Conservatives need Compassion about Illegal Immigrants

New York Times photo of migrants crossing the Rio Grande

Liberals often accuse conservatives of heartlessness. Why are we so selfish; don't we want to help  the downtrodden?

If conservatives value initiative (and ever want to win elections), we must prove our compassion by recognizing the presence and humanity of undocumented immigrants. And we need law and policy to absorb and ultimately accept the ones with a sincere desire to become citizens.


The pathos of desperate people spending life savings to endure hunger and hardship to come to the United States touched me when I saw a front-page story in the New York Times. It describes the dangerous and arduous trek from Central American countries undertaken by mostly women and children seeking to remedy poverty and hopelessness faced by accident of birth.

They leave countries that offer no jobs or futures, trusting their passage to "coyote" guides. These become paid captors who herd their charges through risky by-ways, sometimes running through drainage pipes, dashing among grasses, crowding into compartments in trucks and, as described in the article, boarded onto rafts. They know only that in America, with asylum, they might fill the lowest jobs available, those generally unwanted by citizens with English skills and greater education--dishwashers, laborers, baby-sitters, house-cleaners. This vulnerable hoard constitutes the most tenacious, hardy and dedicated of the many who suffer in poverty-ridden nations led by corrupt governments.

"In Mexican border cities like Reynosa, just across the river," writes immigration reporter Julia Preston, "migrants have become easy prey for Mexican drug cartels that have seized control of the human smuggling business, heightening perils for illegal crossers and security risks for the United States."

Among those who forded the Rio Grande to be interviewed by the journalist were "a Guatemalan mother carrying a toddler with a baby bottle, another with an infant wrapped in blankets. A 9-year-old girl said she was traveling by herself, hoping to rejoin her mother and two brothers in Louisiana." The child had only a "telephone number on a scrap of paper" tying her to  family.

One traveler said he'd been "kidnapped for two weeks while Mexican smugglers extorted $10,000 from his frantic family in Honduras." A former El Salvadoran soldier, 29, fled, leaving his wife and children, after a gang sought to kill him in retribution for an arrest. A 19-year-old whose brother was murdered in the bed next to him considered the travails of  journeying to America a safer option than remaining.

Why don't they follow immigration protocols and come legally? We in America assume that government bureaucracy may be inefficient, but not corrupt. But people who desperately want to support their families by moving to the United States often live where corruption reigns. I know of cases where anxious would-be emigrants submitted paperwork  that was "lost" until they produced bribe money--repeatedly, for officials at every level. And then, once their money was gone, their paperwork became "lost" once and for all. How can honest, eager workers gain legal admission to the US if their governments won't even let them apply?

For this we need bigger fences, more patrols and huge detention centers that use taxpayer dollars to return long-time US residents back to hopeless situations? On the other hand, wide open borders would mean an unmanageable influx of immigrants, saturating the labor market and straining infrastructure. There must be a compassionate middle ground that discourages illegal entry but acknowledges the plight of people who are here.

 Entering the United States without proper paperwork is not a felony; it's not a

New York Times photo of migrants awaiting processing

misdemeanor; it's a lesser class of offense called an "infraction." And yet people discovered without documentation are imprisoned for weeks or months and more without trial.

I am aware of several cases of families with US-born children, separated as parents were deported simply because they lacked proper paperwork. I know of a case where an undocumented worker, stopped for a burned-out tail light on his borrowed car, landed in the Tacoma detention center, imprisoned for almost a year and then returned to El Salvador because he couldn't raise the $9,000 needed for a  lawyer.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free!" The inscription by Emma Lazarus at the base of the Statue of Liberty begins to ring hollow when  so much rhetoric and effort goes to spurning those risking their lives so that they and their families may simply breathe free.

Moderation is Conservative

As a fan of talk radio and a long-time supporter of conservative Republican candidates, I'm getting frustrated with some loud-mouths on the right wing usurping the term "true conservative."

I hear radio callers attacking practical, get-things-done leaders, in disdainful tones, as "RINOs," and "moderates"--as if only media firebrands and mean-spirited activists get to define the terms. As if they've got the only conservative positions on major issues, and those views can't be discussed or varied. As if people with differing means to the same conservative goals should be ostracized and marginalized as "not true" conservatives.

Really drives me crazy.

First off, certain broad values are shared by all conservatives--like a belief in individual enterprise, with minimal governmental interference. A belief that charity is best conducted by voluntary associations and gestures rather than from forced taxes that the government  disburses. A belief that local is better than federal direction of most functions--education, health care, police and fire and just about anything that doesn't require the joining of the nation as one.

Most basic is conserving values and policies that work as you adapt and change with circumstances. This is prudent.  It's smarter to preserve the good in what you have, and cautiously change the rest.

Yes, that may make people "moderate," in their conservatism, but perhaps the more constructive way to see it is moderation. Moderation is a positive trait. "Moderate" has (wrongly) become a nasty slur.

I remember when an honored position was "mainstream Republican," someone whose views reflected the majority of conservatives. Mainline--accepted widely, representing the bulk of the party. The only way ever for conservative candidates to win is to appeal to a wide range of citizens, especially independents and folks in between the right and left ends of the political continuum--who are the real moderates.

How did the far right hijack the GOP and dominate conversation about the conservative movement? They're not even the majority of conservatives--not even "mainstream" on many issues. For example, the hot-buttons of abortion and immigration. Polls show sharply divided American opinion on abortion. Conservatives can personally fervently oppose abortion and yet acknowledge that banning it from conception just won't happen.

Similarly, conservatives can recognize the reality of 11 million undocumented immigrants in our country and think practically about means to address their presence. The extreme idea of deporting them all or driving them away is, I believe, harmful to our economy, inhumane, and completely radical and unfeasible, and yet, the position is often mentioned by those who claim it defines "true conservatives."

Moderation is conservative. Moderation demands the least disruptive course first. If it's not broken, don't fix it-- and if it is broken, don't boost our "disposable society" by pitching the components that still serve. And when proposing something new, look to previous successes as inspiration--don't jump into something because good intentions alone drive it.

Obamacare, for instance, may be well-intentioned. But its sweeping imposition now makes "The Affordable Care Act" a joke. Since its mandates have removed consumer choices and insurer options, rates for payers are much more un-affordable. Employers seeking to avoid its restrictions and added costs are cutting some positions to less than 30 hours weekly or holding their staffs to less than 50 workers. Few doctors are enthused, either. Good intentions hemorrhaged into a massive national peril. Yes, some Brits and Canadians and Israelis like their nationalized health care, but they started from a very different place, and even their beneficiaries offer plenty of complaints with their kudos. Brazil has a nationalized health care system. Just 7% of it's consumers are at all satisfied with it.

Conservatives value moderation; it's the natural conservative approach. This contrasts with the new favored term for liberals: "Progressive." Who would ever want to thwart progress?  Doesn't everyone want to move on, jump forward, progress? Leave the old behind and forge something new and untried? That's youth, excitement, possibility!

I recall George W. Bush's explanation for his early rash behaviors: "When I was young and stupid, I was young and stupid." While there's something exhilarating about daring experiments, and conservatives applaud most of them on a personal level, there's something risky about forcing 314 million people to bungee jump along for the ride. What's acceptable for a single college student is not when he's got a wife and several kids to whom he's responsible. We're the American family, and government is there to protect us physically, to be responsible, and to make room for us individual members to thrive.

Caution and pragmatism come with maturity, while impetuosity, impatience and utopian dreaminess mark adolescence. Conservatism is the ideology of grownups. No matter their places on the political spectrum, all parents want to provide their children a conservative homelife--a stable, loving environment based on universal values. And when it comes to creating policies, visions of perfection may be inspiring fantasies but a conservative grounding in reality lets us function in the real world.

Moderation in all things. That's conservative. That's responsible and prudent, and conservatives should use the term "moderation" proudly and repeatedly; it's the hallmark of practicality and wisdom, and will help us win.

Wedding Announcemet as Immigration Editorial

Is a wedding announcement the right place for a political statement?

With the feature about Perla Farias and David Portugal, Jr.'s nuptials last week, the New York Times certainly thought so.  The couple, 21 and 22 years old, lamented that the undocumented immigrant members of their extended family of 400 were too skittish to attend their Goodyear, Arizona wedding.  It wasn't travel, expense or illness preventing their attendance--but fear of deportation occasioned by the recently-adopted state law empowering law enforcement to verify immigration status.

The bride and groom sound like great, idealistic kids.  They're both in college and met through their Catholic church.  They bonded in their youth group, soon spending Sunday afternoons "taking long walks, discussing the book they were reading--or immigration raids."  His early gift to her was a portrait he painted from a photo in which she's wearing a t-shirt emblazoned, "Think: It isn't illegal yet."

Their relationship matured as they became "partners in community activism."  The new Mrs. Portugal's family came to the US illegally, but received "amnesty under a 1986 federal immigration reform bill."  (That would have been two years into the second term of Pres. Reagan, about three years before she was born.)  Mr. Portugal is a fourth-generation Mexican-American from Los Angeles.

Not only do I congratulate the young couple and wish them well, but I have no problem with The Times highlighting their interest in pro-immigrant activism.  What I found surprising, however, was the article's unrelenting slant--opening with "The marriage of Perla Farias and David Portugal Jr. in Goodyear, Ariz, was marked as much by those who didn't attend as it was by the more than 250 guests who did." It leaps from there into a lament about the two dozen undocumented-immigrant relations of Ms. Farias too nervous about the not-yet-enacted Arizona clamp-down to show their faces at the celebration.

Personally, I don't think the new Arizona law was a good idea, for a variety of reasons, and I sympathize with the hard-workers who risk everything coming to the US for a better life. (I also think the federal lawsuit against the Arizona bill is a waste of taxpayer money, since the law's sure to be challenged anyway.)

Illegal immigrants would gladly come legally if they could--but receiving documentation for average people to emigrate from Mexico to the US is nearly impossible, given Mexico's corruption greased by bribery at each step of the process.  The people who leave family behind, take our least-desirable jobs (and are even willing to live in the shadows) are not unlike those in generations past who boarded crowded ships with similar hopes--they share the American spirit of self-determination founded on willingness to take chances and put in effort.

The mothers of "anchor babies" want those children to live where they have the best chance for success and the most opportunity.  Is America the greatest nation on God's green earth? Ask them.

Still, I blanched seeing the blatantly political message featured on the wedding announcements page.  Just another reminder that the press has become as openly biased as anyone else, and doesn't mind inserting its editorial content everywhere it can.

Anti-Immigrant Racism at Issue in Presidential Campaign

We are a home steeped in politics. We are also a Jewish family whose lives intertwine with both legal and illegal immigrants.

In observing Republican politics at the moment--which is not always pleasant, to say the least--I keep hearing pledges and promises that sound to me to be, unfortunately--racist. I hear things like Huckabee's vow yesterday that under his presidency, the approximately 12 million illegal immigrants now working among us will be booted out of their jobs and out of the country within 120 days of his oath of office. And never allowed back. Even if they have citizen children; even if they've been here 30 years and own their own homes and businesses and pay taxes and have sent sons and spouses into our military.

I see angry denouncements of people who come here under great peril and duress, leaving their young children and their aging parents because they have no way to make a living. And America has plenty of jobs, enough so they can quickly begin to send their paychecks home.

I've known some of these people. They work hard. They wish with all their hearts that there was a legal way to be here--or, even more, that they didn't have to be here, consulting "abogados" and finding some way to get a green card. If they could have come here to work legally, they would have--but their countries run with bribery and corruption. With bureaucracies that "lose" applications for years on end. I know of a case where a hopeful immigrant was told three times that his application was "missing," but could be found if he paid $2000. Meanwhile, families are starving; there are no jobs.

The anti-immigrant politicos are reacting to a small but vocal fringe. These voters don't like pressing "2 para espanol." They don't like seeing ballots printed in Chinese. They are uncomfortable with foreigners who have different ways; whose idea of a nice Sunday afternoon is a big family picnic in the park; a park now crowded with such families. They feel invaded and threatened.

The positions candidates are taking are not just reactionary but impossible to actualize. Employers from restauranteurs and hoteliers to construction companies and landscapers can't suddenly reach into a waiting pool of workers should the backbone of their support staff disappear. And many illegal immigrants have risen in their fields to positions of authority, and carefully established themselves in ways that conceal their lack of paperwork. Rooting out twelve million people integrated into the fabric of America cannot and will not happen.

We've got plenty of jobs, plenty of space and have accepted these millions over the years with the warm-heartedness that comes naturally to a nation of immigrants. There were no "closed borders" or restrictions on immigration until 1924. And I maintain that fear and prejudice shaped many of the rules and laws that have come since.

I'm worried and sad that such un-American sentiments can influence citizens at this time in our history. But I'm even more distressed that our politicians have listened to them and played along. Because this is the way they'll lose the election, and lose the heart of America.