Thief analogy hits the wrong mark

Carole Weling’s May 4 contribution to the Mailbag (“Illegal immigration is as illegal as burglary”), equated illegal immigrants with “burglars who break into our homes” because “they both break the law.” This logic, however, lumps jaywalkers together with murderers, and the law certainly deals with these categories of offenders differently. The current debate concerning illegal immigration should also differentiate otherwise law-abiding people from those who threaten our personal safety.

A far better analogy for illegal immigration is the situation of a handyman crossing into a homeowner’s yard to offer his services. When he steps foot on the homeowner’s property without advance permission he is trespassing, and the homeowner has every right to ask him to leave. However, if he’s hired to perform a job, the homeowner can’t then complain to the police that the handyman has trespassed.

With respect to those who have entered the U.S. without permission and lived here as hard-working members of our society, the analogy of the handyman is apt, and it is unfair to accord them criminal status. We, as a society represented by an elected government, have tacitly allowed such immigrants to live and work here for a generation, since the last immigration reform efforts of the 1980s.

While respect for law and order is fundamental to any society, those advocating the criminalization of undocumented status are, in effect, saying that we should task our law enforcement community with finding and deporting the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants in this country. The scope of such an undertaking, and its human toll, reveal the folly of such a policy. Forcibly relocating 3% of this country’s population solely in the name of “law and order” would place the U.S. in the history books next to such enlightened states as Stalin’s Russia, which uprooted a paltry 300,000 Volga Germans and half a million Chechens in the 1940s. The forced relocation of 110,000 U.S. residents (and citizens) of Japanese ancestry during World War II likewise pales in comparison to the scope of the policy advocated by proponents of criminalizing undocumented status. It should not be forgotten that both Russia’s deportations and the Japanese internment were “legal” at the time, but resulted in enormous human suffering.

The Prohibition Era may provide the best historical lesson when considering options for addressing the immigration issue. For a decade, drinking alcohol was not only illegal but unconstitutional. Millions of Americans (Al Capone notwithstanding) broke the law but otherwise lived exemplary lives. After years of futile efforts to enforce the law, the country reversed course and chose to deal with the elephant in the room.

Controlling the U.S. border is a security issue ? an important one. Just as we regulate who can drink and where (not minors, and not in a car) for reasons of safety, we should control immigration. But we must keep in mind that our choices regarding what to do about those who have already crossed the border without permission have a moral dimension, as such choices affect the lives of millions of people. That dimension has seemingly been lost in the present debate.