Immigration Laws

Logical Flaws Analysis: Immigration Laws and Policies
As has been seen in the recent debate regarding the issue of the separation of children of immigrants from their parents at the border, immigration is a fraught issue in America. America is a nation built, in part, upon immigration. Many individuals who have immigrated to America illegally form the backbone of a number of industries in the US, spanning from the restaurant industry to the landscaping and gardening industry as well as domestic service. Yet there have been repeated calls to curtail illegal immigration, making immigration reform policies very difficult to pass. One approach which has been adopted by the previous Obama Administration, in the face of Congress’ unwillingness to pass meaningful immigration reform, is “prosecutorial discretion,” according to Delahunty& Yoo (2013), which means selective enforcement of the law.
Delahunty& Yoo (2013) use the Obama Administration’s attitude towards immigration as a greater example of what the authors see as the Democratic administration’s hypocrisy in regards to executive overreach. The article “The Obama Administration’s Nonenforcement of Immigration Laws, the DREAM Act, and the Take Care Clause” from the Texas Law Review makes an extended argument by analogy, suggesting that Obama’s criticism of the Bush Administration for, among other acts, the Iraq War, was self-serving given that Obama did not enforce laws he disagreed with, such as the removal provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
Argument by analogy is one of the most common techniques used in persuasion. It is, however, a very problematic one, given that there are seldom perfectly analogous situations in historical fact, in contrast to analogies made between words. Even if there are superficial similarities between the historical circumstances being analogically compared, that does not mean the most relevant and salient aspects of the analogy are valid. For example, in the case of the Obama versus Bush analogy, President Bush was later found to have misrepresented key aspects of intelligence to the US Congress, such as the existence of weapons of mass destruction, to encourage it to enter into a military conflict with Iraq. In the case of the Obama Administration, there was no fundamental misrepresentation of its failure to or concealment of its enforcement of aspects of the law.
Delahunty & Yoo (2013) accuse the former Administration of embarking upon an open borders policy, stating that “if a President can refuse to enforce a federal law against a class of 800,000 to 1.76 million individuals, what discernible limits are there to prosecutorial discretion” (p.2). As well as making a false analogy, however, this also seems excessively hyperbolic. The Obama Administration did not forgo the enforcement of all reasonable immigration policy, as this sweeping claim seems to suggest but rather had argued that specific types of immigrants who had come into the country illegally might be worthy of certain protections. According to the nonpartisan Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to fighting bias against Jewish people and other marginalized groups, “the DREAM Act (short for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act) was a bill in Congress that would have granted legal status to certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children and went to school here” (“What is the DREAM Act,” 2018).
In other words, the Act which the authors accuse President Obama of enforcing in actual fact, even if Congress did not enact a formal policy change, was not designed to improve the fact of all immigrant groups, but those who had been brought to the United States as young children. Many Dreamers might not even be aware of their status as illegal citizens until they applied to college. It should also be added that even the children of undocumented immigrants who are born in the United States are still technically US citizens. The DREAM Act would simply have permitted those born across the border who had made a significant contribution to American society to remain as well. Yet throughout the Delahunty & Yoo (2013) essay, the actual provisions of the DREAM Act and who constitutes Dreamers under the Act are not fully fleshed out, rather Obama Administration’s refusal to enforce certain aspects of immigration policy is simply vaguely alluded to again and again, along with the dangers of executive overreach.
The notion that the Obama Administration enforced the DREAM Act in de facto if not de jure fashion is peculiar, because the provisions of the Act called for sweeping changes in society in regards to the children of immigrants which were never fully realized. Such changes included Dreamers being able to be eligible for college scholarships and other sources of state as well as federal funding for education. There was no way that an executive order or a refusal to enforce a particular Congressional law could make such societal changes happen, particularly on a state level.
Finally, the authors’ analysis does not fully take into consideration the spotty history of immigration law and immigration itself in the United States over the course of its history, one which transcends easy analogies between left and right. Both conservative and liberals alike have turned a blind eye to illegal immigration, given the economic benefits immigrants often offer to US businesses, because of their acceptance of low wages. There has never been a true zero tolerance policy in regards to immigration; this is in stark contrast to declaring war on another country or abuses on civil rights. The Obama Administration’s flexible approach is far more in keeping with past traditions than it is a break from it. If immigration law had not been treated with a relatively open-minded approach in the past, there would be far fewer illegal immigrants on American soil and far fewer potential dreamers.

Reference
Delahunty, R. & J; Yoo, J. C. (2013). Dream on: The Obama Administration’s nonenforcement
of immigration laws, the DREAM Act, and the Take Care Clause. Texas Law Review,
91(4), 781-857.
What is the DREAM Act and who are the Dreamers? (2018). Anti-Defamation League.
Retrieved from: https://www.adl.org/education/educator-resources/lesson-plans/what-is- the-dream-act-and-who-are-the-Dreamers