OUR HOUSE IS NOT NICE

Our house has too many there,
And the residents don’t seem to care.

It is crowded and dirty, and so full of cheats
That often and anywhere the police that one meets

May be extortionists, rather than arms of the law,
And our house is poor for the lot that we draw.

So we’ll come to your house because it is nice,
Though you may not want us we’ll come in a thrice.

We have too many priests who tell us to bear
Children, more children, now answer our prayer.

Though in our house there are too many to feed,
We’d rather be in your house than find us in need.

We’ll live in your house because it is so pretty,
Though we’ll change it to make it look like our city.

We’ll bring with us the flaws and flavor of our people,
And we’ll bring our own speech and our own church steeple.

When you say that you did not ask us to stay,
We’ll claim we had the right from the very first day.

We’ll grow arrogant and rude, and we’ll have so much pride
In our race and our right to keep us inside.

We’ll demand a place be set for our food at your table,
And we’ll make a mockery of your life and of your freedom a fable.

In the end we’ll stay whether you like it or not;
In the end we’ll not remember the days that we fought.

For the years we’ll have lived in your blessed lovely land,
We’ll both forget we’re not one, with the hourglass sand.
John C. Lincoln

Immigration is one of our great national debates at the outset of the second decade of the third millennium. I am uniquely qualified to comment on problems of immigration because I came from a third-world country (Mexico) to America as a young man. I was an immigrant in a sense. The difference in my case was that I was coming home. We should not view illegal immigration as merely our problem. It is a worldwide problem, but it is really rather simple: the poor of the world are coming to the lands of the rich. I too was poor, and I too came to the land of the rich. The advantage I had was, through the accident of birth, I was entitled to come. I was born in California, but grew up in Mexico. Had I been born in Mexico, and grew up in California, I could have been required to return to Mexico. There are millions upon millions of human souls upon this earth who would that they had been born in California, or anywhere in the United States. There are about seven billion people on this earth. I am reasonably certain that about six billion of them would like to come to America. You can argue whether that is the accurate figure; perhaps I am mistaken by a billion or two. The principle is the same. If we opened our borders to all comers, we would be inundated. When I came back to the United States in 1965, the country’s population was about 194 million. In 2013, it is about 310 million. Our population has increased, in less than fifty years, by more than the population of France, Germany, Great Britain or Italy. Essentially, in less than fifty years, we have added another good sized country to our nation.

When will we have too many people? We learn to cope with what we have, but that does not mean that the size of our population is ideal. If it had been possible to limit the U.S. population, I would have limited it at about two hundred million, which is about what it was when I returned to the U.S. I have always tried to be responsible personally. Good citizenship requires conforming your personal conduct to what is good for the nation, and even what is good for humanity in general. Overpopulation was a concern when I was young, just as it is now. My wife and I had only one child for years, then decided to have another. I have often thought that, had I to do it over again, I might have as many children as my parents did. I was second to the youngest of seven children. If my parents had stopped at only two children, I would not be alive.

Personal responsibility has its limitations. Doing the right thing sometimes gains one a feeling of pride, and self-satisfaction, and nothing else. One should always conduct oneself in accordance with the Rule of Universality. The Rule dictates that one’s conduct is bad if the effect would be bad if everyone so conducted themselves, and good if the effect would similarly be good. It is, however true that the Rule of Universality is not universally true. That is, like every generality, it has its exceptions. It does no good to act responsibly to limit the size of one’s family if most other people do not also exercise restraint. Mom used to say that all the wrong people were having children. I never thought of Mom as a racist when I was growing up, but then I had no reason to think about it. I was growing up in Mexico, and the closest contact I had with racism was the other kids calling me “Gringo.” I think I was aware of the American civil rights movement, but I was more concerned with taking Cuba away from Castro than with what was happening in the U.S. One cannot serve every good cause. We live in a world as full of tears and sorrow, as of smiles and joy. Every evil begets a corresponding movement to reduce or diminish it. I assume that my lack of concern and involvement in the American civil rights movement was because of my youth, and because I was not in the U.S. Mostly, however, I think it was because I had bigger fish to fry. Trying to defeat communism in the Americas singlehandedly, when I was no more than fourteen years old, was, to put it mildly, unrealistic. Nevertheless, I was full of good deeds. They were just a little more ambitious than most.

In a broad sense, Mom was right that all the wrong people were having children. In general, the poor countries of the world have higher population growth rates than the rich countries. When I came back to the United States, the population growth rate in Mexico was 3.5%. Those who could least afford bigger families were, and still are, the ones having them. I have often heard the attack from advocates of immigration that attempts to limit immigration are racist. This is nothing but name calling. If we had twelve million illegal immigrants from Canada, they might be more welcome than twelve million from Latin America. Admittedly, some Americans might have racial motives in preferring immigrants from the North instead of the South. Mostly, however, Canadian immigrants would be more tolerated for two reasons. One reason is language, the other is culture. In a sense, these reasons are the same because language is a significant part of culture. One of the great strengths of the United States has been a common language. When I traveled in Europe, I was impressed by the multitude of languages within relatively small geographical areas. In the U.S., we can travel for over two thousand miles without being required to learn a different language. It has been said that the U.S. is weak in foreign languages. Be that as it may, within the U.S. any such weakness is a reflection of the strength that is a common language. I love languages, but a nation loses some of the glue that holds it together if it loses a common language.
If I change the hypothetical a little and suppose that the U.S. would receive twelve million illegal immigrants from French speaking Canada instead of from English speaking Canada, Americans’ tolerance for the influx might change. (I realize that there are probably not that many French Canadians, but let us not destroy the hypothetical.) It might look more like the level of tolerance, or intolerance, with which the Spanish speaking influx has been received. The culture of the immigrants would be similar to existing American culture. Many Americans (including me) have French ancestry. The racial characteristics would be similar to a majority of Americans. There would be no Middle and South American indigenous racial characteristics, which make the Latin American immigrants obvious. There would be no Aztecs, Mayas, or Incas, or any of the many other indigenous racial groups from Latin America. Yet there would still be the same kind and degree of American antipathy towards illegal immigrants who arrogated to themselves the “right” to come to America, and the “right” to speak a language other than English. The major antipathy towards illegal immigrants is not racial, it is cultural. It is also a reflection of the fact that we are a nation not of people but of laws. We naturally recoil from those who claim the “right” to break our laws.
The same analogy could be made for illegal Spanish immigration. There is a significant part of the population of Mexico that is more or less pure-blooded Spanish. That is, people who are descended from the Spanish rather than from indigenous peoples (Amerindians) or a mixture of indigenous and Spanish (mestizos). That a significant proportion of the Mexican population is “white” is obvious from Spanish language television. To keep up my Spanish, I sometimes watch Spanish language soap operas. They are just about as bad as English language soap operas. The Spanish language soap operas are, almost without exception, “lily white.” Almost none of the actors on their soaps appear to have any indigenous racial background. It is almost as if in Latin America, if you have brown skin you cannot apply to be on television. Mexico and some other Latin American countries have large percentages of population with indigenous blood. Even in Mexico, which supplies the majority of our illegal immigration, there is a substantial part of the population with no indigenous racial admixture. The CIA’s World Factbook states Mexico’s “white” population as 9% of the total population of about 113,000,000. That would mean that about 10,000,000 of the total are “white.” If we were being flooded with “white” illegal Mexican immigrants, Americans would react more or less in the same way as they react to “brown” illegal immigrants of indigenous or mestizo descent. The reasons the reaction and the level of intolerance would be the same are the same as with mestizo immigration: language and culture. The language would still be different from English: Spanish. The culture would still be different from American culture: Spanish-American.
The reason we do not see “white” illegal Mexican immigrants is because they are all busy starring on Spanish language soap operas. Seriously, we do not see “white” Mexican immigrants because they tend to form the upper class in Mexico. They have no need to emigrate. There are not enough of them to flood the U.S. with the volume of illegal immigrants we have experienced anyway. I have heard estimates of between ten and fifteen million illegal immigrants residing in the U.S. currently. The “white” Mexican population is not numerous enough to have provided any significant proportion of that total.
There is admittedly one reason why the analogies of French Canadian and Spanish Mexican mass, illegal immigration are not entirely analogous to Mexican mestizo immigration. That is the “unwashed masses” effect. It is an unfortunate fact of life that one who is not poor does not want a poor man to come live next door. It is also true that peoples do not normally emigrate unless hardships force them to do so. People came, and continue to come, to America for a better life. This is certainly true of the mass, illegal immigration to the U.S. in the last decades. When I lived in Mexico in 1965 and before, times were hard. We ate little most of the time, and nothing some of the time. As hard as life was for us, it was worse for some of our neighbors. There was the neighbor who lived in a closet, and the family whose father was sick for lack of food, and asked us to share food we did not possess. We would have shared what food we had, although we were still children. In fact, on some occasions, we did share. I can remember making pancakes, and serving them to one of the other boys in the neighborhood. Pancakes were not a Mexican dish, and he probably had not eaten them before, but he was happy to have them. He was probably like me in that he would eat about anything. Beggars cannot be choosers. And the pancakes were not all that bad anyway.
I suspect that times are worse in Mexico now than they were when I was there. When your family is hungry, you go where there is food. That is the simple explanation why the U.S. is being inundated with millions of illegal immigrants from south of the border. The fact that it is the poor that are coming to America, means that they are not educated, cultured, or well-mannered. That the immigrants are poor does not mean they lack potential. In their second and third generation, they may produce some of the leaders of America. In their first generation, however, they cannot speak English, and many of them would not if they could. When a citizen goes into a store and the clerk does not speak English, it is offensive. When I lived in Mexico, I spoke Spanish. I claimed no right to speak my native language in a foreign country. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Mexican, Amerindian, illegal immigrants do generate more resentment than would my hypothetical French Canadian or “white” Mexican illegal immigrants. The reason is simply that the “brown” Mexicans who take so many risks to come north are poor. Probably because of their poverty, they are rude and uncaring, and lack some of the basic social graces. There was a time several years ago when there seemed to be a rumor in the illegal, immigrant community that if you filed all of your U.S. income tax returns, you would be eligible for citizenship. Someone opened a tax preparation service in our office complex. We were inundated with illegal immigrants having their taxes done. There were many young families, including babies in diapers. The parents would change the babies’ diapers in the car and leave the dirty diapers in the parking lot. This despite the fact that there was a dumpster about fifty feet away at the end of the parking lot. We would not have liked the diapers in the office dumpster but it would have been better than being thrown on the ground in the parking lot. Illegal immigrants are, at best, guests in our country. When you are a guest in someone else’s house, you do not discard your used diapers on their grounds. If you do, you should not be surprised that your host will not like you, and will not invite you to stay. Admittedly, that is only anecdotal evidence, but I am reasonably sure that kind of behavior was not just limited to my office complex.
The irony in the poor behavior of many illegal immigrants is that they do not come from an impolite culture. I cannot speak for other Spanish American nations besides Mexico. My acquaintance is with Mexico because I grew up there. Mexicans do not have a national characteristic of rudeness. I think the opposite is true. In their formal relationships, they are very courteous. They are respectful of professionals. When I had to do some legal business in Mexico for a client several years ago, I needed to communicate with the Mexican police regarding a traffic accident. They were invariably courteous and very formal. Even though I grew up in Mexico, I did not form any opinion of a Mexican national characteristic for courtesy because, naturally, my interactions were with other kids.  Kids are kids, wherever they may be. I think now that it is probably more the upper classes in Mexico that tend to behave with formality and courtesy. Be that as it may, by the same token that Americans tend to informality, Mexicans tend to formality. Even the Spanish language tends to formality. English has lost its formal form of address. A long time ago, “thou” was the informal form of address, and “you” was the formal. Now, “thou” is archaic, and “you” is used without distinction for both formal and informal address. In other words, in English everything is informal. In Spanish, “usted” is the formal form, and “tu” is the informal. It is not appropriate or socially acceptable to use the informal “tu” when addressing a stranger.
Americans do not use racism as a sword to attack illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants do, however, use racism as a shield to defend illegal immigration. It is commonplace to see “Hispanics” use racial terms and strategies. They openly refer to themselves as, La Raza” (the Race). One of my grandmothers was German. I do not think it would be appropriate to refer to myself as a member of “The Race.” Nor do I think it is appropriate for Hispanics to refer to themselves that way. The word Hispanic is itself at once a racial term and a misnomer. In racial terms, there are very few Hispanics in the U.S. Although it has become common to refer to Mexicans and Central and South Americans as Hispanics, most of them are not. A Hispanic is properly someone from the Iberian Peninsula. That means Spaniards and Portuguese, and their descendants. I have not seen any Portuguese illegal immigrants, nor have I seen any Spaniards. Mostly, I see Mexican mestizo illegal immigrants. Some of them may even be pure Amerindians: Aztecs, Mayans, Zapotecs, Mixtecs, and people from any one of the many other Mexican indigenous tribes. Why these immigrants, who are at most of mixed Hispanic descent, and at least not of Hispanic descent at all, should be referred to as Hispanic is curious. About the best that can be said for the misnomer is that their common language is almost exclusively Hispanic, which is Spanish. They are, therefore, more linguistically than racially Hispanic. Admittedly, any shorthand description of a diverse racial group is likely to be imprecise. We do not want to end up with a description that is long and cumbersome. We could call the illegal immigrants from south of the border Spanish Speaking, Spanish, Amerindian, and Mixed Spanish/Amerindian Immigrants. Or we could call them Spanish, Spanish Dominated Native American Tribal Groups, and Mixed Ethnicities thereof. Obviously, either of those references would be unnecessarily accurate, overly didactic, and just plain annoying. Yet Hispanic seems oddly inappropriate because most of our unwelcome guests are not Hispanic at all.
I suggest that a more appropriate shorthand reference for our immigrants, legal and illegal, and our own citizens who came, or whose ancestors came, from south of our border, would be Spanish Americans. Spanish refers to a shared language; it also refers to the Spanish racial mixture. Our citizens from south of the border are Americans in the same sense that I am an American. The immigrants, illegal and otherwise, from south of the border are Americans in the sense that they come from the Americas, North (Mexico), Central, and South. Thus the reference is no longer entirely racial, which is inaccurate. Rather, it is more linguistic and geographical than racial.
Part of the American objection to illegal immigration arises from the Spanish Americans’ failure to assimilate. Language is only the most obvious facet of this lack of assimilation. Immigrants have always assimilated and the current wave of illegal immigration from south of our border will, in the end, be no different. They will assimilate sooner if we do not adopt policies that discourage assimilation. We should not educate Spanish speaking children in Spanish. Immigrants have always had to work hard to become Americans. Education for all children in the U.S. should be in English. We can provide English classes to allow children who do not speak English to catch up sooner. That they will have to catch up is inevitable. We should be careful to limit the amount of instruction in Spanish. The longer they are taught in Spanish, the longer we will delay the day when they will be caught up.
Assimilation of the present wave of Spanish Americans will take longer than usual. The wave is large and ongoing, and there has been no time for assimilation. Second and third generation Mexican-Americans are much more American than they are Mexican. Immigrants assimilate partly because it is in their interests to assimilate. They come here not only because it is a rich country but also because it is a great country. Part of what makes it great is its culture of honesty, integrity, and public safety. In the U.S., bribes and corruption are not tolerated but criminalized. They are considered a serious matter. In the U.S., life has importance, and most can expect to go on about their business without fear of physical harm. Mexico is currently racked by a drug war that has killed tens of thousands. I had to go to a Mexican border town several years ago to bring a little girl’s financial award back to the U.S. Her entire family had been killed in a motor vehicle accident in Mexico, and she had been injured in the same accident. She had received an award of pesos as compensation for her injuries, and for the loss of her parents. I needed to get the pesos converted to dollars and move the money from a Mexican bank to an American bank. I had a local Mexican attorney helping me get the pesos exchanged for dollars. We were waiting in an exchange house, and I was thinking of the very bad reputation that Mexican border towns had acquired for violence, and the fact that I was involved in a substantial, financial transaction in one of them. I was not afraid, but I could not help being at least mildly concerned. The Mexican attorney seemed to be making small talk, and said that the police station was just across the street on the far corner of the intersection. That immediately made me feel more secure, until he followed up that comment with the additional remark that just last month the chief of police had been shot and killed on that corner. I finished my business and came back across the border none the worse for wear. I would, however, be hesitant again to do business in Mexico. I do not go to Mexico anymore on vacation. That is unfortunate because a major source of income for Mexico was tourism. I suspect they are trapped in a vicious cycle. Times are bad and crime, including the drug trade, worsen. As a result, tourism declines, and times get worse still. Crime continues to increase, and tourism to decline. And so on.
It may seem inconsistent to complain of a lack of assimilation, but to demand that all illegal immigrants go home. The ideal, for many Americans is, however, just that. That legal immigrants assimilate, and that all illegal immigrants go home. The former goal is inevitable, given time. The latter goal is unachievable. To deport between ten and fifteen million illegal immigrants would require a national focus and a national effort almost equivalent to a national mobilization. That is not going to happen under any conceivable set of circumstances, regardless of the political philosophy implemented for the purpose. That fact, however, leads many people who should know better to pontificate that amnesty is the only available answer. It is not. Amnesty would only serve as an invitation to the next ten million to pour over the border. Then, this next cohort of illegal immigrants would have been here long enough that they too would “deserve” amnesty. And so on.
We must do a better job of deporting illegal immigrants, and keeping them out of the country. When the Statue of Liberty was erected, we had room for “the huddled masses.” Immigration to the land of opportunity and the land of the free was a wonderful thing for all concerned. For the immigrants “yearning to breathe free” and for the nation they helped to build. America was young. Now America has entered its middle age. The wide open frontier is gone, and the land is settled and consumed by the millions that populate it. Yes, there is room for more, but there is a price. Our resources and our open spaces are overused as it is. It is not in our national interest, and it is counter to our sense of well-being in the future, to allow the population to continue greatly to expand. We want our grandchildren to be able to enjoy the same wide open spaces and the same natural resources that we enjoyed in our youth. That cannot be because many of those spaces and resources have been consumed in our lifetimes. One of my great-grandfathers wrote a book in the late 1800’s about fishing and camping in the great outdoors. He died in the 1920’s. I wonder whether he would find any of the places he once fished and camped to be part of the great outdoors any more.
When I first came to Phoenix in 1965 the population was about 500,000. The surrounding suburb, satellite towns were correspondingly small. Some of them were merely tiny farmworkers’ settlements. Now, I can drive thirty miles and more in any direction and still be in the city. I remember the first time that I drove to Los Angeles when I had grown up. I was driving with my eldest sister, and we started to see city all around us. I commented how quickly we had made the trip, because I assumed that we were already in Los Angeles. I had no idea that we were still two hours of freeway driving away from our destination. Do we really want to live in a nation in which there are scores of cities like Los Angeles and New York City? It is human nature to become accustomed to adversity. We accept the huge urbanization of America because there is nothing we can do about it. It is a fact of life. Yet, there is something we can do about it. We cannot reverse it, but we can do much to prevent the cancer from spreading. One important step that we can take is not encourage more illegal immigration. Most of the growth in the U.S. population is because of immigration. Most immigration is illegal. Amnesty for the vast numbers of illegal aliens already in the U.S. is attractive for a number of reasons. One of the presidential candidates lost a lot of support for commenting that people who did not support educating illegal aliens did not have a heart. He was partly right. It is very much a matter of the heart. Americans are a generous people. Time and again, we have come to the aid of other peoples. Mexicans come to the U.S. and raise their families. Their children grow up here, go to school here, and know no other home but America. Then, if they are caught, they are required to return to what is to them a foreign country. They may not even speak much Spanish. That is a predicament with which I and many other Americans can sympathize.
It is emotionally easy to say that, in the abstract, illegal immigrants must return home. It is much more difficult to say that someone must go home when you know them individually. Illegal immigrants have faces; they are people, and they are friends and neighbors. They are kind of like lawyers. A lot of people hate lawyers, but the same people tend to like their own lawyer. In the same way, a lot of people hate illegal immigrants, but they may like the ones they actually know. The reason is simple; there is no reason not to like them individually.
The problem with amnesty is not that it is an unrealistic answer to the problem of the millions of illegal immigrants already in the U.S. It is, if we could ignore its impact on future illegal immigration, probably the only realistic answer. The objection that it rewards lawbreakers, and is therefore, morally repugnant, is a valid objection. The problem with amnesty is that it will inevitably encourage more illegal immigration. When the nation was younger, we had room for more millions. Now, we have too many millions already. Now, we risk becoming an overcrowded nation, and losing our open spaces when we have lost too many already. Now, we must, with a tear, shut the Golden Door. Simply put, we could accept the fait accompli, but we cannot accept the consequences of our acceptance. We could accept the millions that are already here were they not the harbinger of many more. Surely, we cannot realistically deport millions of people. What we can do is deport as many as we can, and deny benefits to the rest so that many will go home on their own. The best we can do is reverse the flow so that more are leaving than coming in. If we want to preserve our open spaces and our natural resources, we must achieve at least that.
We must also reverse the flow of millions to preserve our national character as an English speaking nation. To have a common language is a very important component of nationhood. A nation that speaks two languages is a nation that answers to two masters. America has and should continue to accept many cultures. The fire under the melting pot must, however, not be permitted to go out. America comes from many, but has become one. Let us not reverse the process by a fanatic promotion of multiculturalism. Each year when as a lawyer the County Bar sends me my dues statement, I am dismayed and disgusted by the number of race-based bar organizations listed. There is an Asian American Bar, a Black Bar, a Black Women Lawyer’s Association, and a Hispanic Bar. There is no White Bar, or European Bar. I am a European mongrel. My forebears were English, Scotch, Welsh, French, Dutch, and German. So why not a Germanic bar, a Gallic bar, or a Celtic bar? The reason is because those of us of European descent do not look upon ourselves as German or French or English. We regard ourselves as Americans. It is time to leave the black and brown, yellow and red behind; it is time that all Americans think of themselves as Americans first. When some Americans set themselves apart by race, other Americans are more likely to set them apart for the same reason. There was a time for minority races in America to band together for protection. That time is past. Now, self-identification by race is more divisive than unifying. Quit it already! We are all Americans. Let us all behave as Americans. If I am required to fill out a form that includes a blank for race, I state my race as American. We should not allow each other, and we should not allow our government, any longer to divide us.
So what then should our policy be toward illegal immigration? Some say that we must fence the entire border, and confidently assert that will solve the problem. There are two defects in the argument. One is that a fence may be better than nothing, but it really is not very effective in keeping illegal immigrants out. The high cost of a 2,000 mile border fence is not worthwhile compared to the relatively minuscule cost of ladders. The only way a continuous border fence would be worth the exorbitant cost would be if it would effectively cut off the flow of illegal immigration. It will not do that. A continuous border fence would give too many Americans a false sense of security. It could not be effective, yet many might declare victory and quit the fight.
The second defect with the argument for a border fence is that it does nothing about the “interior immunity” problem. By “interior immunity” I mean that once illegal immigrants have successfully crossed the border and reached the interior of the country, they are virtually immune from apprehension and deportation. Attempts to round up illegal immigrants en masse are invariably met with cries of racism and complaints of civil rights violations. Those complaints are really nothing more than an assertion of a right to come to America, and to remain once the hazards of the border have been successfully negotiated. The only grounds for a “right” to come to America and to remain once here are humanitarian. The humanitarian grounds are strong, but we cannot grant a right based upon those grounds. Were we to do so, we would lose our open spaces, and we would lose our country. There are simply far too many people on Earth who would qualify for immigration to America on humanitarian grounds.
The only effective way to avoid the problem of interior immunity is to find ways to apprehend large numbers of illegal immigrants. The sheriff in Maricopa county has a national reputation for rounding up illegal immigrants. When he does his “sweeps” however, he catches a minuscule number of illegal immigrants compared to the vast numbers here. Such attempts are in actuality nothing more than nibbling at illegal immigration around the edges. Laws against the hiring of illegal immigrants are not effectively enforced, and many of the provisions of state laws that seek more effectively to deter illegal immigration have been struck down by courts. The main ground of invalidation of the laws is that immigration is a matter for the federal government. But, the federal government does little or nothing about illegal immigration. It leaves the border states, who must suffer the brunt of the illegal immigration, helpless because the federal government will do nothing, and will not allow the states to do anything.
We must effectively address the problem of interior immunity if we are effectively to limit illegal immigration. In order to do that, we must curb some of the fanaticism and ulterior motives with which our civil rights laws are applied. We must admit the obvious. Daily, there are a number of men of obviously Mexican or Central American descent standing around outside Home Depot. There should be nothing wrong with allowing peace officers to ask them for their immigration status. Some may indeed be citizens; others may not be citizens, but may be here legally. Many, however, may not speak English, or they may speak little English, and only with a heavy Spanish accent. In that case, further inquiry into their immigration status would be warranted. The application of the criminal law is based on probable cause. When an officer has probable cause to believe a citizen has committed a crime, the officer is entitled, indeed required, to arrest the individual. The color of a man’s skin does not establish probable cause that he is in the U.S. illegally. It does not provide probable cause for an arrest even when it is combined with loitering at Home Depot to obtain employment as a day laborer. When combined with the fact that illegal immigrants are known to hang around Home Depot to solicit employment, it should however allow law enforcement to inquire further. It is not a substantial interference with the rights of any citizen to be asked if he is a citizen. I grew up in Mexico. I speak fluent Spanish. I would not object to an officer asking me if I am a citizen. I realize that it is unlikely that an officer would ask me, because I am of obviously Northern European descent. If I were in Mexico, and if Mexico objected to waves of American immigration, I would not find it objectionable if a Mexican peace officer asked me if I were a citizen of Mexico. The reason illegal immigrants object to the question is that they object to the answer.
One’s race cannot provide probable cause that one is in the country illegally. We have many citizens of Spanish American descent. When combined with other more reliable indicators, however, race can be part of a probable cause determination. If an officer sees a white man hanging around Home Depot waving at pickup trucks, should the officer ask that man if he is a citizen? He could. If the man answered the officer in French, or with a heavy French accent, the officer might have probable cause to inquire further. The difference is that we are not experiencing enormous waves of French Canadian illegal immigration, at least not in Arizona. If we were, the response should be the same as with illegal immigration from south of the border. The officer could, and should, ask the French speaker for proof of citizenship. (Incidentally, I admit that I only feel like deporting a Canadian if I am playing tennis with him and he makes a bad line call.)
The U.S. constitution allows the police to establish roadblocks to catch drunk drivers. The U.S. Supreme court decided in 1990 that it was constitutionally permissible for police to stop cars at a “sobriety checkpoint” and briefly question the occupants in their vehicle. Michigan Dept. of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444 (1990). The Supreme Court held that Michigan had a “substantial government interest” to advance in stopping drunk driving, and that this technique was rationally related to achieving that goal. The Court also held that the impact on drivers, such as in delaying them from reaching their destination, was negligible, and that the brief questioning to gain “reasonable suspicion” similarly had a negligible impact on the drivers’ Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search. The same kind of rationale is clearly applicable to illegal immigration. An officer’s asking a man at Home Depot if he is a citizen has the same kind of negligible impact on that citizen as an officer’s asking a sober person at a sobriety checkpoint if he has had anything to drink. The “government interest’ advanced in attempting to control illegal immigration is at least as important as its interest in controlling drunk driving. Drunk driving is epidemic. So is illegal immigration. A major reason that there are legitimate arguments favoring amnesty is the scope of the problem. It is next to impossible to deport ten million illegal immigrants. As with drunk driving, it would not be permissible for police to ask people at random whether they are citizens. It would be permissible to ask that question of people in areas known to be heavily frequented by illegal immigrants.
The only way effectively to control illegal immigration is to abolish “interior immunity.” If you tell a man whose family is starving that he can bring his family to the land of milk and honey to stay, and that once past the border they are virtually immune from deportation, their incentive to cross the border is enormous. If you tell them however that they are just as likely to be caught and deported once in the interior, their incentive to cross in the first place is much diminished.
Suppose then that we can slow the raging torrent of illegal immigration to a trickle. What do we do about the illegal immigrants already here? The main reason we must deny blanket amnesty is because of its effect on future immigration. Blanket amnesty is inconsistent with defeating interior immunity. Whether we like it or not, however, we are going to be forced to accept many of the illegal immigrants that are already here. We should do that in an ordered, rather than a disordered fashion. That does mean legalizing some illegal immigrants. We should legalize some, however, only on conditions that are favorable to the national interest. First and foremost, we should legalize only those illegal immigrants who have become proficient in English. I would not set that requirement unrealistically high. I know, firsthand, what it is like to learn a second language, and that it is much more difficult for an adult to learn a second language than it is for a child. Nevertheless, the bar would, within reason, be set reasonably high. Barely adequate English would not be sufficient. Fluency would be required. A written and oral exam would be required.
It goes without saying that no criminal convictions would be allowed. A history of gainful employment while in the U.S. would be required. Serious, chronic health conditions would disqualify an illegal immigrant from citizenship. The cost of our health system is one of the costs bankrupting the nation. We should not be required to pay for the health care of citizens of other nations. It is admittedly harsh to say that an illegal immigrant with AIDS should be deported. The health system of his own country may be insufficient to afford him the necessary care. It is, however, also harsh to say that starving people should not be able to come to the land of milk and honey. No one should enjoy making that statement. It is unfortunately necessary to make hard decisions in a world of over seven billion people. I would, like to welcome everyone; we cannot do that and preserve the American Dream.
Presumably, we would require some minimum number of years that an illegal immigrant would have had to live in the U.S. in order to be eligible for legalized status. It is an unpleasant reality that we may have to grant some illegal immigrants a legalized status based upon how long they have managed to escape detection and deportation. It seems that we should not reward illegality, but our system of law includes statutes of limitation, which have that effect. The illegal immigrant has broken our laws, but even criminals have the benefit of statutes of limitation. Even a criminal who commits an armed robbery is immune from prosecution after seven years (under the Arizona statute of limitations). A man who crosses the border illegally and remains in America unlawfully so that he can feed his family is not on a par with an armed robber. If you “squat” on someone else’s land for long enough, you will be entitled to good title by what the law calls adverse possession. Perhaps we must recognize squatter’s rights for illegal immigrants. If an immigrant enters America unlawfully, and escapes detection and deportation for ten years, should he be entitled to stay? How about fifteen years? Twenty years? Whatever the number of years, at some point there must be a rule of repose. At some point, it is too late to tell any immigrant that he must go home. At some point, America will have become his home.
We should grant citizenship only to illegal immigrants especially important to the national interest. If an illegal immigrant serves honorably in our armed forces, he or she should be granted citizenship upon completion of their service to the country. Their spouse and children should also be granted citizenship. We should not, however, extend the privilege to other relatives. When we do decide to accept an illegal immigrant because it advances our national interests to do so, we should welcome them wholeheartedly.
We should not grant legal status to illegal immigrants only because they have had children in the U.S., but we should grant legal status to their children who have grown up in the U.S. The parents have arrogated to themselves a right they do not possess: they have claimed a right to enter and remain in our country against our laws. The honor of citizenship should not be granted to those who break our laws in order to obtain it. Their children are, however, innocent of illegal entry. If the only nation they have known is America, it is unfair to “return” them to the country of their parents. To the child, that country would have never been theirs, and would be foreign to them.

States should be able to enforce immigration laws. Only the Federal government can create a national policy on immigration. Only the Federal government can implement national immigration policy by passing laws. There is, however, no reason why the States should not be allowed to enforce existing Federal laws on immigration. Let the political entities who are most affected by illegal immigration do the most to prevent it. The Federal government lets the border states suffer the brunt of illegal immigration from the south because the rest of the country does not have as compelling an interest in stopping illegal immigration. The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution provides that federal law is supreme, and where it conflicts with state law, state law must yield. That should not mean that if the Federal government will not enforce the laws of the land, neither can the states.
Illegal immigration is as large a moral issue as it is a practical issue. Is it moral for America to deny hungry people who will work hard and provide needed labor, the opportunity to feed their families? Is it moral for America to break apart families by deporting parents of children who are citizens? These are not easy questions. In each case, they present moral dilemmas. In each case, the proper answer is in the affirmative. Americans are a moral and caring people. Even a moral and caring people cannot, however, carry burdens that are impossible to carry. Even a moral and caring people should not be asked to shoulder burdens that are the responsibility of others. It is impossible for America to carry the burden of the world’s seven billion people. If America is too careless to enforce its immigration laws, America will soon see too many of the seven billion on its doorstep. The breaking apart of families by the deportation of illegal immigrant parents while their citizen children stay behind is an especially heart-rending problem. Yet, it is important to ask who it was that created the problem. It is not America that created the problem. The predicament of the children is the fault of the illegal immigrant parents who came to America unlawfully to begin with. Children should not suffer for their parents’ wrongs, but sometimes it cannot be avoided. Unfortunately, children often suffer for their parents’ wrongs. A mother who commits a serious crime may be sentenced to prison, and her children denied their mother’s care. That is grossly unfair to the child, but sometimes unavoidable. I do not equate illegal entry to the country with a serious criminal offense such as grand theft. Yet there is a fair analogy to some degree. The illegal immigrant does commit a theft. It is just a theft in which there is no individual victim. The victims of the theft are the people at large. The illegal immigrant steals public resources. The tax dollars that are devoted to immigration enforcement could be more productively spent on other needs. Or they could be saved, and the taxpayers could use them more productively to address their own needs. The taxpayers pay when the illegal immigrant goes to the hospital, and they pay to educate the illegal immigrants’ children. It may be true that illegal immigration produces benefits as well as burdens. I am not going to address the debate about whether the net effect of illegal immigration is a plus or minus. Whether it is an overall benefit or burden is immaterial to the question of whether the illegal immigrant has committed a theft. The American people are entitled to decide for themselves what policies they will pursue. If a bank teller embezzles money from the bank, and is discharged as a result, there may actually be an overall benefit to the bank. The bank, given that times can be hard for banks, may profit from not having to pay severance or unemployment compensation to an employee that it might have had to lay off anyway. The benefit in that case may be more than the amount embezzled. No one would, however, question the fact, and the immorality of the embezzlement. Whether illegal immigrants provide a net benefit to America, and should be entitled to come to America, does not matter. Whether they should be entitled to come to America is simply not their decision to make.
If we allow amnesty to illegal immigrants, we should allow the same degree of benefits to legal immigrants. To say that you can break our laws, enter and remain in our country illegally, and as a result of your unlawful conduct, you will be rewarded with citizenship sends an awful message to those applicants for immigration who obey the law. They can wait years to enter the country lawfully, yet the lawbreaker will be rewarded with citizenship, and the law-abider may never be granted citizenship.
We must control illegal immigration because it will otherwise feed on itself. It is not only that amnesty opens the door to more legal immigration, because new citizens can bring their families. The more immigration there is, the greater the political constituency will be for yet more. Every amnesty produces citizens who have the right to vote. Those votes will be in favor of more amnesties. There is enough debate about immigration that the new immigrant vote will swing the elections to open the floodgates. Illegal immigration will feed upon itself, and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We cannot afford to open the floodgates. The world is too hungry and overcrowded to allow the gate to be flung open wide. Our cities are polluted, the death toll on our highways is equal to a war a year, and our national parks are overcrowded. Our arable lands are being swallowed up by parking lots and subdivisions. What lies at the heart of all this? What is the root cause? It is not the internal combustion engine. It is not the burning of fossil fuels. It is not affluence. It is people – too many people. Let us digest, let us assimilate, a generation of immigrants. Then let us close the Golden Door for awhile, and let us think very carefully how far we may later reopen it. I do not want to live in China, or India, or Japan. I want to live in America, where we have room to breathe, and where our open spaces sweeten the taste of our freedom.
Finally, we must insist that those who would receive amnesty want to become Americans. True, we cannot establish a test of the heart. We cannot apply any objective criteria to determine whether they will still regard themselves as Mexicans, or Guatemalans, or Equadorians. We can require that they take the pledge of allegiance, and that their conduct not outwardly reflect a disrespect for their new country. For instance, they should stand for the national anthem, and they should fly the flag on July Fourth and Veterans Day. It is to be expected that they will, at least in the first generation, retain a love of their old country. They would, however, be expected to reflect the same gratitude as the many generations of immigrants before them have shown for America. Mexicans, and other Spanish Americans, who come to the U.S., come to America. If they wanted to come to Mexico, they could simply stay in Mexico. They come to feed their family, which they cannot do in Mexico. They come to be safe, which barring deportation back to Mexico, they can achieve in the U.S. It is self defeating if they seek to bring Mexico with them. We can expect these things; we cannot require them. It will be left to time and the greatness of America to instill in them whatever actual allegiance they feel.