Enough Fence Already: Tough Questions on Immigration Reform

Esquire
Enough Fence Already: Tough Questions on Immigration Reform
Yes, Obama made a commitment on Thursday to push border legislation — albeit not 'til next year. But, yes, there are 11 million illegal immigrants in our country. What happens between now and then appears complex, until you talk to this one God-fearing guy.

By: John H. Richardson

The evil overlords that rule my destiny here at Esquire — having decided that "the stories of our time" (boring old health care, unemployment, and workers' rights) were more important this month than, say, Mark Sanford — wanted me to write about immigration this week. So I turned to Dr. Donald M. Kerwin.

Let me just say right out front that Kerwin is one of those nut jobs who believe in a wacko revolutionary named Jesus Christ. For fifteen years, he was the director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. Now he's a big shot at the Migration Policy Institute. But his gateway drug was a stint working in Peru for — you guessed it — a children's soup kitchen.

"I was trying to live my faith," he says. "It was all kind of from a faith commitment. I was focused on doing work consistent with my faith."

Note the obsessive repetition of doctrine. To program a person that well, it takes years in re-education camps.

"In Peru," he continues, "I saw people who were extraordinarily generous and, a number of them, extraordinarily needy as well. Since then, I realize what it takes for people to try to support themselves who come from circumstances like that, and how committed people like that are to their families, and how, if a person like that is forced to go to another country, he isn't doing it willingly. He's doing it with a lot of self-sacrifice, for his family."

After that radicalizing experience, Kerwin helped 5,600 Haitians immigrate to the United States. I asked the obvious question: Why don't those Haitians stay home and fix their own country?

"These people were fleeing for their lives. They couldn't improve their country if they got killed."

Okay, whatever. But why make it any easier? Aren't there lots of miserable Haitians fleeing for their lives? Kerwin's answer was that those particular Haitians had already been winnowed, during a stay at lovely Guantánamo Bay, from 40,000 applicants/long-distance swimmers. "They were already deemed to have a credible fear of persecution, yet they had to go through a very time consuming and expensive asylum process, and it took immense resources on the part of charitable agencies to help them — millions of dollars that could have been spent on other needs."

Another big whatever. It's still a big world and there are still lots of desperate people who want to do my job for pennies on the dollar. That's what I hear on Fox News, anyway.

"That's another thing Peru gave me: People don't really want to come. They'd really prefer to stay in the country and community where they've grown up, surrounded by family and friends."

Okay, smarty-pants. How do you explain the 11 million illegal aliens? (Or "undocumented immigrants" as politically correct liberals such as yourself like to put it.)

"Nobody likes illegal immigration," Kerwin admits. "Everybody recognizes the system is broken. The question really is how to look at people who have come in illegally. Until the recession, our economy badly needed these people. We had record low unemployment — 4 percent — until 2007."

But that was then. Why can't we throw them out now?

"They're all in families, large numbers of them, enormous numbers in mixed-status families. Their kids are U.S. citizens, or their spouse is a lawful resident."

So maybe it's not gonna slide down as smooth as a burger in the gullet of Lou Dobbs. But what else can we do?

"There needs to be strong border enforcement. There needs to be strong interior enforcement, particularly at the workplace. There need to be ways to check whether people are authorized to work in a way that's highly accurate and respects people's rights, and we need to also be screening people who are serving prison time — to remove people who ought to be removed. And we also need to re-think our legal immigration system so it reflects the economic needs of the nation, so you admit more workers when you need more workers."

And then we get them to leave!

"You don't. But that's the interesting thing: If you bring in temporary workers in a way that allows them to move from job to job and become permanent residents, many of those want to go home. What you have now is people who stay because they might never be able to come back."

I dunno about all this. No matter how a person complicates things with, like, logic and morality and social justice and other suspiciously liberal notions, we still have those 11 million illegals getting sub-prime loans and using our emergency rooms when they faint from heat exhaustion in the sugar-cane fields.

"Obviously, you need to give the people that are here a chance to earn the right to remain," Kerwin says. "There's no deportation or enforcement policy that's going to result in 11 million people either being forced to leave or being physically arrested or removed. I don't think anybody who's serious at this point even thinks that's possible or even desirable."

But isn't that one of the reasons John McCain lost the election, because he wanted some kind of amnesty program?

For once, Dr. Kerwin had no snappy answer.

So I put it another way: Isn't that rewarding illegal behavior?

"I don't know what kind of a reward it is to say to someone who has been here working at low wages, most of them in jobs that are thankless, 'You can now go to the very back of the visa line and over the course of a period of time — through work, through learning English, through paying a significant fine — can earn the right to remain.' In a way, yes, it's a program that forgives a transgression. But lawlessness is a little harsh."

Aha! Forgiving transgressions! Typical bleeding-heart. What about the awesome wrath of an angry God?

"You want to uphold the rule of law. You're not happy they entered the country illegally. You want to ask why they did it and what they've done here. But you also have to recognize the reality that they're hard-working people who are embedded in communities and families."

I have to admit, some of them are hardworking — like the guys I use to rake up my leaves every fall. And they're just standing there on the sideway across from the train station, politely waiting hour after hour. Convenient and cheap, too!

"You're the problem," Kerwin tells me. "We need amnesty for you guys. Why is amnesty for undocumented immigrants a stigma, but there's no stigma for people who have hired and benefited from their work? If we're really going to come together as a country, it seems to me the restoration of the rule of law should go in both directions."

That ain't gonna happen, bro.

"No, it won't."

As long as we're cool on that, what needs to be done, politically speaking?

"President Obama met with members of Congress last week to kick off immigration reform; his consistent position is this kind of legislation needs to pass. Senator Schumer is crafting a bill. There seems to be a strong commitment."

And who is fighting it?

"The House Immigration Reform Caucus."

Hmmm, let's take a look. That would be Eric Cantor, Republican from Virginia; Dan Burton, Republican from Indiana; Brian Bilbray, Republican from California; Zach Wamp, Republican from Tennessee; Vern Buchanan, Republican from Florida; Michael Burgess, Republican from Texas; John Shadegg, Republican from Arizona; Pete Sessions, Republican from Texas... and so on for about another fifty names, all with Rs after them.

What's their basic argument?

"That if only the law was enforced more stringently, with even more Draconian measures, you would make life so difficult they would decide to leave."

And the problem with that is?

"There's no way you can break up all these families and do roundups of millions of people and pull 5 percent of the work force out and end up with a country that any of us would be proud of."

Clearly, Dr. Kerwin has never been to a gun show. And he probably hates the border fence, too.

"The fence works in certain places, in highly urban crossing areas. But I think there's enough fence at this point. What we really need is a huge focus on the successful integration of newcomers. Altogether, legal and illegal combined, we're talking about 38 million people. The success of these people is essential to the future of the country. It's a remarkable number. It's a large experiment. If they're successful, the country will be much stronger."

There you have it: the commie — I mean, the Christian point of view