this point.
Possible child abuse and possible undocumented worker are not in the same ball park.
I agree that child abuse has an atrocious quality that living as an undocumented alien does not have, but that’s uncontroversial. What’s controversial is this question: what illegal behavior are you willing to excuse?
I disagree that the First Lady answered “beautifully”. I’d rather say that she met a plea from a child with a bit of callousness. When I see that the President’s administration pushes for even more deportations than under the Bush era http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/26/AR2010032604891.html, that raids on workplaces have not stopped, that the Obama administration is quietly continuing on building the border fence and that other than mere mere words, his leadership is lacking in this, I don’t think that the first Lady gave this child an honest answer. Yes the question was difficult and children always have a way of asking the probing questions that adults are taught are “impolite”, but I don’t see how this President who has pushed very difficult and even downright unpopular legislation through, can just sit by the sidelines on this one and tell us that this is for Congress to fix. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36844_Page3.html For example, I think that the Dream Act is something that most Congressmen on both sides of the aisle would support. It may not fix that child mother’s problem but it is a step in the right direction.
Possible child abuse and possible undocumented worker are not in the same ball park.
Sure it is that where you stand depends on where you sit. And if where you stand (or sit) happens to be among those of the anti-immigrant “us vs. them foreigners” persuasion, the way you WOULD be inclined to look at the matter would be to equate sexual abuse, generally speaking, with immigration law violation, generally speaking. Which is to say, you’d BE inclined to view the matter as a law enforcement issue, plain and simple; that achieves the anti-immigrant policy goal. That said, let me be clear (in case I wasn’t before) on where I stand (or sit) on this matter. Where I happen to stand (or sit) on it is pro-immigrant, which is to say, with the instinct to sympathize with the garden variety out of status foreign person, i.e. my instinct happens to be toward compassion. And therefore my instinct is not to view it as an enforcement issue, pure and simple, not to say immigration law violation is like sexual abuse, but rather it’s to view it as an immigration policy issue, meaning, where immigration law reform is needed in this country, what ought the law calling for enforcement to be, as the law needs to change. That’s the view from where I stand or sit. I commend it to those whose instinct may not be to share that view. I suppose one could say one view is as good as another; that don’t make it so.
Here’s another thought. Is there anyone who has seen the video of this who can honestly say with a straight face that this child hasn’t raised reasonable doubt about her mother’s immigration status? What should be done about it may be debatable, but not that this innocent child raised an issue that in most other circumstances would be addressed. One might be happy that ICE has already announced that they won’t be pursuing this, but I wonder if all those same people, including most AILA members, would be just as complacent if the child would have raised doubts about whether she was being sexually abused or living in a home that was otherwise unfit? If law enforcement would would say in that situation that they weren’t going to look into it, there would be a firestorm of criticism. As they say, where you stand depends on where you sit.
The answer, presumably (I say presumably because I have not read the Arizona law) is, of course, “yes.” The question you pose is an astute one. But the longer train of thought it must set in motion in this: there’s many a person in this country, besides Arizona legislators, for whom that “yes” answer is absolutely acceptable. As the global economy remains distressed, the times remain bad times to be from another country generally, and that, too, is a global phenomenon. By and large, politically, the impulse to write off, and be in favor of deporting, the foreigner, is strong in many countries at the moment. And to those of us who work in service of trying to obtain lawful immigration status for those who wish to make their lives in this country, the further question we are bound to ask is, “Why is that so?” Or, to put it another way (particularly in this country of immigrants, where virtually everyone, down to the most anti-immigrant among us, is one way or the other of foreign stock), “Why the failure of compassion?” Because that is what anti-immigrant feeling amounts to – the practical inability for, the total lack of interest in, putting oneself in the other person’s shoes. A number of otherwise perfectly pleasant and sociable people of my acquaintance, folks one generally would enjoy having a drink with, are lacking this compassionate instinct. There is nothing that causes them to pause before adopting the “ship ’em all out” instinct where foreigners are concerned (ostensibly those foreigners that are here in violation of immigration law, but with the added reluctance to liberalize our laws to the level those laws were at when these folks’ forebears themselves entered the U.S.). Two otherwise amiable individuals I share the occasional beer with have this view: deportation is right for “them,” as “they” are fundamentally different from “us” – never mind that my two beer-drinking companions are themselves descended from (and one of him is himself an example of) people who fled persecution or poverty to come here. How, we immigration lawyers might ask ourselves, does one come by this glib attitude that welcomes this us vs. them distinction in people who ought to know better? I’m not sure I have a profound answer, only the fairly obvious one that as times get bad, that attitude tends to thrive (and, incidentally, tends to extend even to disfavored citizens). But that further question does have some public policy value to us. It suggests that one of the things we might dedicate ourselves to, to the extent we want to try to influence policy, is to combat the casual dismissive impulse by reminding people that the better view, the view that would and ought to be taken by their better selves, if they can be invited to pause a moment to think the thing over, is the sympathetic one. The people that these misguided, often otherwise amiable, souls are descended from, are our allies; those forebears themselves can be heard, even if they have passed on, lending choral support to the compassionate view.