Democrats’ inaction on immigration is coming home to roost | Jim Fossel
One thing we should all be able to agree on when it comes to this country’s immigration laws, regardless of whether you’re conservative, liberal, a nationalist or leftist, is that they’re broken. There have been many attempts to fix them over the years and they’ve all failed. Current Secretary of State Marco Rubio spearheaded just such an attempt in 2013, but has shifted to the right since then. While that may seem hypocritical and opportunistic to you if you’re looking at it from the left, in fact it’s not at all. Having failed to reform the laws, he began to advocate for enforcing them as-is — and getting even tougher with them. You see, for many decades, regardless of the party or administration, there’s been a certain expectation about our immigration laws, both at home or abroad: that we essentially won’t enforce them. During his second term, Donald Trump has upended that expectation, and it’s caused widespread consternation on the left, all over the country. Here, Democrats and progressives have decried his enhanced enforcement, even here in Portland, where they were outraged by the detention of an undocumented immigrant in the driveway of a school. It’s not clear to me why the driveway of a school (it wasn’t even in the building) should be hallowed grounds sheltered from immigration enforcement. Federal, and state, laws apply everywhere. The prior policy that exempted certain places from immigration enforcement, including churches and schools, never made much sense. If someone did drugs, or showed up with an illegal firearm, at a church or at a school, they ought to be arrested, right? Those are crimes, right? The state or federal government can enforce them everywhere. You’re secure in your own home absent a warrant, but all public places are pretty much fair game. So, why should we restrain federal law enforcement from enforcing immigration laws the same way they do with other federal laws? The answer — and it’s the same reason South Korea was outraged diplomatically by an immigration sweep at an auto plant — is that many people don’t even really consider our immigration laws to be real laws. They put them at, or below, the level of jaywalking or minor speeding: things that everyone does and that law enforcement ought to rightfully ignore. There are a couple of problems with this theory, however. The first is that, even though you can believe whatever you want, it doesn’t make much sense to be upset about the federal government (or any government) enforcing the laws. We live in a democracy. You elect politicians, they write the laws, cops enforce them. You’re not exempt from them just because you voted against the politicians. Just ask everyone who hated the measures taken during the pandemic. The laws are apply to you regardless of who you voted for or whether you like them or not. That’s why it’s important to be a well-informed citizen and show up. Another problem is that Democrats had every opportunity to rewrite the immigration laws however they liked, both when Barack Obama was president and when Joe Biden was president. The only reason they couldn’t do anything was thanks to internal party politics. So, they didn’t manage to pass a pathway to citizenship for people who were brought here illegally by their parents, Dreamers. However, they also couldn’t manage, or didn’t bother to try, to codify protections for places like schools and churches. They didn’t bar immigration officers from wearing masks. They didn’t do much to make the immigration laws more fair or more clear when they were in power. Indeed, Barack Obama dramatically ramped up deportations as president, and there was nary a voice raised in complaint on the left. To be sure, when immigration officers make mistakes — like deporting someone who was here legally — they ought to be held accountable. That’s perfectly fair and reasonable, and it’s happened numerous times under the Trump administration. What’s not is terrorist attacks against ICE facilities, violent protests that prevent federal law enforcement from doing their jobs, or local officials hindering them. If Democrats really cared about our broken immigration system, they would’ve fixed it when they had the majority. Instead, they preferred to continue to use it as a political cudgel against Republicans to rile up their base. Donald Trump is only able to harshly enforce immigration laws because Democrats found it politically inconvenient to rewrite them, and now they’re paying the price. Finally, decades of inaction from them are coming home to roost.