One afternoon in July 1985, President Ronald Reagan met with his domestic policy council in the White House cabinet room. The question: should he keep pushing legislation to offer amnesty to undocumented migrants?

Some Reagan aides wanted him to drop his support for amnesty, the term for granting legal status to people in the country illegally. Reagan’s pollsters had told him that the public opposed amnesty. And the president’s championing of amnesty had produced defeats. Reagan’s first bill to legalize immigrants failed in Congress in 1982. In 1984, Reagan had convinced the House and Senate to pass a bill, only to see the legislation fall apart in conference committee.

But amnesty had one stalwart supporter in the room: Reagan himself.

Recently, at Reagan’s presidential library in Simi Valley, I read through the records on the legislation that became the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. Today, IRCA doesn’t get much respect; it’s long been dismissed across the political spectrum as “the failed amnesty law.” Its central idea, of broad forgiveness and quick legal status for undocumented immigrants, is completely out of political fashion today.

But while studying the records, I was struck by the difference between the reality of the 1986 amnesty and its 2018 reputation. The 1986 law was carefully conceived, realistic, and humane—reflecting the practical wisdom of a California president.

The records show that Reagan, despite his reputation for avoiding details, was personally engaged on immigration. When aides talked about the supposed peril to public safety of immigrants, Reagan shifted the conversation to specific stories of undocumented immigrants in California who suffered because of their lesser legal status. “The president cited past cases of exploitation of illegal aliens,” according to the minutes of that 1985 meeting.

Reagan ended the meeting by saying he wanted to talk more with the legislation’s co-sponsor, a Republican U.S. senator from Wyoming named Alan K. Simpson. In those conversations, Reagan and Simpson determined to go forward with the legislation, for two big reasons.

First, they saw legalization as essential to protecting and integrating immigrants. “The work to be done is to avoid seeing this nation populated with a furtive illegal subclass of human beings who are afraid to go to the cops, afraid to go to a hospital…or afraid to go to their employer,” Simpson wrote Reagan in a private note that began, “Dear Ron.”

Second, and more important, both men were old enough to have seen immigrants used as scapegoats; they urgently wanted legislation to preempt divisive politics. “If we do not choose to have immigration reform in the near future, the alternative will not just be the status quo,” said Simpson while reintroducing the legislation in 1986. “No, the alternative instead will be an increased public intolerance—a failure of compassion, if you will—toward all forms of immigration and types of entrants—legal and illegal; refugees, permanent resident aliens, family members and all others within our borders.”

The bill did pass, and it forestalled Simpson’s nightmare—but only for a while.

Immigration restrictionists blame the 1986 law for today’s bitter conflicts over immigration. But they have it backward. Today’s immigration problems result not from amnesty but from our collective failure to understand what made the 1986 law successful.

IRCA actually had two big pieces. One—the successful piece—was amnesty, which was limited, fatefully, to immigrants who had been continuously in the U.S. since January 1, 1982. But the bill’s other big piece drew more attention and was more influential in turning immigration into an American quagmire: a new enforcement regime that prohibited hiring and employing the undocumented.

Familiar figures from today’s politics show up in the records in ways rich with irony. President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, Trump legal spokesman Rudolph Giuliani, and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts—all then in Reagan’s employ—worked on amnesty’s behalf. The politics around this new enforcement were scrambled and did not break down along party lines. Many Democrats opposed the bill, with some arguing that hiring restrictions would lead to discrimination against all Latinos. Labor unions worried that the bill would be too lenient on employers, particularly in agriculture, while some Republicans opposed it because it might be too tough on businesses.

Compromises pulled the bill to passage. To reassure those worried about employment discrimination, an amendment prohibited, for the very first time, employment discrimination on the basis of national origin. And, crucially, California’s own U.S. Senator Pete Wilson—who as governor in the 1990s would embrace anti-immigrant politics—helped lead negotiations that led to the creation of a special legalization category for agricultural workers.

IRCA should have been celebrated as a tremendous legislative victory. But the bill’s passage was overshadowed by news of the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Reagan didn’t sign the bill until after the November 1986 election, in a small ceremony subdued by the fact that Republicans had lost control of the U.S. Senate. Reporters in attendance asked about the Iran-Contra scandal, not immigration.

But in his remarks that day, Reagan unabashedly emphasized the benefits of the bill for the undocumented. “The legalization provisions in this Act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society,” he said. “Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans.”

Under the two-step amnesty process, more than 3 million people applied for temporary residency, which lasted 18 months, in the first phase. In the second phase, 2.7 million people received permanent residency as a result of the law. This was the largest legalization in the country’s history, but it should have been larger. An estimated 2 million people did not legalize their status.

Why not? The law was not generous enough. It excluded newer immigrants who had come between 1982 and the law’s 1987 implementation. Some undocumented immigrants feared making themselves known, while others didn’t know about the program, because publicity and outreach came late in the window for legalization. Some were discouraged by the federal government’s bureaucratic and time-consuming legalization process of security checks, document checks, and requirements for competency in English and American civics.

In retrospect, the process should have covered all undocumented immigrants and should have established a regular amnesty process every few years, since the demand for immigrant labor was certain to keep attracting people to the country. But in many ways, amnesty was a government success story—it gave millions of people the legal status they required to have a better life. It even turned a $100 million profit for the government through the $185 fees it charged applicants.

But amnesty’s successes didn’t stop immigration restrictionists from criticizing the law and scapegoating immigrants, especially after the economy went south in the early 1990s. The main attack on the law continues to this day: Amnesty encouraged more undocumented immigrants to come, critics say. In fact, the opposite is true. Studies show that amnesty produced a small decline in the number of illegal entries into the country.

Restrictionists also have persistently claimed that only tougher border security and immigration enforcement will reduce illegal immigration. The 1986 law’s hiring enforcement provisions, and the ensuing three decades of additional border security and tough-on-immigration laws have not worked to reduce illegal immigration. Instead, the endless deluge of new laws and restrictions have made it nearly impossible for undocumented persons to legalize their status or establish themselves in the country, thus adding to the numbers of people who stay in the shadows. Even migrants who arrive legally and apply for legal status can be effectively turned into lawbreakers by the immigration system. This is pure Kafka: In the name of stopping illegal immigration, we make all immigrants illegal.

President Trump represents not a new approach but rather a nasty extension of our longstanding obsession with criminalizing immigrants; his innovations are to reclassify refugees and children as immigrant terrorists, who need their own concentration camps. This is stupidity in service of stupidity, and hatred for hatred’s sake. Today’s immigration reformers aren’t much smarter. Their proposals combine more failed border security policies with legalization plans so full of bureaucratic obstacles and delays—some proposals require a 20-year wait to achieve legal status—that they are worthless.

Sadly, both advocates and opponents of immigration now follow the same failed script of increased spending on border security, increased illegalness, and offering a narrow path to legitimacy.

It’s time to flip that script. Make amnesty, not border security, the starting point on immigration. The stance should be: not one penny for enforcement or walls until we have amnesty for all our undocumented neighbors.

Amnesty is wise policy for reasons that go beyond immigration. The United States is not just anxious and polarized now: It’s downright unforgiving. In our public sphere, we never forgive a single sin of those who trespass against us.

The Bible says this is wrong: “Forgive as the Lord forgave you,” it advises. Our lack of forgiveness is also a sign of national decline. “The weak can’t forgive,” Gandhi said. “Only the strong can.”

Americans need amnesty not to forgive our immigrants. We need amnesty so that we might forgive ourselves.

The post Why Amnesty Remains America’s Best Immigration Policy appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

MEMO
To: Acting U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke and Attorney General Jeff Sessions
From: The Golden (and Still Sovereign!) State
Re: An alternative to your mass deportation of Californians

This is a legal proposal, but I must start with the following stipulation.

You are monsters.

You are engaged in deportation of undocumented Californians, including many who are neither criminals nor threats to public safety, and are crucial members of our communities, our workplaces, and our families. In removing parents, you routinely orphan children who are U.S. citizens, and in the next breath say you are for “America First.” Your next targets for removal are the 800,000 young people known as “Dreamers,” people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Some 220,000 Californians are Dreamers, the most of any state.

I take comfort that, if God is just, you are eventually going to hell. But that doesn’t solve my problem: all the damage you can do before you check into the Hotel Underworld.

As the state of California, I am suing you and doing everything I can to foil your rotten plans. My police departments and public institutions and religious communities are resisting your efforts to remove Californians. I am treating undocumented immigrants more like any California resident, including issuing them drivers’ licenses. And now, my legislature is in the process of passing legislation to make all of California a sanctuary.

California is slowly moving toward something extraordinary: creating a new legal concept of California residency that includes most of my two million-plus undocumented residents. This is a very American thing to do. While the U.S. Constitution requires uniform standards for citizenship, there is no such requirement of uniformity when it comes to legal residency.

In this context, your deportations are abusive. It is one thing for the federal government to grant legal permission to live and work in every state, and quite another to forcibly remove residents of a state against the will of that state’s people.

Tragically, my people can’t stop you entirely from mass deportation, since immigration enforcement is the province of the federal government. But we can slow you down, deluge you with litigation, pass sanctuary state legislation, target you with protests, and work politically with like-minded people in other states to undermine the very legitimacy of your government.

This ever-escalating conflict is dangerous to California and the country—and I fear that such a fight is exactly what you are trying to start. The president’s political advisor Roger Stone has called for a new Civil War, and, as the Charlottesville aftermath has made clear, President Trump is keen on refighting the last one.

But if civil war is not your intention, let’s make a deal that would protect Californians and perhaps de-escalate the conflict, at least over immigration.

Under this deal, Congress and your administration would grant California an exemption from federal immigration law, in much the same way I have special exemptions to go my own way on certain environmental policies such as air pollution.

In effect, I, California, would win the power to designate certain people—undocumented folks who meet standards that my elected officials determine—as California residents who would have a legal right to live and work here even if they are not U.S. citizens or legal residents of the United States. This residency would apply only in California, though I would hope that other states achieve similar carve-outs.

The federal government could still deport people, but with a couple of conditions. If a California resident were detained for immigration enforcement in another part of the country, he or she would have to be deported not overseas but back to California. And if the federal government decided to go ahead and deport a California resident out of the country, it would—under the contract I’m proposing—pay all the costs of that deportation.

In my view, you, the federal government, should cover the legal expenses of any California resident you deport, and the costs of providing care, replacement income, and schooling for children and other family members that the deported person leaves behind here. You won’t be able to do what you’re doing now: creating “ICE orphans” via deportation, and sticking California governments and families with the bill.

Here at home, we’d have to create standards for deciding who is a resident. A leading advocate for this idea, Dave Marin, the research and policy director for the California Freedom Coalition—which is working for greater autonomy for the state—points out that state legislation appropriating money for legal aid to the undocumented already offers a list of people that Californians consider our own. These include anyone who has family members who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents; veterans of the U.S. military and their spouses; asylum seekers; the so-called “Dreamers”; and just about anyone else who hasn’t been convicted of a violent felony.

Such a concept of California residency is not new. In 2002, the state’s reform body, the Little Hoover Commission, suggested creating a “Golden State Residency Program” as a way of accelerating the integration of immigrants, including the undocumented, into California society. The proposal was that anyone who was participating in their local community should be considered a resident, with all the rights and responsibilities that that entails.

“Immigrants feature prominently in California’s contemporary and future prosperity,” Little Hoover’s report said. “Helping them integrate—meaning to develop a sense of belonging, to take responsibility for the quality of life in their neighborhoods, and to seize opportunities for success—is a key challenge for state and local leaders.”

Residency is not ideal; it still leaves sub-class of people who have full rights only in California. But it’s the best that can be done until the day when a federal administration fully legalizes undocumented people. And residency is principled in one fundamental way: Californians should get to decide who gets to live and work in our state—not a faraway federal administration that routinely slanders us.

Will you, the Trump administration, do this deal? I suspect not. Your preference so far has been to undermine the American institutions that produce compromise. And you prefer to lie and scapegoat diverse California—you think it fires up your racist base—rather than learn from our long experience with immigration.

One of America’s most notable traditions is our federalist system—letting states choose their own paths and then seeing how things work out. California is confident that being a haven that integrates immigrants into our society will produce far more greatness than your approach of removing millions of people and breaking up families in the process.

So what will it be? Will you make a deal that respects California’s sovereignty? Or are you dead-set on waging war against your country’s largest state?

The post Let’s Make a Deal to Keep Immigrant Families Together appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

That is the phrase I grew up living in my native El Salvador.

I emigrated to Los Angeles in 2014, a long trip by land that took me two months. I needed to leave San Salvador: I had dreams of being a journalist, but I had no money. I could only afford two years at the Technological University of El Salvador. And economic life was too dominated by maras, or gangs. They are engaged in widespread extortion and selling drugs.

So with $100 in my pocket, I came here. I saw terrible things on the road, including human trafficking, and I crossed the border walking in the dark for five hours.

I thought I had passed the hardest tests to get here. But the tests keep getting more difficult. Today, more than ever, I need to rely on that phrase about not giving up.

This year, the environment has changed for immigrants. I see more immigration officers in my neighborhood, and more people have been removed.

Most importantly, I find it harder to secure and maintain a job. At first, I worked 10 hours a day, washing cars in Santa Monica. I got the worst sunburn from all that outdoor work, and my feet were wet all the time. It was a very low average salary for a place like California, but it was a steady paycheck. After six months of that, I found a job as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant. The pay was not good over my nine months, but the paychecks arrived on time.

Unfortunately, I was fired. The reason: I had not provided the necessary legal documents since I am undocumented. I have not been able to get such a regular job since then. And that means I had to stop taking English as a Second Language classes that I need for my education and to start a career. Instead, I have taken very different jobs like cleaning, gardening, painting, and assisting with the remodeling of apartments.

Since Donald Trump became president, everything has been more difficult. The people I know are more anxious and scared. And employers do not want to hire undocumented people. The president’s racism has real and serious consequences for people like me.

I am 25 years old, and I think I can be a great contributor to this great country. But to do that, I need protection from immigration enforcement and more freedom to work. People like me have found jobs, but we can lose them at any time. I wish there was some way to get documents in an approved way, and submit them so that I could work without being under a cloud.

This should be possible. The state of California has a system in which you can provide paperwork and learn to be a safe driver, and then get a driver’s license even if you are undocumented. I have a license, and therefore I am legal to drive because of it. That license allows me to do the work I have.

Instead of keeping people in fear, why not give immigrants ways to do things right? In this way, today’s work can be based on yesterday’s work, and you can actually get somewhere.

I am Roberto Flores. And maybe I still have not reached my goal, but I am closer to it than I was yesterday. And I am not quitting.

The post I Survived the Gangs and the Border Crossing—but Trump Has Put New Obstacles in My Path appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Being undocumented in California wasn’t easy. My parents first left Los Angeles a few years ago because they were being threatened by a gang member because they wouldn’t pay protection money for the right to sell food on the street. Their undocumented status made it hard for them to complain to the police.

But living in Indiana—now as a college student—has given me new respect for how Los Angeles deals with its undocumented citizens.

I started my college studies in Los Angeles, and received tremendous support in learning to navigate the educational system and create study habits. I paid in-state tuition for my courses at East Los Angeles College, as a result of 2001 state legislation. Students like me also benefit from the California Dream Act of 2011, which has helped undocumented students get access to more scholarships and state financial aid. A more recent California State Assembly bill, AB 1366—if passed—would encourage universities to provide more resources to help undocumented students complete their degrees.

In essence, the state of California treated me like other Californians: It was investing in me. Which made sense. More than one-third of California’s workforce is immigrants, and undocumented people are needed for their work and productivity, and as future taxpayers. And making sure undocumented people had college degrees was good economics; RAND’s Immigration Policy Center has estimated that the average 30-year-old Mexican immigrant woman in the United States with a bachelor’s degree will pay $5,300 more in taxes annually compared to the same individual who holds a high school diploma or less.

None of this made getting an education easy in Los Angeles, a very expensive place. I was living on my own with a well-paid job as a salesperson at a Chevrolet dealership, but to make a good living I had to work more than 40 hours and sell eight cars a month. I soon noticed my grades falling. So I took fewer classes, in order to sell more cars. Eventually, I decided to move to Indiana with my parents in order to finish my education.

The differences here in Hoosier State are startling. Indiana has a history of seeking to exclude undocumented immigrants such as myself from higher education. In 2011, Indiana passed House Bill 1402, which prohibits in-state tuition for students who are unlawfully present in the United States. To be undocumented in Indiana means to be a worker—not a student. But many students in Indiana have defied the state’s limits by going to college.

I learned from Radi, an undocumented student from Ivy Tech Community College in Elkhart, where she is president of the Latino Student Alliance (LSA) club, that at first she had decided not to go to college because of House Bill 1402. She has been living in the United States with her family since 1997, and has been an Indiana resident since she was a girl. But she couldn’t afford higher education as an 18-year-old, so she took a couple years off to save up for community college.

Then the good news: The establishment of the DACA program opened the door for her and other students, making it easier for them to stay in the country and work so they can go to school. But they still do not receive in-state tuition from the state where they grew up. This puts incredible stress on undocumented students who are pursuing a higher education to find good-paying jobs, to apply for many scholarships, and to keep up their grades so they can hold onto the scholarships they win.

And if they do graduate, undocumented bachelor’s graduates may not be able to pursue work in their chosen profession in Indiana particularly if they involve any sort of state licensing. I know a registered nurse here in Indiana not able to start her career as a nurse in the state because of her undocumented status. She meets all the state’s requirements for testing. She has the state approval in Illinois and passed her licensing in Michigan. But two years after graduating with a nursing degree in Indiana, the state denies her the right to take the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX).

This reality is pretty jarring for an undocumented Californian.

DACA was established by President Barack Obama’s 2012 executive order—it protects undocumented immigrants by giving them a work permit if they pay $495, pass a background check, and provide their biometric data. But President Trump has the power to end the DACA program. If he does so, as he promised during his campaign, young people who pay taxes, attend college, and own homes could be deported to countries they don’t really know. And America will be poorer; the Center for American Progress estimated that ending the program would reduce the U.S. Gross domestic product by $433 billion over the next decade.

The state legislature in Indiana is following Trump’s lead by putting more pressure on undocumented students. In 2017, two state bills were introduced in Indiana’s House and Senate that would prohibit state universities and colleges from adopting sanctuary policies to protect immigrant students. Another bill would prohibit educational institutions and agencies from acting to restrict federal immigration law in anyway. Failure to comply would make institutions ineligible to receive state funds.

As a student in Indiana, it’s hard to understand this failure to invest in undocumented students who want to get college degrees, and eventually master’s degrees.

I’m one such student, and I think I’ve had an impact. At Ivy Tech Valparaiso, I served as the Student Government Association (SGA) vice president. My responsibilities were to make our school campus inclusive for all students, engage students in campus life, and create a culture of civic engagement and cultural acceptance. To meet those goals, my cabinet and I created voter registration drives, took a field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago, connected students with the Campus President and Chancellor, and provided support to the Straight and Gay Alliance club. I filled this student government role while working 40 hours a week to pay for school, which was about $2,000 per semester, and keeping my GPA above 3.5.

In my last semester at Ivy Tech I was accepted to Valparaiso University, a private Lutheran school listed in the Forbes Top College list, with a $27,000 scholarship per year. This fall I will start my junior year, studying political science.

At my graduation in May from Ivy Tech Community College Valparaiso, Ivy Tech’s President Sue Ellspermann, who was Indiana’s lieutenant governor under Governor and now U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, said that the new economy will require workers with degrees. She added that today’s graduates still represent a minority of Hoosiers who have earned a degree, and that the states need more degree holders. As I walked the stage, I shook hands with Ellspermann, and made a point of telling her that to fulfill her mission of increasing the number of graduates and preparing Hoosiers for the future economy, the state needs to invest in undocumented students too.

Earning my Associate’s Degree is one of my proudest achievements.

The tale of my two states speaks volumes about values. California seeks to include everyone, and Indiana does not. In my short time here, I have heard a lot of conversations about Hoosier values, which are hard work, personal responsibility, and faith. So why doesn’t Indiana value undocumented Hoosiers who work hard, take responsibility for themselves, and pursue their dream with the faith that they will be respected and treated equally, someday, in the state where they have made their home?

Indiana doesn’t have to look overseas to know how to do this. They could go to California to see what sorts of policies are needed. Or they could ask me, and I would be sure to find some time between my full-time class and work schedules to explain how it’s done.

The post Why an Undocumented College Student Left California for Indiana appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.