Sun 10 Feb 2008
I went to the Marche Migrante event this morning to meet members of the Border Angels, a group that assists immigrants who are in danger while attempting illegal border crossings. They rescue stranded, dehydrated people — apparently about 10,000 people have died recently attempting to cross the US/Mexico border.
They advocated for humane and comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship or legal residence for the 12 million people currently living without documentation in the US, as well as humane immigration policies that prevent needless deaths due to desperation to immigrate. They did not endorse a specific presidential candidate, but allowed that both Obama and Clinton have policies that are close to each other and “have some good parts, some not so good”.
Also, Guadalupe Quinn from CAUSA asked us to call our legislators to ask them to oppose SB 1080 (initially proposed by Bruce Starr , R-Hillsboro) and a similar bill in the house that requires the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles to verify social security numbers and proof of Oregon residence before issuing Driver’s licenses. These provisions force the DMV to assume a role never intended for a this state agency — immigration enforcement.
The point of issuing driver’s licenses is to improve road safety (which is a vital part of the infrastructure that supports commerce, business, transportation, etc.). The point is to keep unsafe driver’s off the road, ensure legal drivers have insurance, car registration, know the rules of the road (i.e the written test) and can drive safely (driving test). Nothing about immigration status affects driver safety.
Of the local legislators, Nancy Nathanson was the only one mentioned and she vote (rightly) against the measures. however, the senate version has made it into Ways and Means and is likely to pass unless we stop it.
This legislation is a step toward implementing Bush’s controversial REAL ID act, which some of us heard about at Rebooting Democracy’s Policy Battle Royale.
I just asked a lobbyist who works on other issues about the DMV legislation and why some dems were supporting a Republican policy objective. He said the word is that progressives in the leg fear a more draconian and oppressive ballot referendum (from the Republicans) or initiative (from anti-immigrant groups, Sizemore, the usual suspects) requiring even stricter documentation of citizenship and residency than SB 1080.
I’m pretty sure that CAUSA and the Border Angels do not agree with this decision. I think it’s important for progressives to listen to their allies, and in this case I don’t think we’re making the right choice.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
I think that any approach to immigration has to balance the real concerns about secure borders and the rule of law with the inhumanity of the current immigration laws and our economy’s dependence on immigrant labor. So, it’s quite reasonable to oppose using the DMV to enforce immigration policy. However, if we could finally get our act together as a country to pass a balanced guest worker/legalization program, then it would probably be reasonable to pass the complimentary security measures to enforce the new immigration laws. There’s nothing inherently wrong with aligning provision of government services to discourage illegal immigration, but the current immigration regime makes it unreasonable.
Sometimes I think that any change from the current system would do good. Total legalization would quickly cause catastrophic societal problems while total enforcement would devastate the economy. Either way, there’d be a tremendous cost, but we might finally be able to move forward in a reasonable direction. Immigration policy is probably the area most directly affected by the politics of polarization. Had we not been played against each other by DC politicians, we might have solved this problem long ago. Fortunately, all three presidential candidates have more reasonable policies than the current administration.