Facing Facts

El Dia de los Niños, May Day March, Cinco de Mayo, These local events within the last week were peaceful, happy celebrations of cultural heritage and of American freedom, and they turn our thoughts once again to the topic of immigration.
There is a case to be made for letting human capital move as easily across borders as financial capital does. While we believe that ideal would bring economic growth to many peoples, we stop short of advocating for open borders, due to the challenge that it would present to America’s sense of nation, to our collective sense of self.
Yet this sense appears increasingly outdated. Indeed, “they” are here in large numbers, and they’re not leaving. Are we prepared to round up those of our neighbors without documents and send them “home”?
Note how we put those words in quotation marks. In reality, there is no “they,” no separate body of readily identified people easily dispatched. Immigrants, documented or not, are integrating into American society – starting businesses, raising families, sending children to school, paying taxes. Of those who have been here for a number of years, it’s unrealistic to think that they’re somehow going to go “home.”
The nation of Liberia was founded in 1822 on that premise, with an organization called the American Colonization Society sending freed slaves to a new colony established on the African coast, one that would declare its own independence in 1847. This ethnic or, charitably, “economic” deportation had little effect on conditions then in the U.S., nor would such a program now. Reality is shifting faster than many of us realize.
Which leaves the question facing our nation: how to resolve the documentation problem. That, as we have said before, is the real dilemma. In order to remain a society in which laws are kept voluntarily, not by force, we have to bring personal and commercial affairs for true immigrants out of the shadows – drivers’ licenses, health care, employment relationships, insurance coverage, banking practices.
How would this reform look? Sorry; we don’t have that answer. As with most political compromises, it’s not likely to be simple. But it’s not surprising that pressure for reform is being advanced by protest. Like an unappreciated minority 40 years ago, Latino immigrants today are exercising a freedom not all people have in this world – the freedom to associate, to organize, and to address the government with grievances.
The first generations of immigrants to this land did so, some 230 years ago, with protests of their own and ultimately with a Declaration of Independence, beautifully articulating their right to those freedoms. If we cherish our founding documents, as indeed we do, we have to recognize that the truths they embody are not always easy to realize, in practice. It involved personal risk then, and may now. It may generate outrage, too, or fear. But protest need not be destructive. It should be respected as an expression of needs not adequately addressed by the government. As we like to note, government is a cumbersome beast, and that’s a good thing. Sometimes it needs prodding.
Here at the local high school, students are planning, according to the college-bound organizer, “a major … student walkout May 15 in favor of new immigration reform that will help the many undocumented immigrants living here in the Unites States.” Of course, another fond American tradition is “senior cut day,” and undoubtedly the weather will be lovely for a morning stroll up Broadway to City Hall, where the students plan to “demonstrat[e] our support for a new immigration reform bill that is in much need for… all undocumented immigrants.” While students in the lower grades might do better to stay in class, we cannot deny that protest is an honored American tradition.