It is at least somewhat ironic that a nation of immigrants struggles so with the issue of immigration. One would think that since everyone here, except for Native Americans, has ancestors who came from elsewhere (or are fresh to America themselves) that we would have figured this out.
But it’s complicated. There’s xenophobia on one extreme, vote-counting special interest groups on the other, and all manner of views in between.
Americans can’t even agree on how much they disagree. A Gallup Poll earlier this year found 60 percent dissatisfied with the current level of immigration; that’s six points higher than 2014, but significantly lower than 2008, when 72 percent were dissatisfied.
The issue has moved back to the forefront now for two reasons—the murder of a woman in San Francisco allegedly by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, an illegal who had previously been deported five times, and the provocative pronouncements by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The murder of Kate Steinle as she strolled along a San Francisco pier with her father shocked the country’s consciousness because Sanchez would not have been here had it not been for failed immigration policy and San Francisco’s status as a sanctuary city.
Sanchez is not an isolated case. Sanctuary cities willfully ignore immigration detainers that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) use to take custody of an illegal alien.
The Center for Immigration Studies, which supports tougher border enforcement, claims that “State and local sanctuary policies caused the release of more than 8,000 criminal alien offenders sought by ICE for deportation in 276 jurisdictions around the country over an eight month period.”
That’s an untenable situation. It’s doubtful that a city or county could get very far if it, for example, decided to stop enforcing federal counterfeit laws and began printing money.
However, the current leading critic of the country’s significant immigration problems, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, is the wrong guy for the job.
Trump’s surge in the polls suggests he has successfully tapped into a growing frustration by conservative white voters that the country is on a perilous spiral, and what the immigration issue needs is a tell-it-like-it-is tough guy.
But Trump is more like the “rabbit” in a race, a competitor who sets a fast pace for the rest of the field, but won’t finish. Other Republicans, such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, have more rational approaches to immigration that would actually help solve the problem, while currying favor with the growing Latino population.
We are a nation of immigrants, people who have come here seeking freedom and opportunity. We are also a nation of laws. Immigrants taking a citizenship test must be able to identify that the supreme law of the land is the Constitution.
Somehow we have to regain our footing on immigration in a way that combines the aspirations of those who would become Americans with the rule of law.