Ambivalence has its Consequences

Though slightly long, it's worth a read: an article from The Economist.

This article from the most recent Economist takes a pretty hard look at America's immigration policy. Or, should I say, lack of policy. For it seems our last major effort to legislate on this topic was in 1986.

That's 32 years ago. Three decades without any change in the laws regarding who is allowed to come here, how many are allowed to come here, and what we do with those who don't follow the normal protocol for coming here.

And in that absence we've seen policy decisions made by presidents, their advisers, and bureaucrats that have essentially created a bewildering body of practices, protocols, and institutions that define immigration law today.

The President's recent zero tolerance approach sickens me. In some ways, though, he's giving the American people what we deserve: a black eye. A set of practices that embarrasses us in its cruelty and clumsiness.

I assign more blame on this to Rs than the Ds. After all, it is a Republican president who has brought to light a particularly cruel and thoughtless response to the fates of those who come to our borders. The last major attempt to legislate this occurred in 2006-07, when George W. Bush pushed the Congress to do something before it was too late. The Republican leadership rebuffed the Republican president. And I doubt this Republican Congress will act now, for a festering un-resolved issue on this sensitive topic is better for the polls. Law and Order when it comes to immigration is red meat.

Democrats don't escape blameless here. There have been sixteen years of a Democratic White House since 1986. And, most recently, there was a two-year stretch (2009-2011) in which a Democratic White House and Congress could have put something on the agenda. I know I know . . . there was an economic crisis to handle.

But there's no crisis now. And there's no foresight on the part of Congress to deal with this now.

Besides, it's an election year.

We (the citizens) are paying a price for being ambivalent on immigration for more than three decades. Democrats and Republicans have not acted for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that there is no one policy on immigration that the bulk of Americans will support. We're fractured in our thinking on this. And in the indefinite political environment created by our ambivalence, we've allowed this issues to be defined by Executive department fiat, which, since 9/11, has increasingly stemmed from a mental model accentuating national security rather than kindness or economic opportunity.

Shame on us.

In some ways, we have forfeited chances to confront the problems that pushes the desperate to our borders. Where is the political will to meaningfully intervene in Syria (whose flood of refugees haunts Europe, a continent just as fractured as us on this issue) or Honduras or Guatemala or any other country where instability, crime, and evil motivate people to come to a place where there can be a better life? That political will isn't there. And that is a reality both Democrats and Republicans need to own.