It's not that difficult to justify Arizona. Or deportations, raids, detentions of children and the elderly and tearing nursing babies out of mothers' arms. You just have to believe that the solution to the immigration problem is to "enforce the laws we have" and that people who want to, can "wait in line" and enter legally. Then express only a dislike for "illegals" (it helps if you can label them as drug mules, criminals, disease carriers and culture destroyers) and claim that legal immigrants are welcome. The solution? Arizona.
Easy enough. Or is it? Our immigration laws are a convoluted, dysfunctional mess, and even those who wrote them don't understand them. Enforcement of laws that can't work is a waste of time. Remember prohibition? And enforcement of laws that deny people basic civil and human rights is bad public policy. Remember Jim Crow? We currently are enforcing federal immigration laws. The problem is not lack of enforcement; the problem is that current laws cannot solve the problem.
We cannot deport 12 million people who are living in the United States, most of whom have U.S. citizen spouses and children, own homes and businesses, and work and contribute greatly to our economy. It won't work. But that reality doesn't stop us from trying. In 2009, we deported nearly 400,000 people, the majority of whom had committed no crimes. And border security? Trying that too, but our increasing expenditures have not resulted in a decrease in unlawful entries or in the undocumented population. We keep throwing good money after bad policy. A 10-foot wall only gets you an 11-foot ladder.
Still, we are enforcing the laws. We are enforcing the laws that demand that undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens must be exiled from the United States for 10 years before being reunited with their family. The laws that permanently separate parents from children are being enforced. We are deporting U.S. high school graduates who have lived here since infancy and the parents of severely disabled U.S. citizen children. We are locking up people who overstayed their visas and spending billions on expanding immigration detention facilities. (Turning a neat profit for the private companies that run them.)
And people are waiting in line. Spouses and minor children of legal residents waited in line for more than 10 years. Siblings of U.S. citizens have been waiting in line since 1989. Skilled craftspeople and professionals who want to live and work in the United States have been waiting in line since 2001. And what about those busboys, construction laborers and housekeepers? Oops, that's right; there is no line for them.
Enforcement of existing laws won't work. Nor will increased enforcement without a reform of existing laws. Our economy depends upon foreign labor. (Check out the UFW "Take our Jobs" campaign if you are interested in field work this summer. www.takeourjobs. org.) Families need to be together. A big fence will not keep a parent from a child or a husband from a wife. If we do not provide a way for workers and family members to legally enter this country, we will not solve our immigration problems.
Arizona can do all it likes to profile, arrest and attempt to remove immigrants. It will produce fear, hate and discrimination. It will not produce a workable, humane immigration policy.
Kimberly Baker Medina is an immigration attorney in Fort Collins and a volunteer with Fuerza Latina, www.cjpe.org/fuerzalatina.