A Colorblind Constitution?

“What appalls me is the premature, wishful thinking that posits the notion of colorblind. Because it’s not only a lie, it’s a willed ignorance.” --Eric Wideman

That basically sums up how I feel about the Supreme Court’s recent decision against race-conscious programs in Seattle and Louisville. Justice Roberts said, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Yes and no. The majority opinion’s idea of ending “discriminating on the basis of race” seems more like ignoring discrimination than stopping any sort of injustice. And that won’t make racism go away.

Our neighborhoods are segregated as a result of centuries of complicated history involving slavery, racism, Jim Crow and other racist laws, Plessy v. Ferguson, voting rights violations, etc., including resegregation today. As someone who has seen the successes (and frustrations) of the METCO program in Boston, I believe that schools must continue with desegregation efforts. It’s one of the few ways we can affect people early enough in their lives to make a difference in life achievement.

Seattle and Louisville schools were “limiting transfers on the basis of race or using race as a “tiebreaker” for admission to particular schools.” While the decision applies to specific integration programs that were particularly problematic, the wider implications are disturbing. What speaks volumes to me is Justice Kennedy’s criticism of the “all-too-unyielding insistence that race cannot be a factor in instances when, in my view, it may be taken into account.”

Again I return to the idea of a willed ignorance. There is an attitude that race is not supposed to matter in any broad number of situations, in particular when the government is involved. It’s a slippery slope from this decision to challenging conscious efforts to diversify the face of government. What do we make of college admissions that take into account all sorts of life factors, including race? (That’s already been under plenty of fire.) Or even associations like the Congressional Black Caucus?

Because race is a very real social division, we must treat it as such. Ignoring racism does not make anyone’s life better off. While legal decisions are supposed to be very technical, focused on interpretation of law more than promoting certain values, the way we understand race profoundly impacts our conception of what is rational or constitutional in situations like these. Justices fighting for the principles set forth in Brown v. Board of Education are coming to different conclusions with equal conviction.

Also remember that, at the end of the day, we’re talking about kindergarteners.

It's only getting worse

Recent news:
US Citizen Illegally Deported from Jail Is Missing in Mexico
Database Is Tool in Deporting Fugitives
Raids in New Haven
Hajbeh celebrates freedom after 4 years of immigration detention
Paris Hilton Moved Back to Original Jail

I don’t want to say that undocumented immigrants should not be deported (under current law). Enforcement of our laws a basic necessity that allows our country to be as safe and prosperous as it is today. But when raids do not happen until now, as a backlash scare tactic more than any security effort, entire families are detained, and the deportation craze causes a US citizen to be wrongfully deported, that’s wrong.

I’m really proud that some state and local officials are standing up to the federal ridiculousness. New Haven, for example, has decided to issue ID cards for illegal immigrants that will provide them with at least some sort of documentation. Mayor Potter spoke out against raids in Portland, Oregon, saying that "Immigrants provide more than mere labor in our community. They have long enriched our history, our culture and our city." He also stressed that "In this morning's raid, no Portland police officers participated.”

As Montgomery police Chief J. Thomas Manger put it, "It's very important for the local police department to develop strong relationships with the community…That trust is being jeopardized."

When comprehensive immigration reform fails at the national level, and local authorities are being forced to break trust within their communities, a serious conflict of interest arises. This is one thing I’ve noticed working on the Hill: members of Congress are really removed from their constituents. They are making profound changes to our laws while living away from their constituent bases, and relying on a team of staffers who are so busy that they spend 12 hours a day in the same building. Thankfully, they get phone calls and emails from constituents, but they tend to be the usual crowd. In the immigration debate, anti-immigration constituents have been the loudest, while public polls show that most are in favor of things like legalization.

There’s been a lot of criticism of the legislative process, so I won’t get into that. But it looks like the Senate is giving comprehensive immigration reform another shot this year. They say a deal was just struck in the Senate, and that bill S. 1348 has been revived. We may see passage very soon, after which the House has its shot at it.

Many had been saying that if Republicans agreed to move the bill forward, Democrats would have to make more compromises. Well, there have already been plenty. S. 1348 is only going to look worse and worse, so it’s probably best to just give up now. And yet it’s so hard to let go of comprehensive immigration reform for good for at least a few years. People are hoping that amendments will be passed, that the House will fix the bill, that if we re-state our core values of human rights and family unity, that the Senate will finally listen. But when does hope start hurting us?

What we have to sacrifice

It is a sad day when a tradeoff has to be made between human rights and family unity.

Few people really expected Senate bill S. 1348 on comprehensive immigration reform to look the way it did. It has left people on both ends of the political spectrum unhappy: Conservatives have made sure that there are strict border security policies and penalties for a host of different things. And though it legalizes the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the US today, there are thousands of dollars in fines that many will not be able to afford, strict requirements, and the process will take many years. It's certainly not amnesty, but ultimately it would still offer a path to permanent status in this country.

Ultimately, the "grand bargain" seems to have been: legalization of the 12 million undocumented for cuts to family immigration. Reunification has been central to our immigration system: two thirds of green cards a year are received through a family tie. US citizens can currently petition for parents, children, spouses, and siblings; legal permanent residents for children and spouses. Family unity is vital to the stability of communities. In the extreme case, you have the bachelor towns of the 19th century where Chinese men had no stake in society without their families, whom they weren't allowed to bring to the US due to discriminatory immigration laws, and the Chinese population was literally dying off as a population as they aged.

While we are not facing a situation so dire, under the new bill, adult children and siblings would have to go through the merit system, which rewards only 10 points out of 100 for familial ties. They, in addition to parents of US citizens who will be capped for entry (currently uncapped), totaled 190,000 in 2006, or one fourth of our family-based immigration system. Proportions are even higher for certain regions of the world, e.g. 35% of all immigrants from Asia--not just family sponsorship--are entering through family categories that will disappear under the new system. Women will also be disadvantaged by the point system, since education level is a main criterion, and many countries around the world limit access to education for women and girls. Did anyone think about that when drafting this bill? Let's not pretend there's a level playing field out there. Suffice it to say, the demographics of immigrants coming to the US would change quite dramatically.

All of this is supposed to benefit our economy. The merit-based points system (college admissions, anyone?) admits immigrants based on how they will contribute to our economy, i.e. as labor. Points are awarded for education level, occupation, family ties, English proficiency, age, and a few other factors. While many countries have successfully used point systems with similar parameters to admit immigrants to their countries, family reunification is not sacrificed for economic priorities. For example, Canada allows citizens and permanent residents to petition for even grandparents (real “extended family”). Unfortunately for us, we can only have both family-based immigration as is and the point system if there are more visas given out overall, something many Senators are dead-set against. So because we are not allowing the number of green cards to increase, family visas have to be “freed up” for the point system.

More conservative Republicans might have allowed one "family amendment" to pass in exchange for an amendment that would require the undocumented to return to their countries of origin before receiving legal status. So…human rights or family unity? (We don’t have to call it human rights. Words have created much controversy in this discussion--"Restrictionists are calling this 'amnesty', but they were going to slap that label on anything this side of mass deportation." Let’s call it humane policy reform.)

Much of this is moot by now. Surprisingly enough, the Lieberman amendment (Safe and Secure Detention Act), passed Wednesday night in the Senate, while the Menendez-Hagel amendment did not. The Menendez amendment concerned the 800,000 people petitioning for family reunification that would be thrown out of line, so to speak, when their applications were declared null and void under the current bill, which sets May 2005 as the cutoff date. It was the most likely family amendment to pass, since it would only change the cutoff date from May 2005 to January 2007. Even conservatives recognized that this was only fair. Symbolically speaking, it did win a majority vote (53-44), but Senator Kyl made sure 60 would be needed for it to pass.

We'll have to wait to see what happens in the next few days, especially after Reid's cloture vote yesterday may have killed the debate. While there are serious pros and cons to passing the bill (leaning more and more to the cons), consequences for not passing the bill are not light, either. A chance for comprehensive immigration reform like this will not come again for several years, while passing it means that there is at least some hope for better reform from the House. In the meantime, millions of undocumented immigrants will continue to live in the shadows, subject to raids and deportation. Would they rather have hope for legalization, even if it is an expensive and difficult process, or wait a few more years for more sympathetic and comprehensive reform? Can we really sacrifice the reunification of 100,000s of family members in comprehensive immigration reform?

In the end, it’s going to be a tough decision for every organization, every Senator, and every American.

The First Blog

After some encouragement from a good friend, I went ahead and created my own blog. Hopefully I'll actually post to it regularly...we'll see!

My life in the next year:
DC lobbying for immigrant rights
Shanghai
Seoul
home (all of one week)
Paris
back to Hahvahd

Should make for some good times.