The Best Option for Immigration: Legalize Them All!
By TANYA GOLASH-BOZA
Tanya Maria Golash-Boza is an Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas.
October 1, 2010
The United States currently faces a tremendous challenge with the presence of eleven million people who do not have the legal right to be here. Some of these eleven million undocumented migrants have been in this country for decades; many have U.S. citizen children, spouses, and parents. Many remember no home other than the United States. There are three general policy responses to this challenge: 1) Deport them all; 2) Attrition through enforcement; and 3) Legalization for all. Let’s briefly consider each of these.
Deport Them AllThe first policy option of deporting all undocumented migrants carries an astronomical human and economic cost. The Center for American Progress estimated the cost $200 billion. This figure, which does not take into account the economic impact on U.S. businesses and the U.S. Treasury associated with the loss of productive labor and taxes, amounts to more than three times the annual budget of the Department of Homeland Security of $60 billion and eight times the annual budget of the Department of Justice of $24 billion. More shocking than the economic cost are the social costs. Mass deportation would require raiding schools, homes and worksites, would tear apart families, and would be yet another stain on the history of the United States.
Attrition Through EnforcementThis approach is not working. Instead of preventing undocumented migrants from working, more stringent systems lead to more criminal organizations becoming involved in the production of fake documents that migrants can use to work. Attrition through enforcement does not work in large part because there are too many people in the United States that do not want it to work. These people include employers who depend on undocumented migrants for their labor power, the family members of undocumented migrants, and advocates for immigrants that recognize the valuable contributions of immigrants to our society. Instead of leading to massive self-deportation, attrition through enforcement exacerbates human rights violations in the United States.
Legalization for AllLegalization for all is the approach advocated by immigrant rights groups throughout the United States. It is the most cost-effective approach: the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the legalization program proposed in 2006 would have cost $54 billion, yet would have generated $66 billion in revenue. More importantly, a path to legalization for all undocumented migrants would greatly reduce the human rights violations generated through the current policy of attrition through enforcement.
Legalization for all would improve wages and working conditions for everyone, as unscrupulous employers would not be able to take advantage of the undocumented status of migrants. Legalization for all would make the United States safer by allowing all undocumented migrants to come out of the shadows and obtain proper documentation to work, to drive vehicles, and to participate in U.S. society. Legalization for all would allow U.S. citizens to remain with their families and not to feel threatened by the possibility of deportation. Legalization for all would take us a long way towards fulfilling the human rights of migrants in the United States. Legalization for all is our best policy option.
Read the full article at:
http://stopdeportationsnow.blogspot.com/-------------------------------------------
October 6, 2010
When They Call You "Illegal"
Words, Names and Meg Whitman
By ALISA VALDES-RODRIGUEZ
Republican strategist and communications expert Frank Luntz is the man who started the right-wing’s habit of controlling the message through a deliberate selection of emotionally evocative words, followed by their unrelenting repetition in the public sphere. You will perhaps recall that he wrote the 2007 bestseller called Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear.
One of the most brilliant strategies the Luntz camp has crafted in recent years is the linguistic attack upon undocumented immigrants, who have served as a perfect scapegoated distraction from the wrongdoing of bankers and mammoth corporations. Though the “crime” of being in the United States without proper documentation is technically a misdemeanor (buying prescription drugs from Canada is a stiffer crime, yet no one calls the denizens of retirement homes in Detroit “illegals”), undocumented migrants here are regularly called “illegals” by nearly everyone in the media, including progressive talk show hosts such as Randi Rhodes and Stephanie Miller whose moral compasses are generally otherwise excellent. It is maddening, and magnificent, the right-wing bit that goes unnoticed in our progressive mouths.
By referring repeatedly to an entire group of people as “illegals” day after day, we not only strip them of their basic humanity (just as is done in India with “untouchables”), we relegate them to a permanent second-class status and attach to their existence and faces a visceral emotional reaction of fear among the masses that they are dangerous criminals — even though nothing could be father from the truth. Studies show that in cities with large immigrant populations, crime goes down; immigrant children do better in school than their domestic-born peers, etc.
To rob someone of her name and to replace it with the unjustifiable mantle of “criminal alien” is to dehumanize her; to dehumanize a person, as history has well shown us time and time again, allows the rest of us to do unspeakably inhumane things to her.
Read the full article at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/valdes10062010.html