Immigration: A Political Football.

I may be wrong but I suspect the majority of people who read this blog are grandchildren, great-grandchildren or great-great grandchildren of immigrants. My father’s father was born in the Ukraine. In UK, immigration has been an issue for as long as I remember. The arrival of the SS “Empire Windrush” in 1948, carrying 492 passengers from Jamaica, marked the latest round of debate. British Caribbean people who came to Britain are referred to as the Windrush generation. Since then, emigration to the UK has been reported far more as an issue of race and colour, rather than people providing services needed by society as well as the successes such immigrants have made of their lives. Economics and culture are usually trumped by fear and hatred.

In 1992, J. K. Galbraith published “The Culture of Contentment” where he argued that the contented in society resist change when their short-term interest is at stake but that immigrants, whether legal or illegal, are welcome in first world countries when they will do the jobs and provide services that others do not want to perform. They may be janitors and cleaners, porters and cooks in offices, hospitals and schools. Presently in UK, they include nurses whose services augment those working in our overstretched NHS. They are fruit pickers, working for less than minimum wage, to help feed society. In America, life seems much the same, as “illegals” cross the Mexican border to find a better economic life and escape difficult conditions. They too work as produce pickers in the valleys of California and do many jobs that second and third generation Californians will not do.

In his recent book, “Trumpocracy”, David Frum looks at the recent history of US immigration. The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act, (DACA) permitted some individuals who entered US as minors and had remained there illegally (the Dreamers) to receive a renewable two-year of deferred action from deportation and to be eligible for a work permit. By 2017, more than 800,000 Dreamers had enrolled in the DACA programme. 

Dreamers’ lives are now in limbo. President Trump rescinded DACA in September, 2017 and told Congress to pass new immigration legislation by March 5, 2018, a deadline that has passed by without action. The White House presented an immigration reform plan to Congress that included a pathway to citizenship for as many as 1.8 million Dreamers and other illegals. The framework eliminated the visa lottery for immigrants and reduced migration into the US for extended family members of individuals already in the country. Only immediate relatives of new citizens could be sponsored.

There was also a trade-off. Congressional Democrats would have to accept a dramatic increase in restrictions on immigration in the future and approve $25 billion to fund the long promised border wall. The Democrats did not bite and it is problematical whether the Republicans in Congress would have supported the deal. Now Trump and the lawmakers have failed to reach an agreement, all Dreamers are now at risk of losing their residential status.

Frum tells the story of how during his two terms, President Obama fought hard for the DACA deal and moved the constitutional goalposts to get it done. In his first term, Congress rebuffed Obama even when Democrats held the majority. When advocates for immigrants pressed Obama to provide executive protection, he reminded them: “I’m president, not king…There’s a limit to the discretion I can show because I am obliged to execute the law. I can’t make laws by myself. That’s not how our democracy works.”

In the run-up to the 2102 election, advisers counselled the President that the Hispanic vote would be crucial to his victory. Obama signed an executive order deferring enforcement of immigration laws against people under the age of thirty who had entered the US before they were sixteen, provided they had violated no other laws. So, this cautious president reversed himself, asserting a power that he himself had previously said was unlawful. He did not have to face a test in the law courts because Congress approved DACA.

In November, 2014, the President signed another executive order, deferring action against the parents of the beneficiaries of the 2012 Order, protecting another four million “illegals.” An appellate court ruled Obama had exceeded his powers. Obama argued that Congressional inaction left him no choice but to act alone. As a constitutional scholar, Obama had to have realised how specious this argument was. Frum contends that Obama had become impatient with the restraints on his power and his supporters on immigration had become likewise.

Since 2014, immigration has remained a political football as the political parties play for votes at the cost of the illegals’ futures and Presidents Obama and Trump have played along in the search for popularity and votes. Frum’s point relates to Presidential power rather than immigration, suggesting that even the most knowledgeable President will overreach himself if Congress refuses to listen.

The coming weeks will be interesting. President Trump declared war on Muslims seeking entry to America and has damned the Mexican people as “drug dealers, criminals and rapists,” while threatening to build a border wall at the Mexican’s expense. Will he be thwarted by Congress who may well maintain its refusal to fund the Wall?

If I was an illegal immigrant in the US, had lived there for twenty years or more, was otherwise law abiding, paid my taxes and raised a law-abiding family who worked hard at school/university, I would feel betrayed if my and my family’s futures were threatened by misplaced ideology. Sadly, politicians rarely prioritise people’s lives before following ideology and their search for votes. Dreamers don’t have the vote.