On Sunday, we found out that one of the brethren in the Spanish ward that shares our chapel in Miami had been deported. He is married to an American woman and has two children, but he had not filled out his immigration papers correctly, so the INS caught up with him and deported him back to Central America, leaving his wife without a husband and his children without a father.
Let’s be clear: this brother broke the law. He came here on a temporary visa and stayed, married, had children and worked. But he also found that trying to legalize yourself is a lengthy, confusing process that can take more than a decade. And before he could become legal, the immigration authorities found him and put him on a plane back home.
I wonder how many of the people who are grumbling about “illegal” immigrants as these immigrants stay home from work today have a clue how difficult it is to become a legal immigrant. Here is the crude reality: it takes years and years of persistence, money, sweat and frustration to legalize yourself. You have to deal with some of the most power-hungry and annoying bureaucrats in the world. The system is completely broken.
I am in favor of following the law — indeed I believe our religion demands it. But our religion also has room for common sense. Joseph Smith supposedly broke hundreds of different laws and was repeatedly arrested on trumped-up charges. He certainly broke anti-polygamy laws, as did many other early Church leaders.
Latter-day Saints should be especially aware of the spectrum of law-breaking. On one end, we break different types of laws every day — we speed, we jaywalk, we play our music too loud, we don’t follow all of the municipal laws when we carry out home improvement projects. I wonder if we would be more sympathetic to “illegal” immigrants if we all had to wait 10 years to get a driver’s license before getting behind the wheel of the car. If that were the law, would all of us obey the law and never drive until we had a license? Imagine what a pain it is to get a driver’s license in some states — the rude bureaucrats, the five-hour lines, the technological backwardness. Now, imagine having to do that for 10 years. If I had to wait 10 years to get a driver’s license, I’d try to get around the law, because it is absurd, just as our immigration laws are absurd today.
I’m ashamed of the nativist fervor of my fellow conservatives on this issue. I’m happy to say that President Bush’s instincts are right — he is pro-immigrant, just as I am. But the majority of my favorite conservative talk shows are filled with bile toward immigrants, and it makes me unexpressably sad. It bodes poorly for the future of the Republican party, and it shows very little humanity.
May Day in most of the world is a time for organized labor to parade and demand that its workers work less. The contrast in the United States could not be more stark — here there are millions of people who want to work harder, yet there are many who want them to leave. It seems un-American to me.