Rubio's New Stand on Immigration Reform Is Good For The Fox Valley

I was pleased to see in today’s New York Times that Sen. Marco Rubio, the darling of the Tea Party, is proposing a reasonable if complex approach to dealing with the millions of undocumented immigrants who live in the United States.  He does not yet have the full support of his party, but he is moving in the right direction, and I have little doubt that support for his proposals in the GOP will grow.

According to the Times article,

“The right way to deal with them is not amnesty,” Mr. Rubio said, “and it is not a special pathway to citizenship.” Instead, he said, he would offer a provisional legal status to immigrants who passed criminal background checks, paid fines and passed English and civics tests.

But, he said, “Ultimately it’s not good for our country to have people permanently trapped in that status where they can’t become citizens.” After a certain period, he said, immigrants would be allowed to apply to become legal permanent residents, a status that would eventually allow them to become citizens.

We also learn that Mr. Rubio now supports The Dream Act, which offers a fast-track to legal residence for young people who were brought to this country illegally as small children.

Our own Paul Ryan now says that he supports the same principles that Mr. Rubio supports.  The Times says,

Mr. Ryan, on his Facebook page, wrote that Mr. Rubio was “exactly right on the need to fix our broken immigration system.”

“I support the principles he’s outlined,” Mr. Ryan said, “modernization of our immigration laws; stronger security to curb illegal immigration; and respect for the rule of law in addressing the complex challenge of the undocumented population.”

I am pleased to see this change of heart on the part of prominent Republicans not only because the things he is proposing will help us to solve an important national problem but also because regularizing the status of undocumented immigrants is an important issue for us in northeastern Wisconsin.  Undocumented immigrants play an important role in our economy.  Several large dairy farms within an hour’s drive of the Fox cities have work forces composed largely of undocumented immigrants.  In addition, several factories in the Fox Cities employ many such people.  They have not displaced other workers as we can see from the fact that our area has a very low rate of unemployment.  The undocumented immigrants in our area have been hired because they are needed, and sending them back to their home countries would seriously disrupt our economy.

Our current laws do not prevent the employment of undocumented immigrants, but their lives are made pointlessly inconvenient.  Thus, for example, many people cannot obtain drivers’ licenses, and so they have a hard time getting to work, but, like the rest of us, they need to work in order to live.  So they manage.  Some drive illegally, and of course that means that they do not have insurance, which is a problem for the rest of us.

Our economy needs these people, and it is stupid as well as unjust for our laws to create difficulties for people whom we need.  We have shown clearly over a number of years that we are not prepared to disrupt our economy by sending them home or by penalizing their employers.  Our undocumented neighbors are here to stay.  So I am pleased to see that important members of the Republican Party are finally coming out of the haze of fantasy that they have been living in and have begun to look for ways to deal realistically with the world that the rest of us live in.

If you agree with Senators Rubio and Ryan (and me), and you want to support the passage of reasonable and just laws to regularize the status of undocumented immigrants, check out ESTHER Fox Valley’s web site (http://esther-foxvalley.org/).  ESTHER Fox Valley’s Immigration Task Force is working on this problem, and you can help.