Why I Support Amnesty for Undocumented Immigrants

Although there are a lot of immigration reform proposals on the table, virtually everyone agrees that they don't support amnesty. This is fine; a transitional citizenship arrangement has no more to do with amnesty than civil unions do with same-sex marriage, or mainstream affirmative action policies do with racial quotas. But I do support amnesty. Here's why.

Let’s begin by acknowledging a cold, brutal fact: We would never see 12 million undocumented Ph.D.-holding white multimillionaires in the United States, and if we did, granting them citizenship would not be a national debate. Our noble leaders in Washington would have made citizens out of them right away. So this is not really about "the rule of law," or at least not just about "the rule of law."

We're afraid of bad things happening: The formation of Quebec-like chunks of the country where no English is spoken, higher unemployment, social services benefits we can't afford to pay, more crime, new diseases. Some of us are afraid, in whispered tones, of a country with a population that simply looks different from ours. Progressives are concerned that the Roman Catholic cultural influence from Latin America could contribute to more conservative social policy. Conservatives are afraid that an influx of Latino voters will give the Democratic Party an invincible majority in our elected government. But I think the greatest fear, the most pervasive fear, is a very different fear. It's the fear of the unknown. It is the unarticulated fear that things will somehow change in ways that we can't anticipate if so many people from a different culture, speaking a different language, praying different prayers and listening to different music and reading different books, come in and change us. And maybe we should be afraid. Mass immigration is a scary idea, at least when you're not one of the immigrants. We should not pretend it isn't. I'm afraid, too.

But let's not lose sight of this simple fact: The 12 million people we're talking about are already living here, and we're doing okay, aren't we? Aren't you still proud to live in this country? Don't you still feel fortunate to live in this country? Has your quality of life been negatively impacted by undocumented immigration? America is still America, and America will still be America whether our 12 million undocumented immigrants are granted citizenship or not.

So as we continue this cultural debate, let's exorcise two demons from it. The first is the idea that this is simply about "the rule of law," because it isn't. The second is unarticulated fear.

And the best way to do that is to look at things from the perspective of the immigrants themselves.