Would average Americans buy this immigration plan (as explained)

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Immigration reform, the big wedge issue of 2008, is not unpopular as long as Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs aren't the ones explaining what immigration reform is.

When someone lays it out in comprehensible, vernacular English it's not such a problem. The trick is finding politicians who can TALK rather than speachify.

This three minute video clip of Biden explaining immigration to a small gathering is a fine model of how to present the issue to in common sense terms to everyday people. And, as with most Biden explanations, there are little nuggets of telling fact... in this case, that 70% of the 12-14 million undocumented aliens in the country are Children.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAU1AIcSrtI

[jody]

1. Does anyone have a source for the 70% illegal alien children? n/t

[northzax]

4. No, he doesn't

Because it is a bullshit number. There is no way that 7 in 10 undocumented residents are children. No way. No way that the average border-crosser or visa overstayer is a child, and, in order to maintain those numbers, you would need almost 19 out of 20 border crossers to be children, to make up, over time, for the ones that become adults and to maintain the ratio to existing adults.

you would also need for the average undocumentedAdult, of any age, to have 3.5 undocumented chikldren, brought into the country with him or her (remember,if the child is born in the us, even to undocumented residents, the chikd is a US citizen, automatically. It's a ridiculous statistic.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

6. Your reasoning is sound....

The literal statement is probably not accurate... minors can not make up 70% of border crossers. (Even if they did, many would no longer be minors today.)

But in the context of a discussion of the option of deporting people, 70% of the people being discussed probably are minors. They are not "illegals" but they are part of the population covered by immagration reform proposals that involve mass deportation.

An illegal couple has three children born in the US. Those children are US citizens. I am assuming we are not going to confiscate them from their parents and make them wards of the state. That means that we will have to deport those three children along with their parents.

He should have said one problem with the idea of deporting these people is that 70% of those affected would be children."

[northzax]

14. Those children cannot be deported

You cannot, under anything remotely resembling US law, force a US citizen to leave the country. Still, having a US citizen child shouldn't automatically convey residency, for a multitude of reasons. It should be considered in an application.

[midlife_mo_Jo]

2. Works for me

There has to be a sane way to move the illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship, while at the same time ensuring that we don't have 30 million more coming behind them lowering wages even more. Unfortunately, amnesty will draw even more immigrants, imo. And the only way to stop that is steep fines on employers. And do an assessment of how many immigrants our nation can rationally absorb every year, without depressing wages substantially, and that's how many immigrants are allowed in each year.

[LakeSamish706]

3. Do you know what? Biden actually did just sell me on this and change my ...

way of thinking about the Immigration problem... He did a hell of a job explaining it in my opinion... Good on him, and yes we do need other politicians giving similar explanations as they canvass.

The only issue I still have with it is, what about the people in line that have followed all the rules and are on a long waiting list to come to the US? What about these folks?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

5. The people in line would not necessarily be disadvantaged

It would be unfair for people who broke the rules to benefit more than the people waiting in line, but that doesn't mean the people in line are any worse off than they were before. (Unless someone proposed slowing that process as part of a reform plan, which I don't think anyone is.)

I understand that issue on a gut level... that it seems wrong for anyone to benefit (in relative terms) by doing wrong. But in practical and constitutional terms, the US is not requireed to be fair to non-residents. We already discriminate based on skills, country of origin, etc., so it's not "first come, first served."

And immigrants from bordering countries always have a practical leg up, in all countries. Just the way it works.

So though I agree that fairness is desirable, the US has no obligation to be fair if that fairness prevents us from solving pressing problems within the US. "Amnesties" (an unpopular word) are never fair. They are reconciliation efforts to solve practical problems and heal practical divisions. (Amnesty for Vietnam era draft dodgers is not fair to people who were drafted and got killed in Vietnam, but as a practical matter it was a sound idea as a reconciliation measure)

At the heart of this is the fact that the constitution is not fair. As a nation of immigrants, we devised a system where everyone standing on US soil is guaranteed equal protection of the laws, no matter how they came to be here. People not standing on US soil are not.

I am all for being more fair than the constitution requires, but not if it prevents solutions to a very real problem. "Fair" immigration solutions are impossible because the practical bottom line is that we cannot deport 13 million people. Not only is it practically impossible, but we would be condemned by every nation on Earth if we tried. It would be seen, correctly, as "ethnic cleansing."

If Serbia had said, "we are only rounding up this ethnic group for relocation because their papers are not in order" the world would not have stood for it. Samr goes for Darfur or Iraq or anyplace ethnic cleansing is going on. The world community objects to all large-scale relocations of ethnic minorities for any reason. That kind of process has a bad history.

[goodgd_yall]

7. Excellent post, K_and_H n/t

[iverglas]

11. very well stated

"Amnesties" (an unpopular word) are never fair. They are reconciliation efforts to solve practical problems and heal practical divisions.

And applicable to a wide variety of situations.

One that comes to mind is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa -- people who had done despicable things that cried out for punishment, in the normal course of human affairs, "got off" with admissions of guilt, because to pursue their crimes farther would have been devastating to the country's chances of establishing a peaceful and prosperous society.

If a whole country can set aside its absolutely natural and justified desire for fairness and justice in its own best interests when the crimes involved are as horrific as those committed under apartheid, why could the people of the US not show as much good sense?

The idea that somebody might be getting something that they're not entitled to is just such anathema to people in the US that the row to be hoed is a mighty hard one. And of course, unlike South Africa, nobody is particularly eager to explain to people in the US how it is in their own best interests to solve this issue in the most practical and effective way and just get on with it.

I'd add that most of those basing their opposition to amnesty on concern for those waiting in line are shedding pure crocodile tears. They're entitled to what they've got by being born in the US, and that's what really matters to them, they're just willing to share a few crumbs of it with a few other people who can slip through the tight bars they erect around it. US immigration policy is still based on national-oriign quotas, by the way, for anyone who doesn't know. (And obviously no one thinks that removing barriers to people crossing borders, as they have been removed for goods and services, is going to be practicable any time soon, so of course I'm not saying that regulating immigration is itself racist.)

I practised immigration law in Canada during several amnesties. Obviously, the situation was entirely different here, with a non-status population proportionately much smaller than in the US, and the problems largely caused in some instances by an overwhelmed bureaucracy (refugee claimants piling up in backlogs). All the same arguments were made here, though, by all the same usual suspects.

Somehow, people in the US seem uniquely able to cut off their noses to spite their faces and congratulate themselves on how handsome they are, as long as they can assure themselves that nobody's putting one over on them or getting something for nothing. What good it does anyone to have these numbers of people present in a country without status and all of the public benefits that such status confers, or to throw massive amounts of public money at attempting to get rid of them, I don't know.

I don't actually take a position on what the US should do in this situation, but I'm struck by the tunnel vision of people who can't see that measures that enable at least some people to regularize their status is a solution in their own best interests.

[sandnsea]

12. Those in line go first

They get citizenship first, then the ones who are here get their citizenship. This is written as a long process, requiring many years for each person to fulfill all the requirements to get citizenship.

[rucky]

8. 70% or 17%?

YouTube audio sucks ass, but 70 seems way high.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

9. Yes, current illegal aliens cannot be 70% minors

The literal statement he makes cannot be accurate, as a couple of folks have pointed out.

I think he "short-handed" his argument... there's no way 70% of undocumented aliens are minors. If he said "the subjects of immagration reform proposals; Illegal aliens and their children" it would be sensible.

If we deported all undocumented aliens, their children born here (US citizens) would have to either be sent away with their parents, or confiscated and put in US orphanges of some sort. In practice, those children would remain with their parents, so if we did just load everybody on a train bound for Mexico, I would not be surprised if 70% of the people on those trains were children.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

10. *** ** Apologies to all for the 70% figure ** ***

Those objecting to it here are correct. It cannot be a correct figure as literally stated.

If stated as "people who would need to be deported" rather than "illegal aliens" it is probably correct. (Children of illegal immigrants born here are US citizens, so are not "aliens", but would have to be deported along with their parents unless we added intentionally breaking up those families somehow to our immigration measures.)

(See replies 6 and 9 for more)

[CTyankee]

13. Thank you so much for this post. It is long overdue and needs thinking and debate.

We need an overall plan for immigration reform. Unfortunately, it will not happen in the heated context of the presidential election as it is too easily demogogued by the RW.

It will happen under the next, Democratic Administration, after careful thought and consideration.

[conservdem]

15. What does he want to do about the borders?

He did not seem to address strengthening them.