Dont let nativism cloud immigration debate
By Shikha Dalmia
Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON D.C. Heres a question for the proud Americans demanding that the unaccompanied foreign children
showing up at our borders be deported:
Suppose that one of these illegal" minors was your neighbor living with his aunt & uncle going to school during the day kicking ball with friends in the evening trying hard to put the traumatic
journey from his native violence-ridden country to America behind him.
Would you with a clear conscience pick up the phone and turn him in?
If the answer is no" then it is time for you to throw out your Return to Sender" signs. Why? Because asking your government to do what you cant aint right!
America is blessed with a rich and stable neighbor on the north and oceans on the east and west. Hence it is naturally insulated from the nasty side effects of civil wars famines and other catastrophes outside its borders that other countries routinely confront. But unless it relocates to another planet it cant completely cut itself off from foreign upheavals especially those it has a hand in causing.
Anti-immigration hardliners are blaming the surge of minors - 90000 alone this year a five-fold increase from 2011 -- on Americas lenient deportation policies and the prospect of amnesty." The reality is more complicated.
The surge comes almost exclusively from three of the most dangerous countries in the hemisphere -- Honduras El Salvador and Guatemala. Why are they so dangerous? In part because of Americas illicit drug war.
This trillion-dollar war puts the onus on Latin American countries to stop drugs from flowing into the U.S. -- rather than on the U.S. to curb its own appetite. America has conditioned aid and market access on how hard these countries crack down on drug dealers.
This hasnt dampened the drug trade one whit but has driven it into the hands of dangerous drug cartels. Five years ago half of Honduras was outside the governments control. In El Salvador rival drug gangs shake down schools for recruits and money. Drug dealers even fund political campaigns in Guatemala to elect their candidates. Caught between the authorities and drug cartels are innocent civilians especially the poor and powerless who are increasingly helpless in protecting their children.
Thats why 66 of the kids from El Salvador and 44 from Honduras cite organized violence as their main reason for fleeing.
No doubt some kids are hoping to take advantage of a George W. Bush-era law requiring that unaccompanied minors be given an asylum hearing and be placed in the least restrictive setting" -- such as their families -- in the interim. (If their fathers are with them they are almost certain to be turned away.)
However because the burden of proving that they face a physical threat back home is so impossible many of them simply melt away into the undocumented underclass rather than show up for their hearing.
A compassionate people would demand that these kids be given usable options for applying for asylum in their home countries so that they wouldnt have to undertake a dangerous journey with coyotes" human smugglers mixed up in the drug trade.
Instead America is arguably experiencing its worst spasm of nativism since the early 20th Century. Then magazines such as Judge ran cartoons depicting a Statue of Liberty with a Chinese face welcoming crime-prone and diseased immigrants. Now protesters in towns like Murrieta Calif. are turning away buses carrying these kids to shelters accusing them of being scabies-infected lawbreakers.
But such nativism will ultimately run into what University of Californias John S.W. Park calls Americas Huckleberry Finn Problem." Slavery unraveled when like Mark Twains Huck Finn Americans couldnt bear to enforce anti-fugitive laws preventing blacks from fleeing to freedom. Inflicting the law became hard" notes Park when there was so much evidence of common humanity."
The same is happening now. There is no movement of private citizens turning in illegals but sanctuary cities are cropping up offering safe haven also what happened during slavery. Such responses reflect this core intuition: Laws requiring the government to do what private citizens wont are wrong especially in a country founded on the notion that a governments powers cant exceed those of its people.
Nativism ignores both Americas humanity and commitment to limited government -- which is why itll lose.
SHIKHA DALMIA a Washington Examiner columnist is a senior policy analyst at the Reason Foundation a nonprofit think tank advancing free minds and free markets. Columbia Universitys Eric Haskell provided valuable research assistance for this piece.
