Since 2016, federal government shutdowns have become the fashion of the day in the governance of our country. This is because our legislators have grown so staunch in their stances that they altogether excised discourse and compromise from the political process. Consequently, the only option for the minority party to prevent being railroaded by the majority party is to force a shutdown. When Democrats were in charge, Republicans had to rely on this tactic. Now, the tables have turned. This is a puerile game at its finest, and an undemocratic rule-by-fiat at its vilest. In this game, both sides routinely behave like trite little “Schemers.” There is nothing new under the Capitol dome.
But this time, the shutdown fight is different in kind. We are not sparring over taxes and entitlements, now; we are deciding whether to sustain or destroy the lives of countless young immigrants, whom we call “Dreamers.” That this impasse long remained unbreakable shows how evenly our citizenry is divided over this issue. I argue that the Dreamers should be granted the legal right permanently to reside in this country.
These youngsters were brought to the US illegally by their parents a few decades ago, when they were under the age of consent. Since then, they had grown up here, they have studied here, and now they are making their living here. To consider rending them from whence they have rooted and deporting them to birthplaces they know nothing about is inane. Indeed, it is inhumane.
Say, you have a twenty-something daughter in law school. Her future is bright. Now, imagine that one day, a cadre of armed, masked men abducted her from the dormitory, and unceremoniously rendered her to a dysfunctional, Third World country, where rape and rampage trump rules and regulations. As a parent, you would be devastated. You and your family, friends, neighbours, and congressional representatives would pursue every possible avenue to reverse this injustice. It is no less heart wrenching to think of a deported Dreamer in a similar situation.
The proponents of deportation are eager to label these youngsters as “illegals” or “criminals.” Sure, those labels could be legally justified: one who unlawfully crossed our borders criminally violated our immigration laws. And the just deserts for this crime are detention and deportation.
But I contend that in law, as in life, there are scant few situations in which something could be deemed wholly right or patently wrong. Labelling of Dreamers is no different. If a two-month-old baby was brought across our southern border illegally upon her mum’s bosom thirty odd years ago, and the baby grew up to become a law-abiding schoolteacher, is this young woman to be branded a “criminal”? Well, it depends.
Narrowly viewed, her unlawful entry into the country is a criminal violation of the immigration laws. But if we widen our gaze a trifle, it is plain to see that she personally committed no crimes, at all. And to hang a crime round her neck, we must show culpability. Pray tell. What mens rea and actus reus do we ascribe to a suckling? Or is our society now meting out punishments to a child for the crimes of the parent? No, we ought not hold her accountable for this long-forgotten crime. Not only is she free of culpability, she is a load-bearing member of our society. So, why disrupt a productive, young life? Why now, after all this time?
A large number of these migrants likely arrived decades ago, at the height of the Reagan-Bush era retrenchments. The federal government’s border protection service failed properly to secure our border then, because we, The People, did not see fit to fund the service, adequately. Instead, we opted to lavish upon ourselves sundry tax breaks. Had we turned the migrants away at the border, as we should have, we would not be in this quagmire, now. Having negligently secured our border, we the citizens are at least as culpable morally as those migrants who unlawfully crossed it. And if we are to develop the habit of deporting the guilty to savage locales, we have an abundance of despicable citizens to target: Bernie Madoff, Larry Nassar, et al.
In a just society, wagering lives as chips in a political poker showdown might well amount to a crime against humanity. If it were so, we the voters would be the arch-criminals, for it was we who commanded our elected representatives to perpetrate this abomination upon our fellow human beings. If we are doomed to be Schemers who must divert ourselves with myriad brinkmanship in this infinite, zero-sum game of politics, let us at least have the decency to restrict ourselves to play with rhetoric and logic, not with families and lives of Dreamers. These youngsters have lived amongst us for a very long time, and they have demonstrated their worth by contributing to our society. Discarding them would bring us no treasures, no pleasures. We are a people who reflexively save lost kittens, without a moment’s reflection; callousness is contrary to our nature. We must, therefore, immediately stop this cruel practice of using lives as political bargaining chips. Time for deliberation and dawdling had long passed. Let us grant the Dreamers the stability and the dignity they so deserve.
My position is not founded on political persuasion or legal reasoning. It is the inevitable outcome of an application of the principles of logic, decency, and compassion to a national issue that splits us so closely that we are unable to decide it, one that propels us so far apart that it does violence to our sense of community. This, then, is a common-sense sentiment of a common man, a judgement call of an ordinary citizen.