The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in his Roll Call op-ed ("President Is Ignoring Immigration Laws," Feb. 6), argues that a policy of deporting serious criminals instead of parents, military families and students attending college is bad for the country. Once again the Republicans are on the wrong side of the law-and-order approach to immigration.
Like so many Republican accusations about this president, the ones surrounding immigration come straight out of a fantasy world. I wish we had the president that Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) says we have. If we did, I could have saved two trips to Park Police headquarters for being arrested in front of the White House protesting the president's deportation policies.
I praise the president when he does well, and I criticize him when he's wrong. But the fact is that President Barack Obama has deported more people, put more personnel on the ground at the border and reduced illegal entry more than any previous president. He is proud of it and trumpets it frequently. But through the Republican political lens, he appears to be a president who is soft on illegal immigration.
The question is not how many people to deport. Unfortunately, given the complete obstructionism of the Republican side to craft a more sensible alternative, we are stuck with a system that forcibly removes about 400,000 people per year, with huge costs to taxpayers, families and communities. A population about the size of Minneapolis is deported every year, and we have reached our capacity to deport more.
For this president, the question has not been how many to deport but who to deport first. Republicans say we should deport anyone we find, even if that means reducing the number of criminals we deport and reducing the capacity of both local law enforcement and our criminal courts to go after actual violent criminals -- regardless of whether they are immigrants. A sophomore in college or a handyman with two U.S. citizen children are simply not threats to public safety. But Republicans want them prioritized equally with someone who has murdered, driven while drunk or trafficked drugs. That is plain crazy, but that is the Republican approach to immigration.
When this Congress is over and the president is re-elected, I fully expect a debate on how we re-establish law and order in our immigration system, and I fully expect the leading Republicans on the immigration issue to fight every attempt at reform tooth and nail. Too many on that side of the aisle are addicted to scapegoating and denigrating immigrants -- and Democrats -- to have it any other way.
But the rest of us want a legal immigration system that works and a way for those who have been here for years and built lives here -- the vast majority of those who are here illegally in the absence of a functioning legal immigration system -- to get in the system and on the books so that immigration enforcement has teeth and employers play by the rules.
We will have that debate eventually, over the strenuous objections of Republicans who oppose a sensible law-and-order approach to immigration reform.
A version of this post originally appeared in Roll Call.
Follow Rep. Luis Gutierrez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LuisGutierrez
As opposed to the corrupt, look the other way approach. Luis' approach isn't equal treatment under law, it's thwart the law due to the ethnicity of who is in violation of it. That's not the American way.
"we have reached our capacity to deport more"
We have reached and exceeded our CARRYING capacity. It can't go on forever. Thus, it's not just good policy, but moral not to import millions more each and every year.
"I fully expect the leading Republicans on the immigration issue to fight every attempt at reform tooth and nail."
Sadly, I fully expect the leading Democrats on the immigration issue to fight every attempt at enforcement of the law tooth and nail. Oh, and speaking of "reform", what exactly does Gutierrez mean by that:
Schupak: What about comprehensive immigration reform?
DeMell: That's just a code word for 'amnesty'.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-schupak/immigration-reform_b_1281402.html
"Republicans who oppose a sensible law-and-order approach to immigration reform."
What? Some Republicans are the only ones who favor a law-and-order approach. Amnesty/"comprehensve immigration reform", by definition, is throwing the law out and abandoning rule-of-law. Gutierrez's statement makes no sense. How can he wear the badge of "law and order" when you want to nullify that law?! It's pure doublespeak. Gutierrez's definition of law and order: no enforcement of law and the resulting disorder.
If we are not one we just keep going on the way we are with some states trying to enforce the laws, some states flaunting them and tacitly approving sanctuary cities and the federal government doing as close to nothing as it can get away with.
The whole issue with the legal challenge to states enforcing immigration laws on their own is which government entity has the constitutional right to do so. Obviously, that should be the federal government. The Constitution appears to be silent on what happens when the feds abdicate.
Without exception or special allowances for political and ethnic considerations.
Hint - if you stay at home you can't be deported!
End the free healthcare, food stamps, Earned Income Credit, education and the myriad of other services and they'll go somewhere else.
Why this myth keeps spreading is a testament to the right wing's echo chamber of fallacies.
Send them back with what they brought NOTHING
Frederick Bronson NC