This is the critical question for immigration reform
The last four years have witnessed the largest “immigration surge” in U.S. history, “surpassing the great migration boom of the late 1800s and early 1900s.”
Consequently, it is hardly surprising exit polling demonstrated that Immigration Reform was one of the most important issues to voters in the 2024 election cycle. The unprecedented numbers of people illegally crossing the border into the U.S. during the Biden presidency brought the already simmering illegal immigration issue to the boil.
America has desperately needed significant reform of the immigration system for decades. There are few segments of the American political system which are, and have been, as broken as our immigration policies.
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Under President Biden, the non-enforcement of our immigration laws reached new heights of non-enforcement. In fact, the Biden Administration with the collaboration of sanctuary cities and sanctuary states raised non-enforcement to a veritable art form.
So what do we do now? How should President-elect Trump proceed in fulfilling his campaign promises?
I, having been involved in several attempts to bring about serious immigration reform, most recently in President George W. Bush’s second term, suggest several lessons that must be heeded.
First, the American people will not accept immigration reform that allows significant numbers of people (such as the “dreamers”) to stay unless they are convinced that the federal government is going to control the border. Control means we decide who comes in and who goes out and we have verified who they are and where they are. Controlling the border does not mean “closing” the border. We need immigration to keep our economy growing, but in “controlled” numbers of people with skills and without criminal records.
President-elect Trump is right to begin with emphasizing deporting any illegal immigrants with criminal records here or in their own countries. The President-elect was also right to say that he wanted to find a way for the “dreamers” to stay. Who are the “dreamers”? They are people who were brought here by their parents, usually as young children and many of them have grown up here and have little, if any, memory of their native countries. Under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), children who were brought here as children before June 15, 2012 have “temporary status” for “deferred action” from deportation. DACA is currently under Supreme Court review.
The principle at work in DACA is that we normally don’t punish children for their parents’ crimes and the parents are the ones who broke the law by bringing their children to the U.S.—the children did not bring themselves.
Second, there are those on the left-wing of the Democrat Party and the right-wing of the Republican Party who would rather have the issue to campaign on rather than have a solution to the problem. To pass meaningful reform, there will have to be a bipartisan “coalition of the middle right and the middle left.”
I believe the contours and ingredients of such a grand bargain are there and the moment is ripe to bake the cake.
As a nation, we should acknowledge that our immigration system has been broken for at least half a century. We have had two signs up at the border, one saying, “No Trespassing!” and the other saying, “Help Wanted!” In many ways, it is as if we had not enforced the speed limits on the Interstate Highways for 25 years. Then we send out notices informing drivers that the government has been monitoring our velocity by satellite for the last quarter century and they are now billing us retroactively for excessive speeding every time we exceed the speed limit. I don’t know about you, but I would need a substantial loan and an installment plan. And, I believe most of us would think it wasn’t fair that the government didn’t fine us earlier.
So what should we do? I would suggest that we pass legislation that gives those in the United States illegally three months to come forward, register, undergo a background check, pay a fine, and apply for legal status. If they have been law-abiding residents both here and in their country of origin, if they have paid their taxes, and if they have been productive members of society, they would begin a ten-year probationary period. If they stay out of trouble with the law, pay their taxes, and demonstrate that they can read, write, and speak English, they can earn permanent legal status—not citizenship.
The penalty for having entered illegally is the forfeiture of the opportunity for citizenship. If they desire citizenship, they would have to leave the country, apply for reentry, and begin the legal process anew.
Some would object that this is “amnesty.” It is not. Amnesty is what President Carter granted those who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War by leaving the country. President Carter let them come home with no penalty or fine of any kind. (I would have let the draft evaders come home, but I would have required them to spend two years working in Veterans Hospitals taking care of the young men who took their place.)
Let me be clear. If you came here illegally and you have a criminal record in your country of origin or here in the U.S., you should be arrested, detained, and deported.
When it comes to the “dreamers,” I believe we should put forth a pathway to citizenship, whereby if they successfully navigate the ten-year probationary period and the other requirements listed above, they could apply for citizenship in the U.S., the only country they may have ever known.
A prime example of such a “dreamer” is Jaime Cachua, a 33-year-old man who was brought to America from Mexico by his family when he was 10 months old. Since then, he has lived in Rome, Georgia. He is married to an American citizen and they have four children who are also citizens. He served in the U.S. Army, works as a “customer service specialist” at a local car dealership, and serves as a leader in his local church. Jaime Cachua is the kind of man any country should want as a citizen and he, his wife Jennifer, and their children are the human face of the immigration crisis that must not be forgotten.
For people who seek to come to America the day after passage of a successful immigration reform, they must apply at the now-controlled border and only be admitted under terms and conditions specified by the government of the United States.
We should be grateful that so many people around the world want to come to America. However, if we allowed everyone who wanted to come to America to come, we would soon find that our country would resemble more the countries the immigrants are coming from than the country we now have. There is a limit to how many people we can assimilate into American society within a specified time period and still maintain the uniqueness of our society that acts as a magnet for people across the planet.
As we work urgently to implement immigration reform, we must pay the most careful attention to ending the disastrous abuse of adults and children by the drug cartels and human traffickers who are committing such widespread human rights abuses of those seeking entry into the United States. As long as we do not enforce our laws and protect our borders, we must assume some moral culpability for the actions of the human jackals and the heinous abuses they are inflicting on those seeking to enter our country illegally.
Finally, we should remember that all of us are the descendants of immigrants unless we are Native Americans. And all of the immigrant groups that have come to America have enriched our culture with their unique contributions to our vocabulary, music, cuisine, etc. How much more vibrant is American culture as a result of our fellow Americans of, for example, Irish, Italian, Asian, Polish, and African-American origin?
The genius of the American melting pot is that E Pluribus Unum (“out of many, one”) is true and we can all be proud of our immigrant origins, celebrating our various backgrounds as “hyphenated” Americans, understanding that we should put the emphasis on the right part of the designation—“American.” Which is not based on any ethnicity or origin, but on allegiance to a revolutionary set of principles and beliefs set out in the remarkable Declaration of Independence.
We must always remember that America is still the only country in the world not based on blood or ethnicity but on allegiance to America’s founding principles. Anybody can become an American in a way that someone cannot become a Frenchman, a German, or a Japanese.
Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.
Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” and in his weekly column for CP.
