The GOP's Second Class Non-Citizen Immigration Reform Principles

Some things don't change with conservatives and the godly set

The House of Representatives has finally unveiled supposed immigration reform principles.  Like everything else the GOP does nowadays, the "reform" would leave some in a permanent non-citizen status and still panders to the white supremacists within the GOP base that frankly doesn't want anyone who doesn't have white skin to become an American citizen.  Not ever.   Because only white Christians are "real Americans."  It is a consistent theme with the GOP: some have rights and privileges and others do not.  This "do not" category includes non-whites, particularly blacks and Hispanics, non-Christians, gays, and in many instances, even white women.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the GOP House vision of "reform."  Here are excerpts:

The Republican proposal predicates legalization for the undocumented on stringent requirements and border enforcement. The House speaker, John A. Boehner, ruled out any “special path to citizenship” for undocumented migrants, but seemed to leave open the possibility that they could eventually be naturalized. Even that stance, however, is likely to raise hackles among conservatives.

Those who take this ultraconservative position (including many aligned with the Tea Party) are blind to the lessons of history. The United States has a long track record not only of legalizing illegal immigrants, by legislative or administrative action, but also of pairing legalization with a grant of permanent residency, the prerequisite for naturalization. 

Even the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, known mostly as a conservative immigration measure, included provisions for suspending deportation orders in cases in which deportation would separate families or otherwise result in hardship. These provisions also included adjustment to permanent resident status. The most recent legalization program, under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, granted permanent residency, or green cards, to 2.7 million people.

The rationale for the linking of legalization and permanent residency is straightforward. Legalization recognizes that the undocumented have become part of our society — by working, paying taxes, raising families, owning property and the like. In other words, we recognize their de facto inclusion and we adjust their status to align with that reality.

[S]ince the nation’s founding, we have always recognized that access to citizenship is the best way to promote social and economic integration, democratic participation and political equality. 

The alternative now envisioned by some House members — legal status without access to citizenship — would effectively create a new stratum of society, a permanent second class of Americans.

We have been down that road before, with grim results. The Asiatic exclusion laws, in force from the 1880s to the World War II era, were openly racist attempts to protect America from the “yellow peril” and “unassimilables.” These laws not only prohibited most prospective immigrants from China and other Asian countries from entering; they also excluded all Asians from naturalized citizenship, including merchants and professionals who were otherwise legal residents. In most Western states exclusion from citizenship also meant exclusion from owning agricultural property and from a range of occupations, from teaching to commercial fishing. 

Congress repealed the Chinese exclusion law in 1943, when China had become an American war ally. By 1952 all the other Asian exclusion laws had fallen. 

Today’s political opposition to a path to citizenship is out of sync with democratic principles, historical practice and the vast majority of public opinion. It is punitive in spirit. It also suggests an unease with the prospect of more Latino voters. Republicans seem divided between those who recognize the need to appeal to the growing Latino electorate and those who would rather shut out prospective Latino voters than try to win their support.

Citizenship is precious. That is precisely why it shouldn’t be held hostage to narrow, defeatist and racially discriminatory partisan interests.