Getting the picture on 'illegal'
Steve Ford, Staff Writer-Rasleigh, NC News & Observer



There's a familiar retort intended to derail suggestions that untangling the problem of illegal immigration might involve something beyond just shipping immigration violators back where they came from: "What is it about 'illegal' that you don't understand?"

Having fielded this retort more than a few times, I have to say that it's popular among those who seem inordinately proud to have thunk up such a zinger. As if "What is it about 'illegal' ..." weren't already common currency among a raft of folks who can't bring themselves to acknowledge that solving today's immigration puzzle isn't as simple as they'd like to believe.

Their assumption seems to be that when someone has entered the United States without proper permission, or has overstayed a temporary visa or work permit, then that person has violated the social order in the same way that someone does when he robs, rapes or murders.

An undocumented immigrant has breached the law, no question about that. Laws and regulations governing immigration are needed, and they're supposed to be obeyed, but the simple fact that a law is on the books doesn't automatically elevate it to the realm of moral principle. There is nothing sacred about a ceiling on the number of people allowed to come here from India, or Nigeria, or Mexico, or about the terms under which they may be allowed to remain -- nothing that puts those rules on the same plane as the law against, say, killing someone in cold blood.

So are people entitled to choose which laws to follow? No. But when laws are impractical to enforce, counterproductive or inhumane, the proper focus should be on making the laws better serve the needs of society and better comport with American ideals, rather than on lashing out against those whom the laws target.

That backlash now is driven by politicians who stoke resentment toward illegal immigrants as an easy way to ingratiate themselves with certain voters who must enjoy lording it over ditch diggers, vegetable pickers and dish washers desperately clawing for a spot on the ladder toward a better life. And over their children, perhaps trying to get an education that could become a ticket to the middle class.

Down through this country's history, there have been instances when behavior that had been deemed illegal was then declared to be perfectly OK. There have been instances when those who defied the law eventually were honored: Rebellion against the Crown comes to mind. The revolutionaries saw themselves as acting to uphold unalienable rights, "the laws of nature and of nature's God."

Even then, women were denied the right to vote. When the activists for women's suffrage finally came along, what was it about "illegal" that they didn't understand?

Of course, the most monstrous example, where settled law embodied the grossest violation of human rights imaginable short of genocide, involved slavery.

It was illegal for a slave -- always a person of African descent -- to escape. It was illegal to shelter a slave who had managed to flee (an illegal immigrant of sorts). It was illegal for a slave to exercise or enjoy any right of citizenship at all. So declared the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision of 1857 -- probably the most ghastly outcome of strict constructionist thinking in the court's history.

Dred Scott had been purchased as a slave by an Army officer in Missouri, then taken into free territory in the North when the officer was transferred. Eventually Scott and his family were returned to Missouri. He sued for his freedom.

When the case made its way to the high court, Chief Justice Roger Taney in his majority opinion recognized the plight of the "unfortunate," "unhappy" black race. But his reading of the Constitution found no grounds under which a black person could become an American citizen, enjoying citizenship's rights. When the Constitution was written, the court concluded, blacks were regarded as so inferior that it was inconceivable they could have been eligible for full membership in the American body politic.

What about the lofty language employed by the Founders, asserting that all men were created equal? In Taney's view, those old boys were so prejudiced that they couldn't have believed what they wrote.

The court's decision fanned abolitionist flames and became a catalyst for the war to come. Many thousands of deaths later, the slaves were freed, and in the Civil War's aftermath the Constitution was amended to outlaw slavery and grant citizenship to anyone born in this country.

Abraham Lincoln & Co. understood "illegal," all right, and did what they had to do to remedy a colossal injustice. It will take judgment and courage, but thank heavens no bloodshed, to resolve today's difficulties with illegal immigration in fairness and good order.
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