The US government’s crackdown on illegal immigration, the resulting disorder in Los Angeles and other cities, and the Democratic Party’s response to the riots testify to the country’s broken politics. However, they also raise a deeper, less obvious and more unsettling question. In what sense is the US, as it wants to believe, a nation of laws?
In a nation of laws, you might expect people to understand not just what the law says, but also what it actually requires — an important distinction. In the US, the gap between the two is often very wide. Immigration law is an especially consequential case. Instead of clarifying its demands and aiming to have them enforced in a stable and predictable way, the country’s politicians manipulate the law’s gaps and ambiguities for partisan purposes. The result is injustice — together with enormous collateral damage.
From my office window in Washington, I look down on an unusually complicated intersection. I can count (conservatively) one instance of law-breaking per minute. Cars making forbidden left turns, exceeding the speed limit, running red lights, using bus lanes; cyclists weaving all over the place, in and out of cycle lanes, on and off the sidewalks, scattering pedestrians; riders of motor scooters doing all of the above and more, at much higher speeds, all the time.
Illustration: Mountain People
A police car parked on the corner makes surprisingly little difference. We have decided, somehow, that these rules would not be enforced (unless you encounter a police officer in an especially bad mood). The law does not mean what it says. Immigration laws are similar, except that a closer parallel might be highway speed limits — where it is understood that you are a nuisance to other drivers if you insist on complying.
The US has millions of immigrants who are in the country illegally; the economy would slump without them. Employers want to hire them. This nation of laws forbids it, but allows it. The federal government taxes their wages. State and local governments collect taxes as well, and provide various benefits and accommodations. Some cities proudly call themselves “sanctuaries.” The rules say, “Keep out,” but for years they have meant, “Come on in.”
Millions of people have been allowed, and often tacitly encouraged, to remain in the country illegally. For years, they work, take their place in communities, build families with children who are US citizens. Suddenly, they are at risk of being detained and deported. The sweeps are not confined to people who have broken other laws. Some have been arrested and jailed for paperwork violations while attending appointments to review their applications for citizenship. The law is being enforced, you might say, but no fair-minded person could consider this indiscriminate crackdown decent or just.
To be clear, this is not a plea for the law to be ignored — it is a plea (hopeless, I know) for the law to be repaired. The rules should be aligned with the country’s interests, meaning that they should allow far more legal immigration. They should also be stable, predictable, enforceable and consistently enforced. In a nation of laws, people — law-abiding and violators alike — should know where they stand.
The country’s broken politics militates against any such solution.
Democrats are right to express sympathy for the people caught up in this aggressive turn. But the problem has arisen partly because, often in the name of compassion, politicians have so diligently complicated and obfuscated the immigration laws.
During the administration of former US president Joe Biden, would-be immigrants could use the CBP One app to schedule appointments at ports of entry that granted temporary “humanitarian parole” while their asylum applications are processed. Slowly. Most of those applications were likely to fail. Never mind: “Come on in.”
The administration of US President Donald Trump has canceled the policy. People who entered legally are, at a stroke, in the country illegally, and the app is now telling them: “Get out.” People who were present legally under a separate program for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have seen their parole terminated, and the administration has abruptly withdrawn Temporary Protected Status from other groups. In giving people admission without security, the Democrats’ purportedly compassionate policies did the beneficiaries no favors.
The party’s sanctuary-city virtue-signaling was worse: It lured migrants to break the law by assuring them of protection from the consequences — protection, it turns out, the sanctuaries cannot provide.
Responding to the federal deployment of the California National Guard in Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass said: “I’ve been in touch this morning with immigrant rights leaders as well as local law enforcement officials. Los Angeles will always stand with everyone who calls our city home [emphasis added].”
Just so, because her party has all but erased the very concept of illegal immigration. Meanwhile, Democratic politicians oppose the federal deployment partly on the grounds that it is unlawful. Because, as they insist, the law is the law.
As a political strategy, by the way, “do not say illegal immigrant” seems a sure-fire loser. Immigrants who have followed the rules would be among those who object, and how much worse when Democratic politicians seem reluctant to recognize that some immigrants (regardless of their legal status) are gang members or commit serious crimes. The zealous pursuit of such people is something that the vast majority of immigrants, as much as natural-born citizens, would applaud. Casting riots and wanton destruction, whose principal victims include immigrant communities, as “mostly peaceful protests” is yet another act of political self-harm. The president understands this and is exploiting it.
All that said, the administration’s crackdown is cruel and hypocritical. If the president could snap his fingers and beam across the border every immigrant who is in the country illegally, he would not do it, because it would turn the economy upside down. The posturing on both sides — including the constant invocation of what the law demands — is cover for the prevailing consensus on the need to maintain fierce disagreement. In this nation of laws, that is what comes first.
Repair the law, the countries’ politicians ask? How would that help us win?
Clive Crook is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and member of the editorial board covering economics. Previously, he was deputy editor of The Economist and chief Washington commentator for the Financial Times. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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