At yesterday's Democratic NPR debate, the candidates were asked several questions about immigration, highlighting what is shaking out to be a painful topic for them. They were asked whether American citizens should turn in someone they know to be an illegal immigrant, and whether they thought undocumented workers drove down wages. Both questions that leave something to be desired, as they don't really ask the candidates to elaborate on their plan for immigration as president, but which at least begin to approach a subject that's likely to be contentious in the election.
The candidates offered responses that attempted to answer the given question while avoiding the greater subject of immigration. Said Clinton: "What we’re looking at here is 12 to 14 million people — they live in our neighborhoods, they take care of our elderly, they probably made the beds in the hotels that some of us stayed in last night [...] If we want to listen to the demagogues and the calls for us to begin to try to round up people and turn every American into a suspicious vigilante, I think we will do graver harm to the fabric of our nation than any kind of person-by-person reporting of someone who might be here illegally."
On the wages question, Obama gave a similar response: "I believe that there are circumstances where, in fact, illegal immigrants are driving down wages [...] The question is, How do we fix it? Because oftentimes, when it’s posed that way, then the thinking is that somehow we have to pit low-wage American workers versus low-wage immigrant workers."
Actually, there's a much simpler, more direct answer they both could have given: "When I am president, we will create a sensible immigration policy so that American civilians don't have to become vigilantes, and immigrants have an opportunity to become documented, so that they can compete for wages on a level playing field with other Americans."
Is that so hard?
--Kate Sheppard
