When a sanctuary becomes a trap

Shunning conventional wisdom, Councilman Ken Brown straddled the third rail of American politics recently. In view of both his constituency and the rest of us – the silent ones, those who hail from the unincorporated badlands and are denied a vote in council elections – Ken Brown is talking about race.
Together with a small group of activists, Mr. Brown has authored a resolution declaring the city of Sonoma a “sanctuary for immigrants.” The proposal is largely symbolic, a gesture of simpatico good will towards the Mexicans and Mexican Americans who live among us. As a “sanctuary city,” Sonoma would refuse to collaborate with federal authorities attempting to implement immigration law, offering official protection to all immigrants, legal or not.
Say what?
Sonoma will formally identify itself as a city where illegal immigration is permissible, even welcome. We will stand united as a town and say: come. In the face of increasingly stout frustration and fear over our porous borders, Sonoma will boldly declare itself unfazed.
Mr. Brown and his cohorts believe the city is ready for this legislation. They believe that the majority will embrace its practicality, its sense of economic frugality, even its large heartedness. But if the results of my informal weekend poll are a reliable measure of public opinion, they may have miscalculated.
My friends are generally what most people would characterize as “liberal.” We vote Democratic, support public education and choice; we oppose the war in Iraq. Many of my friends are immigrants themselves, though mostly from European nations. Not one of these newcomers came illegally. One friend received her legal work permit just last week after a ridiculously long wait. For seven years she cooled her heels while her husband brought home the bacon, or even – when money was tight – the spam. It wasn’t easy getting by in a brand new country with just one pair of hands at work, but they did. Might she have found some under-the-table income stream to bridge the gaps? Sure: she’s smart, capable, and ambitious. But she waited for her papers to wind their way through the federal labyrinth because to go at it any other way is against the law. A respect for the order of law informed this family’s willingness to occasionally do without.
Around our table with friends last week, we talked about Councilman Brown’s proposal. Every single one of us gave voice in support of protection for our legally immigrated neighbors. It is the energy and labor of immigrants that built this country, after all. But official protection for persons who enter illegally? That’s another matter altogether.
Welcoming people to live and work in Sonoma when they’ve crossed our borders without permission seems on its face a kind and generous thing to do. We know they’re already here, the logic seems to go, why not be hospitable? It’s tempting to imagine that this is more humanitarian, more Christian than enforcing the law of the land. But what becomes of these people when they need to leave city limits? When they run up to Santa Rosa on an errand and find themselves needing assistance from the police? Or they set out to enjoy a day at the beach and end up requiring medical help? What of them then? They revert to fugitive status, wary of their precarious standing. In fact and in practice, they become the victims of our largesse, the collateral damage of misplaced philanthropy.
I think of this kind of permissiveness as “benign racism.” It looks like activism, but its results can be more menacing than outright bigotry. Benign racism says: don’t bother with English; maintain your original linguistic roots with pride! And a new generation of housekeepers and gardeners takes shape. Benign racism says: don’t worry about Uncle Sam, that ole’ Draconian bully! Auntie Sonoma will make it better! And a permanent underclass of fugitives is counseled to hide in plain sight. I don’t pretend to know the solution to our looming immigration problem; it’s a hoary chestnut of titanic breadth and depth. Resolution will admittedly require a large quiver of tactical arrows. Personally, I’m not ready to embrace anarchy as one of them.