Just Immigration

American Policy in Christian Perspective

Mark R. Amstutz

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781467446785
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Few issues are as complex and controversial as immigration in the United States. The only thing anyone seems to agree on is that the system is broken. Mark Amstutz offers a succinct overview and assessment of current immigration policy and argues for an approach to the complex immigration debate that is solidly grounded in Christian political thought. After analyzing key laws and institutions in the US immigration system, Amstutz examines how Catholics, evangelicals, and main-line Protestants have used Scripture to address social and political issues, including immigration. He critiques the ways in which many Christians have approached immigration reform and offers concrete suggestions on how Christian groups can offer a more credible political engagement with this urgent policy issue.

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Morality, Law, and US Immigration Policy

As with most complex public-policy issues, the subject of immigration gives rise to a variety of views and perspectives. For some, regulating immigration is an important task of government as a means of building communal solidarity by giving priority to the assimilation of immigrants into the new community. For others, border control is a means to give priority to the interests and preferences of citizens. But for critics of such an approach, immigration control is a way by which citizens in stable, prosperous societies give precedence to their own needs over those of people from foreign states. In effect, immigration regulations allow states to justify global inequality. For business interests, the unimpeded movement of workers across territorial boundaries is assumed to be desirable to foster economic growth. According to this view, since domestic labor mobility is important in maximizing economic efficiency, unimpeded transnational labor mobility is also important to advancing global economic growth. For others, regulation of international migration is an impediment to the affirmation of universal human rights because the division of the world into sovereign nations legitimates radical inequalities among states. Immigration concerns arise only because the international community has been divided into nation-states.

In her book Undocumented, Aviva Chomsky captures this latter perspective when she writes, “Immigration simply should not be illegal.”¹ In her view, immigrants should be accorded the same rights and privileges as citizens: “Immigrants are human beings who have arbitrarily been classified as having a different legal status from the rest of the United States’ inhabitants. The only thing that makes immigrants different from anybody else is the fact that they are denied basic rights that the rest of us have. There is simply no humanly acceptable reason to define a group of people as different and deny them rights.”²

I do not accept Chomsky’s premise that the existing global order of nation-states is morally illegitimate. Rather, the analysis of immigration that I set forth in this book is based on the existing global order of nation-states. This does not mean that sovereign states can disregard the interests and concerns of peoples from other nations. Rather, the challenge of advancing justice in the international community—and, more specifically, the task of devising morally just immigration practices—must begin with the recognition that nation-states are the fundamental units of the contemporary global order. Under the world’s constitutional order, enshrined in the United Nations Charter, states are responsible for the affairs within their territorial boundaries. This means that sovereign governments are responsible for maintaining social order, protecting human rights, and promoting prosperity. Since states are ultimately responsible for domestic economic and social life, regulating borders is an important task of sovereign governments. The worldwide acceptance of sovereignty and border regulation is evident by the widespread use of passports and visas that facilitate governmental control of transnational migration. As Cheryl Shanks notes, sovereignty is a fundamental norm of the political architecture of the world. “Controlling access to citizenship,” she writes, “helps states stay sovereign in the face of globalization.”³

Citizens have the right to leave their homeland without official permission, but they do not have a right to enter another country. That decision is in the hands of the host state. The asymmetrical relationship between emigration and immigration is a source of enormous humanitarian challenges in the modern world. Such challenges have become especially difficult in the post–Cold War era because of globalization and the collapse of states. The first development is important because technological modernization has fostered increased economic and social integration, resulting in increased knowledge about foreign societies and dramatically lower costs in transnational migration. The second development, the rise of failed states, is a byproduct of the decline of sovereign authority coupled with increasing ethnic, tribal, and religious conflicts. In some countries, such as Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Rwanda, Syria, and the former Yugoslavia, civil wars have resulted in enormous human suffering, leading to millions of refugees and displaced peoples. In 2015, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that there were nearly 20 million refugees and about 40 million internally displaced people.⁴ When more than half a million Syrian refugees sought entry into Europe in 2015, it precipitated a crisis within the European Union (EU).

Since most EU member states allow free movement among its members, the entry of large numbers of refugees into Greece led some countries, such as Hungary and Macedonia, to establish border security in order to restrict the flow of refugees. Even Sweden and Denmark, which have maintained liberal migration policies, established tighter border controls to curb the influx of asylum seekers.⁵ As of early 2016, it was estimated that more than one million refugees, nearly half of them from Syria, had sought asylum in Germany alone.⁶

Since the United States is protected by the Atlantic Ocean on its eastern coast and by the Pacific Ocean on its western coast, it has not had to face massive flows of refugees, such as those entering Europe from the Middle East.⁷ Instead, the United States has been faced with millions of aliens who have entered the country unlawfully through its porous southwest border with Mexico. Furthermore, because of lax enforcement of laws governing visitors, students, and temporary workers, many aliens who arrive lawfully decide to remain in the country even after their visas have expired. It is estimated that of the 11 million aliens living in the United States without authorization, about 40 percent arrived legally but have overstayed their visas.⁸

Immigration policy has two dimensions. First, a government must determine the total level of new migrants it wishes to admit. This task involves not only determining the number of immigrants and refugees who are accepted for resettlement but also determining the number, if any, of temporary or guest workers. Second, the government must establish the criteria used in admitting immigrants. Currently, the United States grants visas to roughly 800,000 immigrants per year, but the total number of people who are accepted as legal permanent residents (LPRs) is about a million per year. The number of new LPRs is higher than the number of newly admitted immigrants because the total also involves persons admitted as refugees and those seeking asylum, as well as persons who already live in the United States and whose legal status is adjusted by the government. This second policy task, establishing admissions criteria, is especially difficult because it involves setting priorities in the face of competing and conflicting political demands.

Because of the perceived limitations in the current US immigration system, political leaders have undertaken numerous initiatives in the new millennium to reform current policies. For example, President George W. Bush sought to advance immigration reforms but was unable to get the Congress to adopt the proposed changes. Subsequently, President Obama called for broad changes in immigration policy, but he, too, was unable to garner sufficient legislative support to advance comprehensive reforms. The most recent significant legislative initiative has been the bipartisan US Senate Bill 744, titled “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act.” The bill, a massive document of more than a thousand pages, calls for, among other things, strengthening border security, legalizing undocumented aliens, and increasing the number of employment-based visas. Although the US Senate passed that bill in June 2013, the House of Representatives refused to take up the measure. As of 2016, no major immigration initiatives are pending in Congress. But while immigration reform was dormant in 2015 in Washington, DC, the topic was featured prominently among some presidential candidates during the 2016 election campaign. Given the continuing demands for low-wage workers, the growing size and influence of the Latino population, and the desire to resolve the status of illegal aliens, immigration reform will likely surface again with a new administration in 2017.

The Need for Immigration Reform

There is widespread agreement that the design and implementation of US immigration policies suffer from major limitations. Many of the policy shortcomings are the result of competing, if not irreconcilable, political interests. These competing pressures and tensions include the excessive demand for immigrant visas beyond the number that the US government is legally authorized to supply; the challenge of being compassionate to unauthorized migrants while also seeking to maintain the rule of law; the desire for having high-skilled and low-wage workers while also maintaining a restrictive policy on employment-based migration; and the demand to enforce employment laws without implementing an effective identification system to facilitate this task. Besides the shortcomings in the laws themselves, the US immigration system also suffers from inadequate and inconsistent implementation. Given the broad and complex nature of immigration policies and the limited resources available to implement them, government agencies rely on executive discretion in channeling resources to enforce concerns that are regarded as a priority.

The following diverse cases illustrate some of the challenges and contradictions that present themselves when one attempts to maintain a credible, humane immigration system.

1. In 1996, the US Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) to reduce the number of illegal immigrants. The law sought to do this by forcing those living in the United States without authorization to return to their own countries to secure a visa at a US consulate. The problem with this initiative is that aliens who have lived in the United States unlawfully are prohibited from returning immediately because the law imposes a heavy penalty of three to ten years for “unlawful presence.” Since many unauthorized aliens have lived in the United States for many years, have families there, and have established roots in local communities, being separated from spouses, children, neighbors, and friends for several years makes legalization extraordinarily difficult. Thus, instead of encouraging unlawful aliens to seek to normalize their status by securing a visa, the current system motivates aliens to “live in the shadows.” As with other government initiatives, immigration policies often result in unintended consequences; that is, good intentions do not necessarily lead to desired outcomes.

2. In 2014, tens of thousands of unaccompanied children, mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, entered the United States unlawfully. The dramatic and sudden increase in the number of children entering the country through the southwest border was not a random development. Rather, it reflected families’ decisions to use children, aided by smugglers, to enter the country with the knowledge that they would be treated differently than adults. Since US law requires that children entering without authorization must be processed quickly and separately from adults, the sudden increase in children led the government to construct several shelters to care for their needs while they were being processed. The effort to address the unexpected arrival of unaccompanied children resulted in shifting resources from established refugee programs to the needs of children. Here again, the unintended result of compassion-driven policy toward children forced the American government to withdraw support from another sector of society in need of care. Competing interests are not always between economic and humane concerns; sometimes they involve making a hard choice between competing moral values.

3. My frequent visits to the Immigration Court in Chicago during 2015 illuminated the uncertain, complex, and time-consuming action of processing immigration hearings. Immigration Courts, which are supervised by the US Department of Justice, hear deportation cases initiated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). During my court visits, a large number of cases were heard from respondents in prison via tele-video. Those individuals had committed crimes and had thus come under the scrutiny of ICE. In one case, the unauthorized alien had been imprisoned for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) and using false documents. Since he was not married and had no US relatives, the judge issued a deportation order. He also told the respondent that returning to the US unlawfully would be a felony, subject to a longer prison sentence. In another tele-video case, the unauthorized alien had been arrested and convicted of DUI. Although he had twice been returned to his Mexican homeland under voluntary departure, he was currently in detention for entering the country unlawfully. He had a job, and his employer indicated that he was an effective worker. He had a girlfriend and three children who were born in the United States. Since his original conviction for DUI, he had converted to Christianity, and the judge noted that the respondent showed evidence of rehabilitation. He lowered the $10,000 bond to $2,500 so that he could live at home and work. He gave the respondent a new hearing date so that he could seek relief from deportation.

In a third case, a Mexican alien had entered the United States illegally and was convicted of making a false claim that he was a US citizen. He posted a $25,000 bond. Supported by his wife and children in court, he was seeking the cancellation of his removal. The judge set a new hearing date in 2018—three years in the future!

Court cases such as these illuminate the complex task faced by immigration judges in determining the extent to which humanitarian concerns should mitigate strict legal enforcement. Since living in the United States without legal authorization is a misdemeanor, it does not lead automatically to deportation. The many immigration court cases that I observed were being heard because aliens had committed offenses after entering the United States. The task of the judge was to address the offense of unlawful presence while taking into account factors that might mitigate the need ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Morality, Law, and US Immigration Policy
• 2. The Rules of the Game
• 3. The Immigration System in Practice
• 4. Theories of International Migration
• 5. Christian Ethics, the Bible, and Immigration
• 6. The Roman Catholic Church and US Immigration Policy
• 7. Evangelicals and US Immigration Policy
• 8. Other Protestant Churches and US Immigration Policy
• 9. Strengthening the Christian Witness on Immigration
• Bibliography
• Index