The wife of a US sailor, about to leave for his third Iraq tour, is facing deportation. The wife came to America as a political refugee at age five and was granted asylum, but due to bureaucratic delays and mazes, she hasn’t been able to secure her status. I don’t know what’s more terrible: that’s mostly our own fault that she’s not legal yet, or that the rabid right-wingers supporting her deportation can’t distinguish her from someone who actually broke the law to come here.
I haven’t hid my position: I support full amnesty and a spiking (if not elimination) of immigration quotas. I pair this position with heavily tightened border security, so that we know who is coming into our country (and know that, if someone is trying to sneak into the country undetected, its likely for a “crime” more serious than pursuing a better life). But outside of that position, I think at a far more basic level we have an obligation to recognize when something is our own fault, and I think we need to stop the absurd and inhuman rhetoric that treats five-year olds like willful fugitives. Cases like this, where there is really no coherent argument against letting this woman stay in the country, are the ones that really worry me about the immigration debate, because they show more than a policy difference — they show an irrational anti-immigrant ideology that’s resulting in serious perversion of soul. It’s moral corruption that’s poisoning too many American hearts. And it genuinely frightens me.