Immigration Irritation

 “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. “Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. ²³ If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry." Exodus 22:21-22

As I listened to the most recent round of debates about immigration, my stomach flipped and flopped almost as much as each of these candidates are sure to with the ever-shifting jubilance and wrath of public opinion. Flippant responses about the fate of millions of people poured forth effortlessly from the mouths of these “public servants.”

When candidate A argued that it is the American Way to provide a path to prosperity for every person who was raised in this great country of ours, candidate B responded thusly:

“The American way is not to give --benefits to people who have broken our laws and are here in the US illegally! --what works is to have people come legally with money in their pockets and a sponsor. They should also have to --learn to speak the English language, [take] American History and [know] our Constitution-- that is the American way.”  The crowd went wild! Nailed It, Senator.

Now, I realize that our debate system leaves something to be desired. Candidates are forced to answer in 30 second sound bites rather than thoughtful, measured or even sincere responses. Still, as voters, we remain accountable for obtaining the necessary and accurate information needed to make decisions about our own governance.

As a social worker at a local Elementary School, I encountered many families who were paperless. These families tended to be extraordinarily hard-working, helpful with school events, loving, self-sacrificing--generally model parents and citizens. So in my naiveté as a new practitioner, I was baffled and bothered by what appeared to be complacence and even indifference from them regarding citizenship. Often there was a language barrier between us in our at times mangled Spanglish communication and this got me thinking that perhaps there was something getting lost in translation for me.  I called up a friend named Sam, an immigration lawyer, and asked if he would be willing to come in and chat with me about the legalization process.

I apologized to Sam for my own ignorance and then promptly showed him evidence of it.  “Listen, I said, “I get that citizenship is arduous to obtain, but I need you to tell me exactly what the steps are so I can help some of these families get started.”  He stared at me for a moment, sighed and proceeded.

“Okay “, he said matter-of-factly, “those steps you are referring to, do not exist.”

I blanched.

“Well, I mean, it’s not quite that simple,” he continued more gingerly.

But, he then went on to explain how there are only a relatively small number of legal slots each year for Mexican immigrants—far fewer than the economic and social demand.  “Even a parent/child sponsorship can take between 14 and 17 years of waiting around in Mexico, and that is one of the simpler paths to citizenship. And, if you don’t already have a sponsor in the US, fuggetaboutit . So, actually your clients are right to just keep obeying the laws and hoping for legislation changes.”

Hmmmm. Had he really just informed me that (practically speaking) , there is no legal immigration process for Mexican families? So, in ten years when my students who are currently third graders become adults, in the only place they have ever known, we will just toss them in the pile with all those other law-breakers who don’t deserve American benefits--easy peezy?  

That just does not suit me.

So, when I hear candidates casually dismissing those unAmerican lawbreakers without any acknowledgement of the issue’s complexity, it gets me thinking about our morality as a country. Lawrence Kohlberg, who is probably the most well-known theorist on moral development, uses Heinz’s Dilemma to help explain how we navigate ethical dilemmas throughout our moral maturational processes.  In the story, Heinz steals a drug from a pharmacist in order to save his dying wife’s life, but only after attempting to reason with the man and offering him a down payment with his entire $1000. This admittedly amounted to only half the pharmacists asking price of $2000, but was still five times more than the$200 the pharmacist needed to make the drug .

Kohlberg identifies six value stages used to evaluate Heinz’s actions from an ethical standpoint.  Those with the most immature moral development often take a simple but clear position, reasoning that anyone found to be disobedient deserves punishment, regardless of the individual’s intention, resources or circumstance.  In this realm of reasoning Heinz can easily be characterized as villainous, after all, he is a lawbreaker.  And so, this is one way that we can assess immigration and characterize immigrants in our country.

Moral progression then continues in the following value stages:

 Self interest

Group Conformity,

Law and Order, and  finally-- for those individuals who seem to demonstrate the most maturity,  

The Right to Life Principle and,

Human Ethics.  

These final two stages acknowledge that acts performed to save a life always trump acts performed to preserve personal property.  In this stage, Heinz is the potential hero in the story—the man who chooses life over law and people over power.

And us? How will we prioritize, people, property and power?  

I do not mean to indicate that every illegal immigrant is heroic or that anyone who casts their lot differently than I do on this issue is somehow morally inferior; nor do I believe that we all should stand on the border singing This Land was Made for You and Me to every bedraggled soul hoping to cross over. I do believe that those of us who purport to be Pro-Life or who clamor on about “family values” have got to consider the moral courage demonstrated by individuals like my client Noemi who left her entire support system, risking jail, abuse and death on her dangerous journey, just so that her babies might have a chance at living with the same education and safety that mine will (only because my enslaved ancestors had the good fortune to be dropped off here in the USA). Noemi will likely never see her mother or sisters again because visiting is too precarious. She’ll never shop at her favorite bazaar or attend services again at the church where she took her first communion. But her children are worth the sacrifice.

It is difficult for many of us who were born and raised in such a prosperous nation to imagine having to make these sorts of ethically challenging decisions.  Further, there is no way to know which decisions we would ultimately make in a scenario that is so foreign to our experience that it seems nearly mythical.  But, as we consider immigration, can’t we agree for ourselves  and demand of our politicians to engage in a more nuanced discussion when we debate the fates of all the Noemi’s in America? Can’t we have a discussion that more accurately reflects our own moral progression as a thoughtful and compassionate country?

My answer? Si se puede!