The GOP version of the DREAM Act is better than nothing. Just barely.

At CNN, Ruben Navarette praises an up-and-coming GOP version of the DREAM Act. The original version, promoted by Democrats, would give sons and daughters of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, provided they go to college or serve in the military. The GOP version apparently includes the college or military part--but not the citizenship.

But unlike the earlier version, it would not include a path to citizenship. Students could become citizens later. It's not like they'd be barred from the citizenship process. But they would have to take the initiative. It would be on them, as it should be.

As I understand it, then, all the GOP version really does is tell the sons and daughters of illegal immigrants that they won't be deported.  "We'd like to send you to Afghanistan, and if you're not killed or mutilated, maybe we'll think about making our relationship permanent." My concern is that this legislation essentially creates a permanent class of legal sub-citizens--folks who are welcome to do our dirty work and pay taxes, so long as they don't do something extreme like vote. Navarette says the only reason to oppose this is "ugly partisan politics," but one can actually object in principle to this policy.

And yet, given the immigrant-unfriendly politics of the GOP, this may be the only way to actually resolve the status of millions of young people who A) didn't come here under their own power but B) may not necessarily fit in their own home countries: Many are already, in a very real cultural sense, Americans. Removing the unlikely but still real threat of deportation would help them get scholarships, train for jobs, and contribute to our communities in ways that are denied them at the moment. If they really are eligible for citizenship after attaining legal status, then this legislation would achieve a very real good. It's not as good as the original DREAM Act. But it's better than nothing.

Mitt Romney, public health, and illegal immigrants

Kevin Drum takes stock of the "controversy" surrounding RomneyCare and the fact that illegal immigrants can get some medical care on the tab of Massachusetts taxpayers:

Somebody in a rival campaign presumably thinks this is a useful campaign issue because the slavering masses of the tea party base won't be appeased until illegal immigrants are literally writhing in the streets while doctors walk by and pointedly ignore them. Allowing them access to even last-ditch health services is unacceptable, even if the pointy-heads insist that we're saving money in the long run because it keeps them out of emergency rooms.

At the risk of sounding collectivist, one of the reasons we have public health efforts is because health is so often collective. That illegal immigrant writhing in the street—and this imagery might be unfortunate—might have a communicable disease, and refusing to offer care to that person might end up communicating that disease to you. Giving them a free dose of penicillin might stop the infection in its tracks ... unless, of course, we decide that the immigrant shouldn't get that dose because, goshdarnit, America!

We provide public health services to the public—including illegal immigrants—not just out of some misguided bleeding-heart do-gooderism, but because it also protects the rest of us from epidemic and death. Think of it this way, immigration hawks: It's like building an electrified border fence around your physical well-being.

SPJ and 'illegal immigrants'

I'm uncomfortable with this:

The Society of Professional Journalists, hearing an emotional plea from Rebecca Aguilar, a member of SPJ and of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, voted Tuesday to recommend that newsrooms discontinue using the terms "illegal alien" and "illegal immigrant." The resolution from the 7,800-member organization says only courts can decide when a person has committed an illegal act. 

Aguilar argued that using those words insulted Latinos and all those who are or had once been in the United States illegally. She used the example of her mother, who became a "proud American" in 1980. Her mother felt insulted "every time she heard that word," Aguilar said of the phrase "illegal alien."

The appropriate term? "Undocumented people." Ugh.

The problem here, as I've written before, is that the 11 million "undocumented" people in the United States are here ... illegally. Have they legally been ajudicated as such? No, the vast majority of them. And it's why my practice, when referring to a specific person or small set of persons, would be to attribute descriptions. "John Doe, whom authorities say entered the United States illegally..." or "John Doe, who says he crossed the border, etc. etc." Let your sources do the work of framing.

But I'm fine using the term "illegal immigrants" or "illegal immigration" to describe the issues surrounding the 11 million people who are in the United States in violation of the laws of this country. That's what the controversy is about. Using the term "undocumented" doesn't convey that—it reduces the issue to one of paperwork. (And as long as we're being pedantic, it may not be strictly true: Surely many if not most of these folks have, say, birth certificates or driver's licenses or whatnot in their home countries.)

I think "undocumented immigrant" obscures more than "illegal immigrant" reveals, if only slightly. I'm sorry that that hurts some people's feelings. If it were up to me, our immigration policy wouldn't criminalize most people who want to come to the United States. But the law is the law, and the journalist's job is to convey information as clearly as she can. The SPJ folks suggest they're striking a blow for clarity and accuracy by putting the kibosh on this term. I don't think they're right.

On immigration and Big Government, I was wrong. Unfortunately.

The other day I suggested that conservatives who really want to beef up enforcement against illegal immigration would have to live with a bigger and more expensive federal bureaucracy. I've been proven wrong by this morning's New York Times story about private companies that basically do the work of immigration enforcement for countries around the world.

The really infuriating parts of the story will be familiar to anyone who has critiqued the privatizing of prisons in the United States: The illegal immigrants who are placed in the care of these private companies are often treated like cattle—with the problem being that ranchers generally want their herd to survive. The Times documents a number of cases where immigrants died or were badly injured while in the custody of the private companies. When that happens, companies are punished by ... losing contracts. The problem: Contracts are plentiful, and companies find it easy to replace the lost income. The profit motive works only to attract big companies to profit—not to ensure that they do the job correctly. We should ask ourselves about whether society benefits when the people carrying out the work of the taxpayers are more accountable to their shareholders.

Also disturbing, to me at least, is the way the story illustrates a bizarre disconnect. While workers are largely confined to their countries of origin—or face life-threatening detention—the companies that imprison them can span the globe. The Times: "G4S delivers cash to banks on most continents, runs airport security in 80 countries and has 1,500 employees in immigration enforcement in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States, where its services include escorting illegal border-crossers back to Mexico for the Department of Homeland Security." 

Not to sound all Marxist about it, but: There are no borders for Big Business. Only for people. That should trouble lovers of individual liberty—if not the corporate shills who masquerade as such.

Conservatives? Want tougher enforcement of immigration laws? You're going to have to grow the federal bureaucracy

To listen to Republicans in the presidential primary debates, you'd think Barack Obama had thrown open the borders to the United States to every Tom, Dick, and Juan who wants to stream over the southern border. That's not true, of course: Obama's deported nearly as many illegal immigrants in less than three years than George W. Bush did in eight. 

But there are still illegal immigrants in the United States, so clearly he's doing something wrong. Right?

Maybe you can ship all 11 million illegal immigrants out of the country. But here's the thing, conservatives: You're going to need a much bigger federal bureaucracy to get the job done. According to a Washington Post profile this morning, the U.S. only has the budget to deport 400,000 illegal immigrants a year.  At that rate, it'll only take 27.5 years to ship everybody else—assuming, of course, you can keep everybody else out.

If you want tougher enforcement that includes deportation of any immigrant found to be here illegally, you're going to have to raise the budget for border enforcement considerably. You're going to have to hire a lot of new immigration agents. That's going to expand the federal workforce—something conservatives seem to hate—and spend a lot of money, something conservatives undoubtedly hate. If bigger government is an evil in its own right, then the only solution here is more evil.

Or we could reform our system to offer more guest-worker visas and generally allow more legal immigration. But that would make too much sense.

Yes to birthright citizenship

That's the topic of my Scripps Howard column with Ben Boychuk. My take:

What does the 14th Amendment really mean with regard to "birthright citizenship?" Tough to say. Even the men who wrote and passed the amendment in 1868 weren't in full agreement on that point.

The amendment says that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" are citizens." But the legislative debate over that language was fierce - some senators argued it surely didn't mean that children of American Indians or gypsies or Chinese would be granted the same citizenship as white people.

Other senators - notably John Conness of California - believed otherwise.

"The children of all parentage whatever, born in California, should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States, entitled to equal civil rights with other citizens," Conness said.

The debate continues today. But birthright citizenship - a long American tradition - should continue.

Why? For one thing, it's a matter of simple humanity. Denying citizenship to a child born here would inevitably mean that millions of young people - after having lived here their entire lives, and thus American to the bone - would someday be deported to "home" countries and cultures alien to them. They would be paying a penalty for their parents' crimes. That's just cruel.

What's more, ending birthright citizenship could prove burdensome to all Americans. Other than your birth certificate-assuming you were born here-what proof do you possess that you're an American citizen? Until now, that is all that's been needed. The potential for bureaucratic mischief is enormous.

The people who want to end birthright citizenship would be in the business of telling many Americans they aren't really Americans after all. That would be ugly, divisive and unnecessary. There are better ways to address the issue of illegal immigration.

What I didn't say (for space reasons) is that for more than a century, Americans have lived under the common understanding that -- generally speaking -- to be born here is to be a citizen here. Anti-immigration crusaders who want to challenge that understanding of the 14th Amendment, it seems, are trying to remake American custom without remaking the American law it springs from. (There's no movement afoot, really, to amend the amendment -- only to reinterpret it.) Given continuing complaints from conservatives about "judicial activism," this seems a wee hypocritical.

In any case, the column brought me this e-mail from a Florida reader:

Since the squabble over Passports for the Iroquois LACROSSE TEAM. Would they be a separate nation, the Iroquois Nation and NOT US citizens (by birth) since they consider themselves NOT under the jurisdiction of the United States?

It would seem that since they feel they are not under the jurisdiction of the US according to treaty, they must APPLY for US citizenship.

Without going into details of the Iroquois passport dispute, I'll just note that the 14th Amendment was actually constructed to exclude American Indians from automatic citizenship -- if you delve into the debate that took place at the time, it's apparent that the arguments then against birthright citizenship in the 14th Amendment were explicitly racist -- but that the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 means that American Indians do have that citizenship. If they want it.

In any case, I can imagine that the Iroquois and other native tribes might also be against a policy that lets the children and further descendants of European immigrants claim citizenship here. I can't say I'd blame them.

Today in Judeo-Christian justification: Immigration

Late in the New York Times' story about how evangelical leaders are teaming up with President Obama to reform immigration law -- including a sort of amnesty for illegal immigrants already on American soil -- we hear from Bryan Fischer of the conservative American Family Association.

Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for the American Family Association, a national conservative Christian organization in Tupelo, Miss., said, “What my evangelical friends are arguing is that illegal aliens should essentially be rewarded for breaking the law.

“I think it’s extremely problematic from a Judeo-Christian standpoint to grant citizenship to people whose first act on American soil was to break an American law,” said Mr. Fischer, who hosts a daily radio show on which immigration is a frequent topic.

Well, sure. It's not as though the core doctrine of Christianity involves redemption and forgiveness for a lifetime of sins. It's certainly not like Jesus told his human followers to offer forgiveness for sins "not seven times, but seventy-seven times."

Now, I'm not saying that illegal immigrants should be offered amnesty. (Although I think it makes sense, but that's not the point here.) But even though I'm agnostic these days, I have a long background in the church. And I hate to see people blithely invoke "Judeo-Christian" tradition to justify their policy preferences -- particularly when their invocation actually contradicts the religion they use as justification.

AP Stylebook, Feministing and the language of illegal immigration

I'm on record saying that the Arizona immigrant-profiling law is wrong, and I've used my forum with Scripps Howard to argue that America would be better off with a sensible immigration policy that allows vastly more guest workers and other entrants into the United States legally. I think my lefty bona fides are established on the topic.

But this Feministing blog post blasting AP Stylebook -- which guides the language standards in many, if not most, newsrooms through the country -- is just so much tedious sanctimony that I can barely stand it. Let's quote at length:

Screw you AP Style Book.

The AP Style Book is a resource for journalists on language, spelling, pronunciation and proper word usage. I'm not clear how the AP Style Book makes decisions, but it is widely regarded and highly used by journalists.

This explains why most of the mainstream media still uses the term "illegal immigrant." I find the term offensive and disrespectful, as do most immigration activists. People are not illegal, actions are. The advocate community uses the term "undocumented immigrant" which the Stylebook clearly disagrees with.

Thankfully, they don't advocate using the term "alien." But illegal needs to go.

But it's not the sensibilities of the "advocate community" that AP should worry about serving: It's the readers. And while Feministing makes the case that "undocumented immigrant" is somehow more accurate than "illegal immigrant," Feministing is ... wrong.

I get it: There's a desire to use language to create dignity for people by separating humanity's inherent characteristics from the conditions that afflict them and the actions they take. So there's no more "disabled person." It's now "person with disabilities." The emphasis is on personhood. And that's nice. Laudable. But it does clutter the language: Two words become three. (Similarly, I know from painful experience that there's any number of neutered-but-nice terms for "homeless people.") Pile up enough similar examples, and over time, the cluttering of language tends to obscure more than it reveals. 

Which is the case with Feministing's snit: "Undocumented" reduces the issues at play to nothing more than a paperwork problem. (And it's not necessarily more accurate as shorthand; surely many if not most of these folks have, say, birth certificates or driver's licenses or whatnot in their home countries. What kind of documentation are we talking about?) "Illegal" more immediately conveys the sum and substance of the controversy -- and references to illegal immigration are almost always a reference to the controversy -- many people (and their American employers) have chosen to break the laws of this country by crossing the borders to work here. I think those laws should change; I don't think playing games with the language is the way to do it.

As I suggested, any kind of shorthand -- whether it's "undocumented immigrant" or "illegal immigrant" -- is always going to be overly reductive and, in the end, at least somewhat imprecise. Some shorthand phrases, though, are more imprecise and convey less information than others. And those phrases should generally be avoided.