Immigration

A North American summit meeting is going on in Cancun, Mexico. Mexico's Fox, Canada's Harper, and the United States's Bush are all meeting to discuss issues of mutual interest. On the top of the agenda is immigration reform, according to a Reuters report.

Fox, who has failed for five years to convince Washington to let more Mexicans get jobs in the United States legally, is making one more push before leaving office in December.

His government worked with the Mexican Senate to produce a written document that recommends a crackdown on people smugglers as well as housing and economic incentives to attract undocumented immigrants into returning to Mexico.

That may help Bush win over some doubters in his party, but opponents of his approach will demand decisive action by Mexico, which accounts for more than half of all illegal immigrants in the United States.

Is proposed immigration reform, being debated around the country and in Congress, as ill-conceived and inhumane as the war on drugs? That's what an editorial in the Houston Chronicle suggests.

Demonstrations, including one in Los Angeles over the weekend that attracted half a million marchers, vividly conveyed the passions of a large segment of the U.S. population. However, the protesters who carried Mexican flags and shouted "Viva Mexico" fueled many Americans' fear that uncontrolled immigration would foster wholesale, unwanted change to U.S. culture.

The United States for too long has dealt with its illegal immigration issues through hand-wringing unaccompanied by effective action. But the growing unease with the immigration status quo should not lead the country to make capricious decisions that soon will be regretted as prisons overflow and inhumane exploitation of workers increases.

As we are learning from the negative consequences of harsh antidrug policies, troubling times do not, in fact, always call for drastic measures.

Some Christian leaders are concerned that the recently proposed bill (HR 4437) amounts to criminalizing good Samaritans by outlawing acts of charity for illegal immigrants. Rich Lowry writes that the bill stipulates that to break the law requires assisting an illegal immigrant
"knowingly or in reckless disregard of his status—because it is not aimed at social workers, but at the vicious 'coyote' smuggling rings that exploit illegals in the course of bringing them here for exorbitant fees." But a law written so poorly that it could criminalize such charity seems a bad law, despite the law's supposed "intention". In any case, Mr. Lowry writes that:

Even opponents of the [recently proposed] bill are careful to stipulate their opposition to illegal immigration. In a New York Times op-ed, [LA's] Cardinal Mahony laments “the baleful consequences of illegal immigration. Families are separated, workers are exploited and migrants are left by smugglers to die in the desert. Illegal immigration serves neither the migrant nor the common good.”

There is much to offend the moral sensibilities of everyone about our current immigration system. The first step to putting it on a more rational and humane basis is to get a better handle on who comes here. The Catholic bishops have affirmed that “sovereign nations have a right to control their borders.” The forces who want to exploit illegal immigrants aren’t those who favor exercising that sovereign right, but the U.S. employers who desperately want Mexicans to keep coming.