IMMIGRATION MATTERS: Senate Bill Gets Harsher; America, We Have a Problem

In Texas, a 16-year-old Hispanic boy is brutally beaten and left for dead by two white teens, who shout anti-Mexican epithets as they sodomize him with a metal pipe.

In Seattle, a longstanding leader at a local mosque is abruptly detained without bond, purportedly for immigration violations -- before the government, under the loose rules of immigration court, tries to link him to terrorism.

Around the country, Cambodians living in the United States since early childhood are ripped from their U.S. citizen families and deported back to a country they have no connection with -- for pleading guilty to crimes they had no idea would make them deportable.

These are just a few examples of the human suffering caused by our broken immigration system and the escalating rhetoric surrounding it. The underlying these injustices is fear of immigrants, fear of a Mexican invasion, fear of terrorism, fear of "criminal aliens." The list is lengthy, but these fears have led to irrational, retributive laws that have made our immigration system the mess it is today.

These fear-driven immigration laws -- and the immense pain they create for individuals, families, and communities -- should be of deep concern not just to immigrants, but to all who live in America. When commentators can shout with impunity that we should use a Berlin-wall-style shoot-on-sight policy to undocumented immigrants, well, America, we have a problem.

The politics of fear and violent nativism are amply evident in the immigration bills Congress is currently debating. In December, the House passed the Sensenbrenner bill -- the most anti-immigrant legislation in 80 years. And although the "compromise" bill that the Senate began debating this week is marginally better, it massively erodes basic civil rights for immigrants while managing to also fall short on legalizing this country's millions of undocumented individuals.

Specific provisions in the compromise Senate bill -- keeping in mind that this is supposedly the "good" bill to the House's "bad" one -- reveal deep-seated fear and hostility toward immigrants. It would allow immigrants to be detained indefinitely, overturning established Supreme Court precedent, which outlawed permanent incarceration. It would expand the range of situations in which detention would be mandatory, an expensive proposition for taxpayers, but a lucrative one for private prisons. The bill would criminalize even relatively minor violations by immigrants, creating dozens of new ways to deport non-citizens. The government would be able to deport many immigrants -- even longstanding residents -- without a hearing before a court. Courts would often be unable to review illegal immigration decisions. In short, if the bill were enacted as-is, the due process rights of immigrants, who are already among our most vulnerable and voiceless, would be eviscerated.

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