LTE: "Like many immigrants, I owe a debt to the Republican Party — of the 1980s"

Letter to the Editor
Don Rosenberg
June 7, 2015
As seen in:
The LA Times

Dear Professor Joe,

Your Op-Ed in the October 10 issue of the LA Times clearly exemplified a family that has achieved the American dream. You are well accomplished and clearly so are your parents and siblings. I’m glad to hear that your brother with the intellectual disability is constantly improving. Yes, America has a lot to offer.

But I must say I was quite shocked when I got to the part that informed me that you are a law professor who is rationalizing law breaking and quite frankly endorsing all who can come here illegally to do so. Your writing is myopic as to the scope of the issue of illegal immigration and visa overstays and completely devoid of the harm that it has caused to so many.

My son – a law student at the time – is one who will never live to enjoy the American dream. He was killed by an illegal alien in 2010 on his way home from classes. His death was hardly an anomaly as a known minimum of over 20,000 deaths caused by illegal aliens and documented in a 2011 GAO report and estimates approaching 100,000 to date clearly demonstrate the harm done by those here illegally and those who overstayed their visas.

Of course there are hundreds of thousands who have permanent injuries caused by illegal immigration and the cost to American taxpayers since the Reagan amnesty is into the trillions of dollars. Yes, we should help those less fortunate from around the world but shouldn’t that decision be made by American citizens and not by those who break or ignore our laws?

You claim that your family had been undocumented and that is blatantly false. You had documents that granted your father the right to come and stay here while he was in school. Once his visa expired he and your family was required to leave. Your father and mother made a decision to ignore the benefits that the United States had granted them and just do what they wanted without regard for their prior hosts.

Although overstaying one’s visa is not in and of itself a crime (a ridiculous flaw in the law) many things they did thereafter either was a crime or caused another – an employer – to commit a crime. How can a law professor condone that behavior even it worked out well for your family?

You rationalize that nearly half of the 11 million (closer to 15 million or more but who’s counting?) “undocumented residents” arrived legally with temporary non-immigrant visas and condone that behavior because they didn’t “sneak over the borders”. And yes the U.S. government did grant these people a visa but that visa had conditions and as you noted it was temporary. That’s like saying it’s okay to steal from your host because they invited you into their house.

Their legal temporary visa was never intended as the beginning of a path to citizenship as you seem to imply. There is a completely different process which to a major extent has been compromised by those like your family who decided to “break the line”. This country has no constitutional responsibility to allow anyone to immigrate and certainly those who are not citizens should not be able to use the excuse that the process takes too long so it’s okay to “get in” anyway I can.

I find it almost a call for disbarment that as a lawyer you made the following statement. “For parents, an undocumented life is risky – but a better option than returning to a country they know will not provide a healthy and fulfilling life for themselves or their children.

In other words if I am poor and uneducated it’s okay to lead a life of crime because that is a better option than finding a job that I know will not provide a healthy and fulfilling life for me or my family.

You say we should shift away from emphasizing retribution for the perceived faults of offenders. There is nothing perceived about my son’s death. Would you like to see his death certificate? There is nothing perceived about the over 3 million arrests for crimes from murder to rape detailed in the previously mentioned GAO report. There is nothing perceived in the fact that it is illegal to enter the United States without authorization and that those who receive temporary authorization are required to leave on or by the date stated on their visa documents.

Asking these people to leave is not retribution any more than retrieving stolen goods from a thief is part of their punishment. However, integrating these people into our communities and putting them on a pathway to citizenship is most certainly rewarding them for their transgressions
.
I see who the “undocumented” are very clearly. Some are hardworking people. Some are very nice people. Some are criminals and some are killers. But I know from my six years of research all of them share some responsibility for my son’s death and all others and they all are responsible for depressed wages for many U.S. workers and they all have contributed to massive financial costs to legal taxpayers in the United States.

Although many never intended for those things to happen that is what happened. The man who killed my son, although previously being caught driving without a license, was told by the city of San Francisco it was okay to drive without a license. Did Mayor Newsom institute that illegal policy because there were 70 illegal aliens in San Francisco driving or because there were 70,000? Did then-District Attorney Kamala Harris fail to tell him he had no authority to violate state driving laws because she was running for Attorney General and she needed many Latino votes in Southern California to win the election? (Newsom also needed those votes in his bid to run for governor.)

In 2006 when my son’s killer’s wife was ordered deported she never showed up. ICE never went to get her because she didn’t make the “priority list”. Would there even have been a priority list if there were 11,000 illegal aliens in the United States instead of 11 million or more? The collision that killed my son would never had happened if she had been deported because they were going to parenting class when they ran over him.

From the president to many governors and legislators, the judiciary, law enforcement and now law professors the massive numbers of those here illegally has influenced their behavior, their legal responsibilities, and their ethics. That makes everyone here who illegally crossed the border or ignored their visa requirements a responsible contributor to every harm caused to individuals and every tax dollar spent supporting them.

Professor Joe, you, like so many others don’t owe a debt to the GOP of the 1980’s. Your debt, which can never be repaid, is to all of those harmed and killed by people like your family who chose to ignore the laws of the very country they looked to take them in.