IMMIGRATION UPDATE
The immigration reform bill seems to be making progress. How fantastic it would be if it became law this year! This article about how Republicans are picking up some of the Hispanic vote suggests what political calculations may be helping to motivate Bush. Could the Republicans turn Hispanics into a swing constituency, or even part of their base? We'll see. Personally, I don't know whether Bush is doing this for political advantage or because he thinks is right. Of course, the two reasons are in no way mutually exclusive. If it does work to his political advantage, that might entrench the trench towards more open immigration policies. Excellent!

Here is a fairly smart column that supports more immigration but thinks the Bush plan will be "ineffectual." Being an enthusiast rather than an expert on this issue, such claims make me nervous. But after he tries to envision what a "real reform" would look like, he ends with

The point is that, for the sake of the legitimacy and coherence of social and economic policy, we could and should accept more legal immigrants and far fewer illegals.

Aha, so that's what he's worried about. A friend of mine who works for the State Department recently expressed a similar opinion to me. Strange as it may sound, I sort of disagree. I'm all for accepting more legal immigrants. But I don't want to stop the erosion of our immigration restrictions' legitimacy. On the contrary. I think about it this way. Suppose a friend of mine, a poor Mexican who could not find work to support his family at home, told me he planned to come to the United States illegally, work and send remittances home. He knows the risks, he tells me, and he's decided they're worth it. Would I advise him not to do so, because it's morally wrong? No. I would just wish him luck. And I'm quite sure that to turn him in to the police would be a bad action on my part.

By contrast, suppose an impoverished friend of mine planned to murder, rob, or embezzle in order to support his poor family. He knew the risks and thought they were worth it. In each of these cases, I would tell him what he was planning was morally wrong. If he had done it already, I would advise him to turn himself in. And if I turned him in myself, I would be confident I was doing the right thing. If my friend were selling black-market CDs, or engaging in prostitution, or doing drugs, I wouldn't turn him in, because these crimes have no obvious victim to protect, but I would certainly advise him to stop if he asked me, because I consider these things morally wrong. But crossing borders is not.

I think there's a serious problem whenever law is misaligned with conscience. Law enforcement is more difficult because it becomes a matter of pure force and fear, and does not have an ally in people's sense of right and wrong. Drugs is an example of this. A large proportion of Americans don't see anything wrong with using marijuana, for example, and even those who do feel it's wrong generally feel the case is much less clear than with stealing or murder. This makes it much easier to form spontaneous conspiracies. The population becomes less compliant with law-enforcement officers' efforts. Punishments have to be raised steeply to create a disincentive strong enough to deter "criminal" activity, since the disincentives of conscience are absence. It's the same a fortiori with immigration. A lot of us may see the casual pot-smoker as at least sort of criminal-like; but hard-working illegal immigrants trying to make ends meet working low-end jobs seem more like victims than villains.

So I want the legitimacy of anti-immigration laws to be eroded further, or completely, and I think Bush's measure is valuable not only because it will make life a bit better for illegal immigrants, and let more legal immigrants in, but because it will help lift the stigma from illegal immigration. I hope it will be an important step forward in establishing the right to migrate.