Panel Discussion and Commentary: What to Expect with Immigration Reform in the 110Th Congress and the Implications for the Legal Community Alan L
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Campbell Law Review Volume 29 Article 5 Issue 2 Winter 2007 January 2007 Panel Discussion and Commentary: What to Expect with Immigration Reform in the 110th Congress and the Implications for the Legal Community Alan L. Button Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.campbell.edu/clr Part of the Immigration Law Commons Recommended Citation Alan L. Button, Panel Discussion and Commentary: What to Expect with Immigration Reform in the 110th Congress and the Implications for the Legal Community, 29 Campbell L. Rev. 263 (2007). This Commentary is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarly Repository @ Campbell University School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Campbell Law Review by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Repository @ Campbell University School of Law. Button: Panel Discussion and Commentary: What to Expect with Immigration Panel Discussion and Commentary: What to Expect with Immigration Reform in the 110th Congress and the Implications for the Legal Community ALAN L. BUTTON* IMMIGRATION: POLICY WITHOUT BOUNDARIES AMERICA AND CULTURE Politicians like to talk about "law and order," "family values," and "jobs." These subjects are discussed because they are matters of con- cern to the electorate. But because they are matters of concern to the general public, they get talked about in many settings, not just by vote- seekers, but by disc jockeys, poultry farmers, and lawyers as well. The particular contexts for such discussions are many-and they are many because issues of security, family, and business are issues of culture. They are issues that go to who we are as a society. They go to what it means to live in America. It is no surprise, therefore, that such matters are raised not only in debates about war, taxes, the judicial system, the environment, or the role of the media, but also in debates about immi- gration. Jeanne Butterfield and Mark Krikorian focused on these and other matters in their discussion on February 16, 2007, at the Cardinal Club in Raleigh, North Carolina. Culture is a function of many variables, including language, relig- ion, history, the arts, geography, and law. And in a democracy, where the people govern and where they are permitted to associate with others of like mind and experience, the culture is inevitably affected by changing demographics. The question that needs to be answered before responsible immigration policy can be implemented is: "What would we have America be?" There is a tendency for parties to a debate on immigration to ignore, minimize, or otherwise avoid the question. To be fair, limita- * Professor Button served as litigation counsel for Bausch & Lomb and as a judicial clerk for the Honorable Donald S. Russell, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, before joining the law faculty in 1989. He is a graduate of Cornell University, earned his J.D. from Washington and Lee School of Law, holds an LL.M. from the University of Cambridge, England, and is a Fulbright Scholar who taught in Slovenia in 1998. Professor Button served as moderator for this panel discussion at the symposium. Published by Scholarly Repository @ Campbell University School of Law, 2007 1 Campbell Law Review, Vol. 29, Iss. 2 [2007], Art. 5 CAMPBELL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 29:263 tions imposed by time impel most every debate on virtually every sub- ject to proceed at least in part on unarticulated assumptions. In an ideal world, those assumptions would be identified and parties in dia- logue seeking to resolve a problem would seek common ground as a point of beginning-wherever that might be. That the Butterfields and Krikorians of the nation could find a common starting point, however, is by no means a given. Still, it would be a step in the right direction at least to agree on the question: "What would you have America be?" or, as North Carolina State Senator Phil Berger put it earlier, "What does it mean to be an American?"' In the immigration context, to answer the question, perhaps com- mon ground would lie in something like "one Nation under God, indi- visible, with liberty and justice for all."2 More elaborately, the Constitution provides that "the People of the United States" have come together "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."3 In what has become for some the equivalent of scrip- ture, the Declaration of Independence asserts that certain truths are self-evident. 4 The Gettysburg Address affirms that we are a self-gov- erning people-Lincoln urging resolve in honor of the dead "that gov- ernment of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."' 5 Even the USA PATRIOT Act implies that there is an America that is separate from and greater than its individual citizens and unique among nations-the "USA" in the title is derived from the phrase "Uniting and Strengthening America. "6' 1. Phil Berger, N.C. State Senator, North Carolina Policy Panel: The Future of Immigration Law and Related Issues in the N.C. General Assembly and the Consequences for North Carolina Lawyers at the Campbell Law Review Symposium: Immigration Law: A Practical Guide for North Carolina Practitioners (Feb. 16, 2007). Representatives from both sides of the political aisle during this panel discussion asserted that the "survival of the nation" may be at stake in the debate on immigration. 2. 4 U.S.C. § 4 (2000) (pledge of allegiance); see also 36 U.S.C. § 302 (2000) ("'In God we trust' is the national motto."). 3. U.S. CONST., pmbl. 4. THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE paras. 1-2 (U.S. 1776) (invoking "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" and appealing to "the Supreme Judge of the World," the colonists declared: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."). 5. Abraham Lincoln, U.S. President, Gettysburg Address (Nov. 19, 1863). 6. Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (USA PATRIOT Act), Pub. L. No. 107- 56, 115 Stat. 272 (codified in scattered sections of the United States Code) (2001). http://scholarship.law.campbell.edu/clr/vol29/iss2/5 2 Button: Panel Discussion and Commentary: What to Expect with Immigration 20071 PANEL DISCUSSION AND COMMENTARY These are uniquely American elements. In the hearts of genera- tions of Americans and in the minds of people around the world, this holy American writ is by implication incorporated by reference in the words of Emma Lazarus, preserved on a plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, the "Mother of Exiles." She bids "world-wide wel- come," crying, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore; Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"7 But immigration necessarily anticipates future possibilities-and compassion can be misplaced or ill-conceived.' It is one thing to define the American culture as it is or has been. It is an entirely differ- ent matter, looking forward, to advocate-and then to legislate-either its protection or its modification. AVOIDING THE QUESTION? Whether Butterfield and Krikorian agree on a standard for identi- fying and defining "the problem" is not exactly clear. Regardless, it seems apparent that their visions of the America of the future do not coincide. Butterfield explains that her "starting point is that the immigra- tion system is broken." She goes on: "[T]hen the question is what is it going to take to fix this broken system? And I think that's where our paths ...will quite markedly diverge." Among other things, she observes that there are "twelve million undocumented people" in the United States. But is the system "bro- ken" because "twelve million" is too many-or too few? Is it because they are "undocumented" rather than documented? Are they "undocu- mented" or "illegal"? Are these millions just "people," or are they "immigrants" or "aliens" or "criminals"? Krikorian, with a nod in the direction of the politics of word choice, when asked what "the problem" is, responds in part as follows: "[O]bviously, illegal immigration is a problem because it's illegal." He makes pretty clear that part of his "problem" with the "twelve million" is the adjective "undocumented." For him, they are more accurately 7. Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus (1883), available at http://www.nps.gov/stli/ historyculture/upload/new%20colossus%20for%20displaypage2.pdf. 8. No reasonable person would argue that the United States can absorb all those who would like to enter, or even a substantial percentage of that number. Perhaps, therefore, the potential for our nation's greatest service to the rest of the world lies in its capacity and willingness to demonstrate - to model - how a society might be free and prosper at the same time. Published by Scholarly Repository @ Campbell University School of Law, 2007 3 Campbell Law Review, Vol. 29, Iss. 2 [2007], Art. 5 266 CAMPBELL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 29:263 described as "illegal." But he explains further that "the more impor- tant problem" is "mass immigration," legal or not, something he says is "fundamentally incompatible with the goals and characteristics of a modern society." Butterfield disagrees: "[I]t's . immigration that has fueled this great nation and brought not only hard work but also vision, entrepre- neurship, [and] talent [that] have made this country the dynamic and vibrant society that it is.