Obama on immigration

With Washington’s caucuses concluded, it now looks as if Barack Obama will win the Democratic vote. So with that in mind, I think that it is important to take a look at his stance on immigration. Obama sees the source of the immigration problem in two areas: a broken bureaucracy and ineffective immigration raids. To fix these problems Obama wants “to preserve the integrity of our borders.” He supports “additional personnel, infrastructure and technology on the border and at our ports of entry.” But what I find most interesting is he wants “to support a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.” And “we must fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy and increase the number of legal immigrants to keep families together and meet the demand for jobs that employers cannot fill.”

To me this program sounds a lot like the Bracero program. I think that while this is a viable solution, I feel that there is a real possibility of a backlash against these workers by American low skilled workers who might feel that this program is an institutionalized attack on their livelihood. This could also be used as a spring board for people to use the immigration issue as an excuse for racism. Another important point that I want to bring up is his plan to fine, make illegal immigrants learn English, and go to the back of the line for citizenship is a solution, but I don’t think that it will work because these people are already impoverished and may not be able to pay the fine. So what would happen then? Deportation? This would discourage people from coming forward for this program. Also, as discussed in class, some Latin immigrants either do not have the resources, or the desire to learn English. And how would this be enforced? Could we as Americans really bear to deport someone just because they can’t speak English? That in itself seems pretty un-American.