A Solution To Illegal Immigration In The United States

[This is a re-publishing of a post I wrote several months ago that is probably much more relevant to current issues than when it was first published.  I originally entitled it Cutting The Baby In Half.  Now it seems perhaps there are some who have come forward who care about both halves.  Back when I first wrote it, things weren't looking quite as good.  Let's hope President Obama's blind ambition for personal glory or his harsh partisan scheming don't get in the way.]

Can a nation exist without borders? Is it possible to humanely uproot millions of people and send them back to a country that lacks resources and opportunities for them? The answer to both of these questions, unfortunately, is no. So the United States seems to be presented with a choice where both options are wrong. It is as if we must either forfeit our property rights and rule of law, or go ask Balkan governments to instruct us on the do's and don'ts of ethnic cleansing in the modern world. Although in this case, since the United States is an ethnically diverse nation it would be more of a civic cleansing. With options like these it should be no surprise we can't find a consensus on what to do. We are a nation that has fought and worked too hard to just stop existing and with too much moral certainty to suddenly lose that either.

As you may have guessed from the title I'm going to attempt to use one of King Solomon's tacts to move the dialogue on this closer to a solution. I'm going to intentionally propose a solution that should equally horrify elements of both of our political parties. Some of these elements, I suspect, are not so much tied to the core issues of national sovereignty and treating people humanely as they claim with their rhetoric, and how they may react to the following solution could reveal that.

My proposal requires that we pass laws contingent on the United States and Mexico (the primary source by far of our illegal immigrant population) signing a treaty. The laws and the treaty together would solve both the sovereignty and human rights problems.

The Treaty And The Laws

The treaty would make it so citizens of both countries can freely travel, live, and work in both countries without the need of visas. Both nations may require these foreign residents and workers to register for purposes of tracking taxes and government services but unlike visas the registrations would have no standards for issuance beyond the registrants being law abiding residents or workers. This would make all Mexican illegal aliens in the United States effectively legal.

The laws that should be passed in the United States before the treaty is signed would be as follows.

1. Require all former illegal immigrants to register with the government. Failing to register would result in deportation and possible jail time.  Due to the ease of registration, the number of those failing to register would be very small and manageable.
2. In order to assure that illegals don't cut ahead of legal immigrants, all formerly illegal immigrants would be required to wait an amount of time equal to the time they were in the country illegally before they could apply for citizenship (exemption for military service).
3. All federal agencies must cooperate with states endeavors to remove and keep non-citizens from their voter rolls.
4. Require all United States employers to report the citizenship of all of their employees.

How this deals with both core problems

The sovereignty issue is solved both in the short and long term. The treaty makes it so the only illegal aliens from Mexico would be those who refuse to register or who break other laws and thus can't be registered. The currently huge number of illegal aliens is the greatest challenge to enforcing our immigration laws and that would go way with this treaty. Also, the treaty would make it such that no new illegal influx from Mexico would be at all likely. The ease of registration when compared to the potential consequences of not doing so would make it very unlikely that someone wanting to live or work here would choose not to register.

The laws protect and restore currently lost sovereignty by registering the foreigners, penalizing those who were here illegally in terms of a path to citizenship, and requiring federal agencies to help rather than hinder state efforts to make sure foreigners can't vote. The requirement that employers report their employees citizenship is already being applied in places with great success through E-verify, and it assures that employers don't attempt to use an employee's illegal status as a means to pay them under the table. The combination of E-verify and a foreign worker registration system would discourage this from both directions.

Now as for treating the millions of illegal immigrants humanely, that is also achieved. The treaty would legitimize their current struggles just to make a living, just as long as they weren't getting payed illegally small wages or breaking other laws. The laws would all be fair and of minimal burden to the people involved. They're only suffering would be from having a longer path to citizenship than those who came here legally, and from the inevitable consequences of formerly illegal employment practices suddenly having to meet legal standards or go away.

Sources of expected opposition to this proposal

Now that I've proposed cutting the proverbial baby in half, let's hear from those who would object. Of course I'm only speculating here but I've heard enough from all sides of this issue over the last six years to make a pretty good guess.  After each number I will first state the objection and then after a "↔" I will make my own comment about what I suspect the motives behind the objection are.

From the right, the side I'm most familiar with, would come the following objections.

1. Amnesty is amnesty, no matter if you delay their path to citizenship or not. They broke the law so they shouldn't have any path to citizenship at all. ↔ The anti-amnesty hardliners are clearly wanting to be uncompromising on the national sovereignty half of the baby, and seem willing to let the other half be harmed.
2. A treaty like that effectively eliminates our border with Mexico. That's a loss of sovereignty pure and simple. ↔ Those who object to foreign treaties in general have their hearts in the right place, and I suspect they aren't even thinking about any other part of this issue, just a general principle. It's tough to determine their motives towards the baby because they just aren't thinking on that small a scale. They probably should but they aren't.
3. We need to be able to pay the people who pick lettuce and other crops less than the legal requirements in order to keep produce prices from shooting sky high. ↔ Any real solution that addresses both halves of the baby will probably force farmers to pay their pickers more than they do now. These farmers are similar the cotton farmers before the Civil War. They seem to depend on a source of labor working under conditions morally unacceptable to most Americans.
4. Programs like E-verify are too onerous on smaller businesses. ↔ E-verify is only onerous if your typical employee will leave if you use it. The treaty part of the solution makes this objection just misguided, and as for the added work for the business, the E-verify system is a national database that any business with internet access can use in minutes. As added paperwork from the government goes, this is insignificant.

From the left would come the following objections.

1. The registration process would be intimidating and smacks of oppressive practices in other countries. ↔ Concerns about how the registration process will look seem aimed at protecting the human rights half of the baby, but human rights is not a superficial thing. Rejecting a workable solution to a huge problem, just because it reminds one of something it clearly is not, suggests a less than sincere interest in solving the problem.
2. The registered foreign worker would be an institutionalized second class person. ↔ The second class nature of the registered foreign worker should only be problematic if one doesn't care about the sovereignty half of the baby (note #1 from the right). Of course citizens should have it easier in their own country than foreigners.
3. Registration enforcement would inevitably tend to profile people based on their ethnicity. ↔ The idea that the role played by the ethnicity of Mexicans is some how significant implies that if poverty stricken lite skinned Canadians made up most of the problem, few would see the problem as significant.  This seems silly to me.  It's as though they don't believe sovereignty is a real issue. As if we invented it to cover up our bigotry. For the sake of the proverbial baby the issue isn't whether they respect us, it's that they don't seem to care about sovereignty. That's half the baby.
4. The loss of jobs for people working for illegal pay would cause too much suffering and could result in a sort of de facto ethnic cleansing where the former workers leave the country for lack of income. ↔ The issue of hardship for those currently employed illegally who would lose their jobs if their employers had to pay them legally is a legitimate concern for the human rights side of the baby, but like the #3 from the right, any real solution will probably result in these low pay situations ending. There is something inherently unsustainable about an industry that requires workers with clearly inferior labor rights to the rest of the country.
5. Purging the voter rolls will result in errors which will intimidate some citizens from voting. Those wrongly purged will be disproportionately from disadvantaged minorities. ↔ Voter intimidation is when poll workers try to close the polls while people are waiting in line, or when mean looking thugs stand outside polling places. It is not the inconvenience of having to vote with a petition because one was mistakenly purged from the voter rolls. This concern is suspect as to the sincere concern the objector has for both halves of the baby. A potential inconvenience to a voting citizen cannot compare to the potential that a non-citizen may be able to vote.

It's clear there would be considerable opposition to this proposed solution from both sides. What I want to determine is which objections stem from a legitimate concern for national sovereignty and human rights and which don't. In other words, who should get the baby before it's cut in half?

So who gets the baby?

Solomon gave the baby to the mother who was willing to lose the baby in order to save the baby's life. Where's that mother in this?

No one side of this issue, as the political lines are currently drawn, completely owns that proverbial mother.  Who is willing to let their own partisan or financial interests go in order to protect both national sovereignty and human dignity?  While both sides have their extremists who keep insisting on hard lines that make consensus impossible and lose at least half the baby, there are those who show sincere concern for both national sovereignty and human dignity.

To get to a real solution both sides must make some of their members unhappy. They both can start with those who don't want the underground illegal labor market to end. Some on the right don't want certain industries to incur the greater labor costs and some on the left don't want to lose the incentive that draws in a new underclass for their political exploitation. Both are placing their own financial and political interests ahead of national sovereignty and human dignity. Both poison the dialogue.

Those who should be talking are those who sincerely care about at least half the baby. They should be able to convince each other that both halves are needed. National sovereignty and respect for individual human dignity are inseparable. You can't respect individual human dignity unless you respect a person's right to own things and keep the things they own. You can't ensure this right without some degree of government and that government must have a sovereign jurisdiction in which it operates. If that sovereignty is threatened so is the protection of the individual's property that it provides, and thus the individual's human rights.

Another way to look at is this. Governments exist to serve the individual. Thus a government cannot justly be more important than the dignity of the individual. If a government is preserved at the expense of individual dignity, for example, forcibly relocating millions of people, that government's legitimacy is potentially compromised. While if having to choose between its own citizens and that of another country it should choose its own, it should also sincerely seek the lesser of all potential evils. One group's interest may be more legitimate than another's in a given situation but no group's interests outweigh the dignity of the individual.

By now you should see where I as a third person individualist come from on this issue, nations are important because they protect individuals but the individual is paramount.

I fabricated this solution to illegal immigration intentionally to be objectionable to some on both sides. I strongly suspect the Mexican government would also never agree to such a treaty either, based on their current restrictions on foreigners. It is my hope this exercise will reveal who the ones on both sides are that don't actually want a solution. They would rather let the baby be cut in half. I believe if we could weed them out of the discussion those remaining would have a reasonable chance to achieve a reasonable solution.

Those who dream of new voting blocks or don't want to lose cheap labor, no matter what you think of their motives, have no interest in a solution here. They benefit from the problem continuing. Anyone who cares to listen to them should obviously feel free, but never forget their motives. The solution is going to come through a dialogue amongst those who actually want one. They are the people who care about the issues of national sovereignty and individual dignity.

By the way, I strongly suggest caution when it comes to the social justice crowd. Their respect for national sovereignty is conditional depending on whether the nation involved is advantaged or disadvantaged, and their respect for individual dignity is self-delusion at best. The phrase, “their heart is in the right place” was practically invented for them, as almost nothing else of theirs, when it comes to true justice and individual dignity, is in the right place (see The Heresy Of Social Justice, from Tuesday, June 19, 2012).

As I believe with all civil and international issues, cherish individual liberty and dignity and the best human solutions possible can be found. Put any other natural or human thing ahead of the individual and the Tower comes crashing down and we stop understanding each other.