Thank You, Mr. Trump

Donald Trump is right. His comments about Mexican “rapists” and impregnable border fences, outrageous though they may be, have forced his fellow Republicans, and the rest of us, to talk about immigration. It’s truly the “elephant in the room” on many levels.

It’s very easy for us to have a theoretical discussion about immigration. True, we have problems: millions of people here illegally or semi-legally, who many of the rest of us think are draining our resources. But what would we do if our country were in Europe right now instead of being conveniently isolated by two oceans? What would we do if all these desperate people were washing up on our shores – if their boats even made it that far? Would they be a drain on our resources? Very likely – but some European countries, like Greece, don’t have any resources left to drain. We do have an easy life here!

Let’s roll back the tape a little bit. A few Arab Spring demonstrators several years ago in Syria inexplicably prompted their government to turn a mechanized army on its own people, killing hundreds of thousands. Nothing we can do about it, we said, not our problem, and the other Western powers largely agreed. Let them fight it out for themselves, we said. The country descended into total chaos, and now there is ISIS. Millions have been displaced, and not just from Syria. Did neglect come back to bite us? We haven’t really been bitten yet in this situation, just the Europeans. Some countries are still trying to say, not our problem. But the desperate thousands arrive anyway – their problem whether they like it or not.

There are no easy solutions to our own immigration issues, parochial as they may seem by comparison. Certainly, we have to come up with a fair system that allows for people living here and contributing to our economy as well as for those seeking asylum or those just seeking a better life. But as a friend of mine pointed out recently, most of our ancestors were immigrants – not always nice ones – who displaced the native population. We forced others to “migrate” here as personal property. You can keep rolling back the tape, and you’ll find that the hard distinctions between good guys and bad guys just get blurrier and blurrier.

But at some point we are going to have to set aside demagogic talk about anchor babies and fences and understand that we are all in this boat --- on this planet – together, and the hard distinctions between “our problems” and “their problems” are also a lot blurrier than they used to be.

Living in America

The immigration debate is a story about recognizing reality. Tonight in his television address, President Obama laid out his plan for dealing with it. The major effect of his executive order will be to allow some five million people now living in this country illegally (I’ve never understood this “undocumented” stuff – useless euphemism IMHO), to remain, without fear of being deported, and be able to get work permits.

That’s a lot of people. And the reality is, they’re HERE. Can you make them all disappear? Mr. Obama isn’t stupid. This order is also about keeping families together, and it’s being issued as we approach the biggest family time of the year.

The Congress can’t discuss this matter civilly and resolve it, and the President is trying to move things forward. When the quarterback can’t find anyone to pass to, sometimes he decides to run with ball himself. Usually he doesn’t get very far, but he tries anyway.

Look, here’s some more reality. This issue is complicated, but fixable, maybe only piece by piece. The immigration regulations we have now are tweaked all the time to fit our needs. Congress has done it before. There’s a program called EB-5, which gives foreign investors special immigration status here if they open a large business in this country that creates jobs. And if it were determined that the U.S. suddenly needed left-handed widget-twisters from Indonesia, the rules would be adjusted to let them in. All countries do things like this.

Certainly we have to secure the borders. But as porous as they may be in some places, they’re impregnable in others. How many horror stories have there been of Americans trying to return to this country after traveling to Canada and being detained on this side of the border for six hours or more for no stated reason? It happened to a friend of mine who is white, and whose name doesn’t sound remotely Hispanic – or Middle Eastern.

What would be the impact on our economy if the five million people in question were forced to leave? First of all, it would likely be a much more expensive prospect to make them disappear than to keep them. And what jobs wouldn’t be done, what consumer prices would skyrocket, if these folks weren’t among us?

Did the President exceed his authority? Did he sour relations with Congress (like they’re any good now)? Very likely, yes to both. Pity the poor immigrants in the middle, whose heads must be spinning, wondering where they stand. But instead of simply trying to knock down what the President has done and prolong the torture, can the current members of Congress actually take steps to deal with this issue, as their predecessors did? It doesn’t have to be perfect. But it does have to be realistic. Just pass a bill.

No Change of Horses

In 1864, when President Abraham Lincoln was at his most unpopular and running for re-election, his campaign slogan was “Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream.” Whether you think invoking Lincoln here is appropriate or not, it appears the country has decided to hang on to Mr. Obama for another four years.

Even for Obama-haters, there are certain advantages to this situation. There’s no reasonable cause anymore for congressional Republicans to refuse to deal with him. For the next four, he’s what they’ve got. For Mr. Obama, there’s no reason for political timidity. He doesn’t have to worry about re-election. It opens the door to compromise – a relatively short time before the mid-term election for Congress – where the two parties could actually get something accomplished. President Obama did not win anything resembling a mandate; the Republicans didn’t substantially improve their position in Congress. It’s a wash, so there’s nothing to crow about, and crowing is a waste of time, anyway.

I have some requests for things both sides can work on going forward – after they pull us back from the “fiscal cliff.”

TAX REFORM. Mitt Romney had the germ of a great idea. The issue isn’t just about taxing the rich, which would only be a Band-Aid on top of old Band-Aids. Simplify the tax code! In the end, it will benefit everyone, taking a huge monkey off the backs of individuals and businesses alike. This is one of the keys to dealing with the deficit.

I heard a horror story on NPR this morning about something called the Alternative Minimum Tax, a regulation adopted in the 1980s to make sure wealthy people were paying their fair share of taxes. Apparently, the story said, this regulation was never indexed to inflation, and Congress has to “patch” it each year. If they fail to do so, the AMT could apply to incomes as low as $75,000 – which could mean an instant tax hike as much as 20 percent for the average middle-class family. This is one of the poster children for why the tax system needs to be overhauled – and soon.

IMMIGRATON. Solve this one once and for all. Do the best job you can sealing the borders. Then, come up with a national system that both recognizes realities and is fair to the people who’ve been playing by the rules. Mr. Obama, you promised to deal with this in your first term. You have another opportunity to make good on your promise.

HEALTH CARE. Just because Obamacare is the law, it doesn’t mean Congress and the President have to stop working on this issue. How about tort reform, for one thing? And maybe some real controls on insurance charges?

OTHER STUFF. If there’s time, why not work on getting rid of the Senate filibuster, abolishing the Electoral College, and take a whack at campaign finance reform so we don’t have to endure another election like this one?

These are all very difficult, but they can be solved if elected officials make up their minds to work together to solve them instead of posturing. The President – and the Congress -- have a real opportunity to leave a legacy.

Mr. President, if I may address you directly, enough of the electorate has decided that you are the more effective leader than Mitt Romney. So LEAD already! Get out IN FRONT of issues instead of letting them beat down your door. Put plans on the table before your opponents do. And hold more news conferences -- keep us updated; bring us along with you as you deal with these problems. We just told you we're on your side -- as long as it's the side of getting things done.

Raising, or Sinking, Arizona

The Supreme Court’s long-awaited ruling on Arizona’s controversial immigration law has left some happy, others sad, and still others scratching their heads. The third group is largely populated, as you might expect, by lawyers.

The key provision of the law, which calls on police to verify an individual’s immigration status if that person is stopped for another reason, and the officer has cause to suspect the person is an illegal immigrant, was upheld by the court. Some call this a victory for Arizona, but others say that since the ruling doesn’t prevent litigation if the officer behaves unconstitutionally, the law is toothless. Three other provisions of the law were struck down, mostly on the ground that they’re already covered under federal law – which critics say the federal government isn’t enforcing.

So basically, we’ve got to call in the referee to see if the ball has actually been moved. But at least we’re talking about it.

Immigration is one of those “third-rail” subjects that most politicians seem not to want to address, mainly because it’s too difficult and almost any solution seems unfair. President Obama recently announced a plan to relax enforcement of the law on young people, especially college students, who were brought here illegally by their parents and raised as Americans. It was certainly the right thing to do, but in a political sense, it was a questionable time to do it.

We have to come up with a balanced solution that falls somewhere between deporting all illegal immigrants and declaring amnesty – and it must be clearly understood that it’s going to affect the pocketbooks of everyone who lives here. Already, farmers are complaining that a lack of laborers may force them to grow fewer crops. Replace the illegal farmworkers with American citizens? Good luck. Farmers say the average “ordinary American” who tries to do stoop labor gives up after one or two days in the field. Maybe we need a new bracero program. Fully enforce laws against employers who hire illegals? Sounds good – except how many businesses would be shut down by such actions? How much of a job creator would that be? And if illegals were replaced by presumably more expensive American citizens, how much more would the rest of us be paying for the products and services involved?

Immigration laws aren’t nearly as hard and fast as people say they would like them to be. When we need particular classes of workers, like engineers from India, for example, the laws are tweaked to accommodate the need. And it’s not new. Immediate citizenship was offered to Irish immigrants getting off the boat during the Civil War if they would simply join the Union Army.

We need to recognize that illegal workers are an integral part of our current economy, and if we’re going to make changes, we have to be very clear ahead of time about what we’ll be getting ourselves into.

Thank You, Arizona

Don't get too upset at the folks in Arizona. They've just decided to deal with something that's been ignored. If a tooth is bothering you and dental care is unavailable, the pain may eventually drive you to cruder home remedies, like pliers.

OK, maybe we haven't exactly ignored the immigration issue. We've talked about it a lot, sort of like health care. That was an aching tooth that got dental attention. Many of us didn't approve of the procedure, but at least we took a whack at it.

I've often said that if I were elected to office, the first plank in my platform would be to reduce the tax code to a single 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. For the immigration code, I'd be willing to go up to three pages.

Of course, it will be longer than that. But at whatever length, it probably won't be something everyone believes is fair. Those who played by the rules will be upset about the breaks that will likely have to be given to those who didn't. But if the rules weren't enforced in the first place, who is to blame, exactly? Sometimes the lack of enforcement was lazy. More often it was deliberate. But it doesn't really matter. The rule book needs revision, and we'd better get on it.

Maybe we should be saying, "Thank you, Arizona," for moving this issue to the front burner. Something tells me that cap-and-trade can wait. I have no scientific evidence for saying that, but immigration law would now appear to be a much higher priority. We'd better start asking ourselves how many more Arizonas we want to see out there.