The immigration reform bill

In one of my local government classes, l assigned the students to boost turnout in a downtown San Jose precinct that was overwhelmingly Latino.  A local librarian in the precinct spoke to the class, and she told us not to wear either red or blue, since those were gang colors.  Some students were dubious about the project, but they all participated, and we were rather proud of ourselves.

We went out in pairs on three Saturday mornings to register voters, and we did GOTV on election day.  Some of the people on whose doors we knocked would say, “ We can’t register, we don’t have papers.”  I had the urge to say, “Don’t tell us that; you don’t know who we are,” but I guess we didn’t look much like INS officials.

The people to whom we spoke were poor, but they were hard-working people.  They were not criminals; they were “status offenders.”  That is, they had committed no crimes except their status made them illegal.  Under the Republican demands in the House of Representatives, they will never be allowed to be citizens, because that would be “amnesty,” and conservative Republican House members are opposed to amnesty.

I feel bad for the Senators who worked to craft a bill that won overwhelming support in the Senate, but I am not all that disappointed that the Immigration Reform Bill will die.  First of all, making people wait 13 years to gain citizenship is ridiculous.  I don’t even think I’ll be here in 2026.

Secondly, the whole “border surge” is a vast pork barrel boondoggle. $46 billion will be spent in the next ten years on technology that will benefit aerospace and security companies and border states.  $7.5 billion will be set aside to build a 700 mile high-tech fence.  The proposed Senate bill waives legal requirements to get the fence built, including E.P.A. restrictions.  The Border Patrol would become the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, and, like the prison guards’ union in California, it will lobby for more.  The bill specifies how many drones will be used, and the cost of the drones will be $252 million.  This after intensive lobbying by the company that builds the drones.

My view is that if the House fails to adopt the Senate’s bill, it is probably a good thing.  I certainly support citizenship for all the immigrants who are here, but I think the price of this bill is way too high.