The Damaging Civic Consequences of Illegal Migration, Pt. 2: The 'Better Lives' Argument

By Stanley Renshon on July 15, 2014

The essential core of real immigration reform is enforcement.

That is not because of some harsh "anti-immigrant" sentiment. Rather, it is because real enforcement is very pro-immigration. Why? Because the wholesale violation of immigration laws and procedures and the failure of federal, state, and local authorities to be consistent in their efforts to enforce the law undermine public support for immigration.

One form that this undermining takes is the "better lives" argument. Illegal migrants, it is said, only want to better their circumstances and those of their families. This is generally true. Isn't that both understandable and even laudable?

Yes, to both questions, but that really can't be the end of the analysis.

All migrants, both legal and illegal, want to better their lives and those of their families. However, the desire to improve one's circumstances is largely self-interested.

Moreover, the consideration of personal motives, whether self-interested, laudable, or a mixture of both, does not take place in a vacuum. Good intentions are no defense against willfully breaking the law, especially if those intentions are suffused with self-interest.

The "better lives" argument is powerful, but it draws part of its power from being decidedly narrow in its perspective. It considers only the interests and intentions of the persons who are willing to break immigration laws for their own self-interest and laudable intentions, if applicable, to take care of their families.

The interests of illegal migrants are not the only interests involved, however.

Nor are they the only groups that need to be considered.

The United States, like every other sovereign nation, has an additional set of responsibilities that extend to the country as a whole and to the citizens that the government is formed to represent. "Government of the people, by the people, for the people" is not an abstract aphorism; it is the foundation of the country's democratic culture and the legitimacy of its governments.

Peggy Noonan cogently and reasonably asks: "Is a nation without borders a nation?" The honest answer is no, and anyone who doubts that fact need only look to the disappearing borders of what used to be the Iraqi state

The United States is not, of course, being invaded by hostile powers bent on taking over its territory. But it is being inundated by people who want to live and work here, and who are indifferent to the rules that the country has established to do that legally. Moreover, they have ample reason to believe that the consequences for doing so will be very small, if any.

Few children who are part of the Central American illegal migrant surge of the last few years are deported. And, as to those adult illegal migrants that have raised the total number of illegal migrants to about 11.7 million, John Sandweg, until recently the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in an interview that, "If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero — it's just highly unlikely to happen."

This is not an accident. Nor is it a consequence of momentous and unexpected circumstances. Rather it is a by-product of a step-by-step effort by the Obama administration and its allies to narrow the focus and the basis of immigration enforcement, and the rationale for it.

In that respect, consider the odd, but not really surprising effort to grant legality to illegal migrants by the simple expedient of renaming their offense.

Next: The Damaging Civic Consequences of Illegal Migration, Pt. 3: Sowing Deliberate Euphemistic Confusion