#reform

Artist:Bluecollards

Edit: thank you for letting me know who did the art

Wow, okay. So lets try this again.

Immigration status is a civil issue, not a criminal one. I keep seeing analogies comparing undocumented residents to bank robbing or other serious crimes with victims.

How about instead of talking about felonys, we use this analogy.

Say you already have a house, but man you need a new roof on it. The one you have leaks substantially, and you’re at risk of serious damage to your house if it’s not fixed very soon and one of the biggest holes is above your children’s bedroom.

But, before you can build a roof, you need to get a permit from the city for the construction work. So, you look into the permits and you find that the city only grants 100 roof construction permits per year, and they’ve already granted the 100 for this year and it’s only February. Even better, you find out there’s a line of 10,000 people also waiting for roofs of varying degrees of need. The estimated wait for new roofs is 6 years, unless you can find a construction permit lawyer and afford to pay him a few grand to get that wait down to 2 years.

So, you say screw it and have a contractor fix your roof without the documentation because you *need* a new roof and can’t wait.

Now the work has been done - well and in code - but you don’t have the proper permits for the roof and can’t get the proper permits without demolishing your roof and then waiting the prior 6 years. You also can’t get any new permits for your home, can’t attend block parties, still have to pay your HOA dues or they’ll seize the rest of your house, and don’t have any on street parking because everyone knows about your roof but won’t say anything unless you piss them off.

THAT’S what we’re talking about with undocumented residents. The work has been done. The roof is fixed. Sure it would have been “better” to wait for a permit, but the process to get a permit was beyond absurd and their need was immediate.

The roof isn’t “an illegal roof”, it’s an “undocumented roof” because it doesn’t have paperwork. You *want* to get documentation for the roof. Everything would be *way* easier if you could. But the city won’t issue permits for past work, and you can’t afford to demolish your roof and go without one for years - you’ve got to protect your family.

I’m not talking about getting rid of roofing codes, or saying that no permits should be required ever for any reason.

We need a better immigration system that makes the process of immigration easier, and we need a process for undocumented immigrants, *especially* once that have established successful lives here and have been here for years, to get documented and become full members of society.

I find it interesting that some conservatives have trouble grasping with why liberals don’t particularly care about the difference between legal and illegal immigrants.

I see, quite often “Why don’t liberals understand, I don’t have a problem with LEGAL immigrants, it’s ILLEGAL immigrants we have a problem with.”

And here’s the thing - I get it. I do. But the reason why I don’t find it a big deal is because immigration status, particularly regarding illegal immigrants who have spent years as law abiding, tax paying members of society, doubly so for those raising families, is a paperwork issue.

To me, there’s literally no real difference between a natural born citizen, a naturalized citizen, a green card holder, a visa holder, an expired visa holder, or a border jumper. We’re all people trying to make a life and take care of our families, the difference being the amount of paperwork the person has done and the GPS coordinates of the person when they left their mother.

When someone tells me they don’t have a problem with LEGAL immigrants, but they do have a problem with ILLEGAL immigrants, they’re telling me that they care more about bureaucracy and nationality than about people.

If your concern about illegals comes with a plan and desire to have a path for citizenship for current undocumented residents to get documented, then I certainly will agree that your penchant for good documenting is the issue and acknowledge your point.

If you don’t support that, if you want an undocumented resident to quit their jobs, abandon their homes, maybe abandon their children, move back to their country origin (without a job and home) so that they can wait a couple years and then start the paperwork process… I’m going to think you’re full of shit, and probably just don’t like people who look/talk differently than you do in your country.

Undocumented Residents are already here, already have jobs, already have families. If it’s about the paperwork, give them some paperwork to do to to make everything legit. Because I know with complete certainty if my family needed me to illegally cross into Mexico or Canada to survive or to give my children the chance at a happy prosperous life, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

The system is inherently corrupt. You can go into it with the best intentions, a great moral compass, try to rein in the profiteering, but inevitably you are compromised. When a system answers first to corporations, also known as a dictatorship of the capital, it’s inevitable that you compromise yourself working for a system like that. And compromise is what led it to become that way in the first place. Which is part of why we say “you can’t reform capitalism.” Because you can’t in the long run. It’s why social democracies turn into neoliberal states. Because a system based on profiting, firstly, exploits the worker, and secondly, enables what becomes unsustainable greed, so any safeguards trying to hold back that unsustainable greed erode. In late stage capitalism, it is especially a joke to be a reformist. At this point, most reform is all very surface level. Real change comes from the masses, and they do that through revolt.