Are we a nation of laws?::Responding to the comments on the immigration post.

My last post was about the immigration debate and I told the abbreviated story of my family's immigration. My grandfather moved here illegally, worked hard, got married, had kids and was later granted full citizenship after 20 or so years due to a contact with the former Speaker of the House Tip O' Neal. It was fun to watch the debate that happened in the comments section and those who disagreed tended to all follow this basic idea: We are a nation of laws and if you break those laws the society will crumble. My question is this--Are we a nation of laws that exist on paper or are we a nation ruled by some official laws and other perceived or accepted practices? Let me explain. Most people would agree that the laws preventing murder are good and we should follow those laws. But let's take something fairly benign like the laws regarding speed limits. There are people who legalistically drive 55 in a 55 zone, and 65 in a 65 zone and really see this as a law that should be followed pretty carefully. Unfortunately, the people in charge of enforcing these laws by and large do not agree. I knew a cop pretty well growing up and when I got my license he explained to me that I should never go more that 9 miles over the speed limit on the highway. He said no cop will even touch you if touch you if you are doing 74 in a 65 zone. But as soon as you hit 75, you get attention. He also explained that when the roads are empty, we don't really care if people drive well over the speed limit because the point of the speed limit to keep people safe. Which is why some states actually have a speed minimum on the highway. Because really, if someone is driving 30 on the highway, there is good chance they will get hit from behind, and that's just as dangerous as the punk kid in the tricked out civic doing 95.
Last year, I got pulled over on the road that I live on, less than a mile from my house. I was in a rush, there was no traffic, so I broke the law. I was doing 70 in a 35 when the cop pulled me over. Now, I will readily admit that I was breaking not only the law that exists on paper, but also the perceived or accepted law. And yet, here's how the interaction went down. [as best as i remember it]
Cop: You were going pretty fast there.
Me: Yes, I was, I don't have a good excuse, I deserve a ticket.
Cop: Ok, give me your license and registration.
Me: Here you go sir.
[10 minutes pass by]
Cop: Ok, here's your ticket. I put you down as doing 65 because if I list it at 70, I have to suspend your license. [perceived law trumps actual law] Now, I see that you have a clean record, so let me explain how this works. On the back of your ticket, you check "not guilty", you will then be assigned a court date and on that date you will go to the court and they will reduce your ticket to a non-moving violation--you will pay a hefty fine and then you'll go home, but you won't get any points on you're license, and your insurance won't get raised--so that's a good thing.
Me: uhhh, but I admitted to my guilt already, i readily admitted that I was speeding?
Cop: Yeah, but, this is how it works. You get a ticket, you go to court, it gets reduced. [accepted law--accepted practices]
Me: Can't we skip the middleman and you just reduce it here?
Cop: That's not how it works. [again, accepted practices]
Me: ok, thank you sir.

A month later I show up in court, my name gets called, i go to a room in the back of the court, some guy looks at my papers, and says "Ok mr. taylor, how does a "broken tail light" ticket sound to you?" "Uhhh, ok?" "This is how it's going to work, the judge will call you up front, he'll tell you the charge, and you'll plead guilty to not having fixed a broken tail light--then you'll pay a fine of 250 dollars and go home". [accepted law and practices trumping actual law].

Here's another example: Back in the day when many men chewed tobacco and many women wore long dresses that dragged behind them, it was illegal to spit on the sidewalk and spittoons were provided. As the culture changed, the spittoons and the long dresses went away but the law remained. And yet, no one is getting arrested for spitting on the sidewalk.

Or let's go back to the days of slavery in America? Lot's of people aided escaped slaves on their journey north. They broke the law and helped others break the law. And if you lived in the north--it was accepted to such things. [the accepted law trumps the actual law].

Or how about the prohibition years? Wealthy politicians [lawmakers] among lots of other people set up hidden bars in basements all over the country, and the liquor trade went underground because everyone recognized--this is a silly law that should be repealed.

I could certainly go on and on forever here, but I think you get the point. There is the law, and there is "THE LAW", and they are two different sets of rules.

Bringing it back to the immigration issue. It has long been accepted that our borders are porous. People come and go all the time off the radar screens of computer tracking. The fact that we have vigilante volunteers watching the borders at night instead of paid government employees says something about our actual commitment to enforcing these actual laws. The reality is that we have not taken our own laws seriously and as a result we have set up perceived laws that have trumped the actual laws. The perceived and accepted law on the immigration issue is "If you don't get caught, you are fine". And the government has agreed to this with their silence and lack of funding. It is an old politicians trick to publicly demand action on an issue, and then conveniently forget to fund this new initiative that is so all important. So, when my grandfather moved here illegally, it was an accepted practice. When people move here illegally and immediately find work doing landscaping on multi-million dollar homes in Houston and Dallas--the perceived and accepted law is reinforced.

Now, tonight, bush will address the nation from the oval office about the immigration issue. He is expected to call for a major deployment of National Gaurd troops to the mexican border. Whether he actually funds this new initiative is yet to be seen. The reality is that his home state of Texas benefited from the cheap labor that poured through the borders everyday. My prediction::they will tell us that they are going to get tough on immigration from here on out [the perceived law will change to look more like the actual law]. But in the meantime, let's legalize everyone that's here, because it would be too hard to deport everyone. We make a show of guarding the border, get a few good photo ops in, and then after the next term election, we go back to business as usual and we keep growing this country on the backs of our immigrants--legal or otherwise.

As a side note here, does anyone see the timing as a little fishy? The other major bush initiative about to reach a vote is the outright repeal of the estate tax (sometimes called the death tax). I can't really speak intelligently on this issue, but I do think that there is a correlation in the timing. If the bush administration can keep people focused on immigration, then this repeal of the estate tax will get no press whatsoever.

Now, getting back to the issue of whether or not we are a nation of actual laws or a hybrid of actual and perceived laws. . . The inevitable comment will be:: "Do we all get to determine truth then? Do we collectively decide what is right and wrong?" From a national standpoint--yes, we do, that's what a democracy is. (even though we really are more of a republic). The spiritual issues are completely different. I don't believe you or I get to define truth--that's God's territory. We don't get to pick and choose what we accept or don't accept from the bible. So please don't go there with the comments. I'm talking about spiritual issues here, I'm talking about national issues. And nationally, yes, we decide what laws get passed by either keeping or rejecting our elected leaders. And so laws will come and go and come back again sometimes depending on who is in power at the time. And when the country or culture outgrows the laws that exist on paper, the perceived/accepted law tends to take over until such time as the actual law catches up. This is the nature of a bureaucracy. Laws are incomplete and always demand interpretation. There will always exist both actual laws that are enforce or not, and perceived laws that are enforced in their own way, or not. It's the best we've got.

I look forward to varying comments made in sharp disagreement with one another. Let the games begin.

wading into the immigration debate

As the grandson of a Canadian wetback I have a unique perspective on the current debate over legalization of illegal immigrants. Here's my story--and it's a good one (dad, if you are reading this, use the comment feature below to correct any discrepancies in the story). A few generations back, my family on my dad's side came over from Scotland to Nova Scotia, Canada (new Scotland) and made a home. Later on, my grandfather on my dad's side decided to move to United States to find work. He had family near Boston, so Somerville, MA became his final destination. Rather than going through the normal immigration chains though, he decided to simply swim the river between Eastern Canada and United States. So, I am the grandchild of an illegal immigrant. My grandfather went on to marry, have kids, hold down a job (two at times) and was very much a productive member of American life. And yet, he was not a citizen. Then, the current political administration decided to grant automatic citizenship to anyone that could prove they had lived here for 25 years--no questions asked. My grandfather didn't have quite enough time, and there was a possibility that the government was going to begin getting tough on illegal immigrants like him. So he was in a difficult position. He had a part time job parking cars at a garage in Boston and one of the cars he parked each day belonged to former speaker of the house--Tip O'Neal. He decided to ask Tip what he should do. Tip said, "I'll take care of it". He wrote (or more likely, his secretary wrote) a long letter explaining how Tip and his wife have been friends for 30 years with my grandfather and his wife, how their kids played together all the time. On and on it went--total bulls%$#t. And you know what . . . it worked. Two weeks later, my grandfather received his citizenship papers and was made legal and official. My father decided to repay that hard fought battle by moving back to Canada in his twenties and lived there for 20+ years (legally, this time around). That's where I was born. In New Brunswick, Canada--a citizen of two countries. Canadian by birth, American because my parents are both Americans. The point in all this is that when you think of illegal immigrants, it is easy to think only of the guy who hands you a cheeseburger at McDonald's. It is easy to not really have a face attached to this nebulous category of literally millions of illegal immigrants keeping this country afloat each day. For me, I can't help but have a soft hearted approach to these folks because I know that I'm the recipient indirectly of the kindness of governmental decision made many decades ago.

And besides, if we legalize em' . . . we can tax em'!