"I think New Haven is doing something that makes sense for New Haven," DeStefano said. "Service to one another in community, more than waving an American flag, defines the spirit of our soul."
Opponents of the measure say that New Haven unfairly rewards those who break the laws – a Republican anti-immigration mantra. They fear that New Haven’s move will metastasize around the nation and that anarchy will be the end-result. Such unfounded and unjustified fear-mongering is now a staple of the anti-immigration cabal who keep seeing the undocumented simply as “people who broke America’s laws and therefore should be locked up.”
But with the US Congress taking immigration off of the table – for the time being – states are left to interpret for themselves the best ways to cope with a mounting social challenge. While some rabid Republicans favor rounding them up and deporting them others fear the serious political backlash especially during the upcoming US presidential elections. And still others feel that it is impractical and inhumane to uproot undocumented families that have children born in the United States – and therefore US citizens – and throw them out of the country.
Republicans in the House and Senate have tied immigration reform squarely to President George Bush’s war on terror arguing for “securing the borders” first and then dealing with those immigrants already here. The confusion starts from the fact that hard-line Republicans do not want to grant a blanket amnesty to the undocumented because that “rewards” them for breaking US immigration laws.
The other sticking point is President Bush’s temporary guest worker program that both Democrats and Republicans condemn as simply a mechanism to import cheap, exploitable labor for corporate America. Under this proposal these temporary workers will be allowed in for a period of two years in the first instant, and three in the second and will be required to leave the country after working for basic minimum wages. There is no path to permanent residency or eventual citizenship and immigration advocated has called the plan deeply flawed and unworkable.
Worse yet, Congress will not tackle immigration before November 2008 since this is a presidential election year. What this means is that while Congress dawdles and dithers states will find creative ways to deal with immigration matters that will be directly influenced by local politics and other punitive considerations. And Congress is likely – only likely – to take up the debate in late 2009 after the sniping over the Iraq war yields its fair share of hype, posturing and evening news sound bites. For now immigration is on the back burner as far as Congress is concerned.
New Haven has led the way in producing a good model that states like New York and California that have large undocumented populations might want to look at and fix to their own local conditions. The New Haven model gives a defenseless, vulnerable population that has been at the mercy of the most rabid, hate-based, vitriolic, cowardly and racist legislations, proposals and statements hope that America is truly the land of the free. New Haven, Connecticut, population 150,000, has taken a giant step forward in this immigration debate and demonstrated that it is indeed “the home of the brave.”
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