Abracadabra

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

By Richard Anderson

I don’t presume to have any influence over the fate of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007. Besides, by the time this issue of the Planet hits the streets, the bill may have finally been laid to rest, and this editorial could be irrelevant. But that’s never stopped me from running a crazy idea up the flagpole in the past.

The argument we hear about the most is the one that says this bill offers amnesty to illegal aliens, and that is like rewarding illegal behavior. Let’s for the moment put aside the question of whether the bill really does have an amnesty provision, and let’s instead ponder the argument that “amnesty” would reward the 12 million (or 20 million, to repeat the latest alarming figure being bandied about) undocumented workers for breaking the law.

Some years ago, an official in our local criminal justice community (I don’t recall exactly who it was, maybe one of our judges, maybe one of our prosecutors) said that if you don’t like a certain law, there are ways people can try to change it. The official was referring to marijuana laws, and I want to say that, more specifically, he was responding to an argument put forth by someone accused of possessing pot that, because the defendant didn’t agree with our marijuana laws, he should not be subject to them.
Well, of course, we all know that’s not true.

But, as the official said, the defendant did have legal ways to protest the law and could even lobby to change the law. Yes, we also all recognize that engaging in that process to change the law can be a prolonged exercise in frustration, but, nevertheless, the system includes a method for changing it, and, in fact, it changes all the time.

What does this have to do with immigration? Well, apparently a critical mass of people got it into their heads that it would make sense to change the law and provide workers who are here illegally with a way to become legal, whether that’s the magic wand of amnesty or a more complicated, less instantaneous process of returning home and applying for a visa.

Now, maybe it looks like legislative legerdemain – “We’ll just reclassify all these illegal workers as legal and, voila! Problem solved!” – but, well, yeah, that’s the power of law, isn’t it? If the issue is an inundation of workers taking jobs from Americans, such a trick won’t solve the problem, but if the issue is employers breaking the law by hiring illegals or simply the fact that these millions are indeed here illegally, well, the problem can be solved with a simple act of reclassification. They were illegal and now they’re not.

Is it rewarding illegal behavior? No more than it would be rewarding illegal behavior if a critical mass of voters succeeded in lobbying for changes to our drug laws or in decriminalizing some other behavior or activity. I just think the “amnesty rewards illegal behavior” argument is lame.
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