U.S. immigration policies are unjust, and Arizona’s attempt to enforce these policies perpetuates the injustice. Immigration restrictions prevent peaceful and ambitious individuals and families from seeking a better life. Restrictions violate the rights of employers to hire who they please, whether they are from Colorado, India, or Mexico.
“The fundamental problem with America’s immigration system is that it forces Americans to justify to their government why they want to bring someone into the country, instead of requiring the government to justify to them why they can’t,” notes Forbes columnist Shikha Dalmia.
Legal immigration can take many years. For a cartoon depiction of this labyrinthine process, search on-line for “America’s Absurd Immigration Waiting Line.”
Local job-seekers cannot rightfully claim “first dibs” on job opportunities. Hiring the best person for the job should not be a crime, but immigration restrictions can make it so. A temporary worker program would remedy this and other problems. “A regulated channel for temporary workers would dramatically reduce the pressure on our borders, aid our economy and ease the task of our law enforcement agents inside the country,” testified former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “There is an inextricable link between … a temporary worker program and better enforcement at the border.”
Some decry amnesty for illegal immigrants as undermining “law and order.” But valid moral principles trump unjust laws. If it’s moral to apprehend illegal immigrants to maintain “law and order” was it moral in 1850 for authorities to apprehend escaped slaves under the Fugitive Slave Law?
The Daily Camera (Boulder, CO) printed a version of the above on May 22, 2010.
Here’s the cartoon depiction of America’s Absurd Immigration Waiting Line:
