What We Can Do Right Now:
- FIRST, TALK! Let's immediately begin a national conversation to get all of the reasonable perspectives and salient facts out there on immigration reform, sensible border security and the future path to American citizenship in our rapidly changing world. Put together fact-based discussions of these variables in neighborhoods, towns, cities and regions across America. (And while we are at it, let's hold each Member of the House of Representatives responsible for facilitating multiple sessions of this critical community discussion in his or her district in 2021).
- ACKNOWLEDGE FAILURES, AND MOVE ON: Let's acknowledge together in one united voice that for at least 30-years, the federal government under both parties has hopelessly mismanaged border affairs, immigration protocol, and planning for the realistic future path toward U.S. Citizenship for economic migrants, haven seekers, and extended family members of U.S. citizens. It doesn't matter who is to blame for the past mismanagement; just move on...let's now start making sensible fixes where we can beginning in January 2021.
- ACKNOWLEDGE OUR NEIGHBORS: Let's start with what is right and practical. So, in January 2021, let's push the partisan obstructionists aside and solidify the citizenship status of the tens of thousands of "hidden Americans" whose status has been unresolved for years (because of partisan squabbling) and who have otherwise become productive and contributing neighbors in our communities during their time here. Action on the plan to finally clarify the status of the "Dreamers" and tens of thousands of other decent, freedom-loving people who have become responsible American citizens in all but the paperwork has been ready to roll since the Reagan administration in the 1980s. Ideologues and hyper-partisans in both parties have been holding it up ever since. Let's get it done because it makes sense and it is the right thing to do.
- CLARITY ON OUR GUEST WORKERS PROGRAM: Let's be honest about, also gain more clarity about the status regarding temporary work visa holders, documented guest workers, and other foreign nationals who are employed in the United States and yet remain undocumented for one reason or another. Again, let's be honest and realistic about this "category of person" in our community. We all know that temporary forces of "seasonal laborers" from outside of the United States are a critical component of the agricultural and food industry workforce in the 4th District and across the nation. We know these workers are not taking jobs that citizens would otherwise be taking, for the most part, and are not depressing wages for permanent citizens in their specific industry.
- POSITIVELY SUPPORT THE 99% OF RESPONSIBLE AGRICULTURAL EMPLOYERS: Let's study how to more positively support and if need be subsidize the efforts of the great majority of farmers, ranchers, and food processors who already mount significant efforts to provide these critical non-citizen, seasonal staff members with adequate pay, basic benefits and humane working conditions that are economically competitive, fair and equitable.
- CLEAR ACCOUNTABILITY FOR BAD APPLES: Let's also hold accountable the few business owners out there who knowingly hire undocumented workers. But in the case of these few unscrupulous employers, let's not punish the undocumented seasonal workers for merely seeking to work. Instead, lets assign the rule-breaking business owners with the financial and legal burden of providing for the immediate welfare, proper compensation, future disposition, and proper guest worker documentation of these temporary workers. Let's make them responsible for ensuring seasonal workers either return home or find other temporary agricultural employment (with proper documentation) once the job is done. And then if these few "rotten apples" once again fail that standard, then let's take it to the next level of enforcement and put them out of business.
- ICE & CBP: A QUICKLY CONSUMMATED TEMPORARY FIX IN 2003--IS THIS THE RIGHT APPROACH FOR THE 2020s?-- In January 2021 let's do a complete and fair analysis of the assigned mission and accepted practices of the Department of Homeland Security's two separate but parallel enforcement agencies, CBP (Customs & Border Patrol) and ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement). Let's honestly assess how these agencies as currently structured are handling the state of border integrity and the general policing of the immigration process throughout the United States. There are legitimate questions about how these agencies have evolved since 2003. (For example, is it proper that agents in these outfits be unique in federal law enforcement in that they are represented by highly-partisan labor unions that have actively involved themselves in partisan electioneering?) It is important that we calmly and rationally discuss whether the mission we have assigned these otherwise dedicated public servants since 2003 is still in the best interests of the nation now in the 2020s. Let's then discuss other models for how we could achieve our broad objectives in border security and immigration more effectively.
- LET'S BRING PROSPERITY AND SUSTAINABILITY IN THE AMERICAS BACK INTO FOCUS: In 2021 let's undertake a national effort to look deeply into the root causes of increased U.S. immigration demand from Central and South America. Let's see if there are new "shifts" or "pivots" in American foreign policy and trade policy that could orient us back toward stronger partnerships with this too-often neglected region in our neighborhood. Let's also study new potential emphases for foreign aid, trade development and diplomacy in the Americas that could more adequately help the United States to address the domestic challenges faced by these "fellow Americans" -- in ways that could encourage more sustainable patterns of local prosperity and trans-border movement throughout our Western hemisphere.
THE BOTTOM LINE
We need to get started on immigration reform and border security realism right away. But let's be truthful and empathetic with each other from the get-go.
Our immigration policies must be curated carefully in 2021 to reflect the new realities of our economy (including the work-skills needs and job-availability we can reasonably expect to have here in the next 25-years) and a genuine assessment of the capacity of our communities to absorb new arrivals without sacrificing existing quality of life standards in our cities and towns. That's not selfishness or ethno-centrism talking -- its just practical realism.
As we do this we have to be as actively empathetic to a family honestly just seeking a peaceful and prosperous new life in the United States as we are fully open-eyed to the actual economic, sustainability and logistical realities of community growth. We will need to study this issue in all of its many wrinkles and carefully consider all the perspectives and shades of the facts that we gather (and then discuss these perspectives amiably among our neighbors and communities).
The base reality of true immigration/border security reform for the 2020s and beyond is that, once it is completed, it is not going to be an easy pill for anyone to swallow.
Most difficulty, as the world's first "nation of immigrants" we are all going to have to acknowledge that, whatever the details, in any kind of immigration reform we will necessarily be making a sea-change in America's foundational values and cultural traditions. Given the evolving economic and community sustainability picture, we just are not capable of being the fully accessible country we were in the 1890s. So the future will indeed be a time of increasingly limited capacity for growth due to immigration. We will have to have consensus that these changes have not been driven by prejudice or "fear of the other," but instead by our reckoning of the unique resource and sustainability challenges we face in the 21st Century. Because that is the truth of the matter no matter how much I and others wish it weren't.
So we are going to have to also accept that these changes in the path to U.S. Citizenship that we make in the 2020s are also going to at some level represent a fundamental shift in "who we are" to the world and how we are seen by others abroad.
But if we do this right, and equitably, and we do fix the sustainability of the future path to American citizenship -- we will have served all people who covet freedom, opportunity, and prosperity in their lives over the long term. We can still remain, the last best hope on Earth.
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