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It took fifty years to the day. But on December 1, 2005, President Bush signed legislation authorizing a statue in the Capitol
Rotunda honoring Rosa Parks. On December 1, 1955, the diminutive forty-two year old woman refused to obey the law that required
her as a black person to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. The bus driver called the police who arrested, booked
and jailed her. Years later Rosa Parks recalled asking the arresting officer, "Why do you push us around?" As she remembered
it, he answered, "I don't know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest."
Her arrest was the tipping point that mobilized black residents of Montgomery, Alabama to initiate a bus boycott that launched
the civil rights movement challenging the Jim Crow laws that enforced legal segregation in the south. The Jim Crow laws were
bad laws, immoral laws, causing great suffering among African Americans for decades. Many Americans vigorously resisted the
dismantling of Jim Crow laws. In 1955 a strong majority of white citizens in the south, nearly all of whom were Christians,
opposed desegregation. The culture of prejudice, racism and fear blinded them to the injustice.
I don't know who the Rosa Parks of undocumented immigrants will be, but I hope one day, maybe fifty years from now, there
might be a similar statue honoring some brave soul who will create the tipping point to overturn our unjust and dysfunctional
immigration laws that victimize so many vulnerable people.
A friend of mind lost a valued employee recently when a social security number turned up false. The company attorney advised
that the employee be fired. She had been brought up in the U.S. from early childhood. By the time her step-father finally
obtained citizenship, she was barely too old to be included as his minor child and be granted citizenship along with her younger
siblings. She graduated from high school and made up a social security number to get a job. She worked without problems
until she was red-flagged and fired at age 26. She has two children, both U.S. citizens.
According to the National Immigration Forum, there are only 5000 visas available each year for general workers from Latin
America to enter the US legally on a work visa. Our economy needs more workers and has been successfully absorbing about
300,000 workers a year. Following the legal system to immigrate into the U.S. takes about 10 years for most laborers. Waits
can be as long as 22 years. This is a broken system.
And have you tried to help someone who is here legally try to go through the citizenship process? Several of my friends have
been working fruitlessly for five years on behalf of a brilliant Ph.D. who teaches and leads research at the University of
Arkansas. Despite connections with a U.S. Senator and other people of influence, he can't get citizenship. These are smart
people with power; five years and they can't get through the system.
Two weeks ago the Arkansas Friendship Coalition brought together business, civic and religious leaders to encourage this state
to resist the temptation to waste state and local resources on a problem that can only be solved at the national level. They
especially cautioned against punitive actions targeting our state's immigrant population. They cited a study by the non-partisan
Urban Institute reported by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, showing that:
• Immigrants added $3 billion to the Arkansas economy in 2004.
• Our immigrant community used $237 million in state services (mostly
educational and health services) in 2004 but paid $257 million in taxes
resulting in a surplus to the state budget of almost $20 million.
• If we sent all the immigrants home tomorrow, our manufacturing output
would drop by $1.4 billion and factories would close across Arkansas due
to an acute labor shortage.
• Immigrant spending has created 23,100 jobs that are held primarily by
Arkansans born in the United States. Those jobs would disappear if our
immigrant community disappears.
• Central Arkansas would alone lose $638 million in business revenues, 5,000
jobs and $143 million in payroll without its immigrant community. An even
greater impact would exist in Northwest Arkansas.
• There are nine counties: Benton, Craighead, Crawford, Faulkner, Garland,
Pulaski, Saline, Sebastian and Washington which have immigrant populations
with at least $50 million in purchasing power, that is, income available for
spending in the local communities after taxes, savings and remittances have
been subtracted.
• The education of immigrant children represents an important investment in Arkansas’ future workforce. If we
permit them, many will go to college and accelerate the economic progress their parents have started.
A participant in the Coalition also shared statistics showing that Hispanic persons have a lower crime rate than the Arkansas
average.
Our vibrant economy creates the need and opportunity for ambitious and upwardly mobile immigrant workers to contribute to
our society. At the same time our dysfunctional immigration policies choke the process for workers to respond to those needs.
It's like having an interstate highway and posting a 25-miles-per-hour speed limit. It doesn't work. Wanting strict immigrant
enforcement is like wanting to put up speed bumps on the interstate just so those speeders will obey the law. Change the
law. Current immigration laws are bad laws, immoral laws, causing great suffering for decades, especially for our Hispanic
neighbors.
We can make immigration policy reasonable and just. Who will be the next Rosa Parks, the person who creates the tipping point
to force a change that gives a just, reasonable and enforceable path for worker visas and citizenship? There might be a statue
in it for somebody.
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