Not all illegal immigrants come to the United States from south of the border.
“Undocumented workers include Jews,” said Gideon Aronoff, president of the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society.
They come mostly from Israel, the former Soviet Union and Latin America, and instead of sneaking quietly across the border in the middle of the night, they come on legal, temporary visas. Then they “forget” to leave and enter the “shadow economy,” Aronoff said.
“But that’s not why Jews should be involved in immigration reform,” he continued. “Jews should be involved because of talmudic mandates to welcome the stranger, because reform will bring about control of our borders and because we benefit from having a country that values pluralism.”
Aronoff, who lives in Washington, D.C., spoke at a panel on immigration reform Monday, March 26 at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.
“A Jewish Lens on Immigration Reform” was coordinated by editors of Sh’ma, a Boston-based journal of pluralistic and contemporary Jewish issues. Thanks to a grant from the S.F.-based Walter and Elise Haas Fund, Sh’ma planned the forum exclusively for San Francisco.
Along with the moderate Aronoff, the panel included the right-leaning Ira Mehlman, media adviser of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and the left-leaning Robert Rubin, legal director for the S.F. Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights. Abby Porth, associate director of the Bay Area’s Jewish Community Relations Council, moderated the panel.
“Immigration issues resonate very deeply in terms of the Jewish psyche and experience,” Porth said.
While the men disagreed on many points — speaking defensively or aggressively at times — they all concurred the United States must reform its path to legal immigration and give people less reason to enter the country illegally.
But those reforms, they said, will succeed only if they’re comprehensive in scope and rationally address all elements that exacerbate illegal immigration.
An estimated 500,000 immigrants come to the United States illegally each year, and an unknown number of other foreigners overstay their temporary visas. An estimated 7 million to 12 million illegal immigrants live in the United States today, according to various sources.
The biggest factors pulling them here are jobs. Rubin said immigrants take the jobs Americans don’t want, which won’t change anytime soon because “we have an insatiable desire for cheap labor.”
Mehlman, on the other hand, said Americans would take those jobs if the wages were higher and working conditions better.
The men agreed the biggest problem is that current immigration laws are not sensible or realistic. The path to legal citizenship is long and difficult, forcing many to see illegal immigration as the only option. “We cannot accept the current situation — the system is broken and intolerable,” Aronoff said.
As an example, panelists cited the immigration raids carried out earlier this month in Novato and San Rafael, arresting dozens of illegal immigrants as part of an ongoing campaign, “Operation Return to Sender.”
“I’m willing to bet the Torah is not an immigration law handbook, but it is a guide at how we should respond,” Aronoff said. Seizing illegal immigrants in the middle of the night, sending them to deportation centers and labeling the process with a callous code name is hardly humanitarian behavior the Torah condones, he said.
Panelists said it’s crucial for Congress to develop comprehensive immigration law reform, and that Bay Area residents are in a unique, exciting position to advocate for reform via House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-S.F.).
Aronoff pointed out that while current immigration policy is unreasonable, the current “integration policy” is a good one.
“We have a country where Americanism is based on a commitment to certain ideals, not on a blood culture,” he said, which is part of the reason Jews in America have been able to thrive. “We have a society that incorporates the newcomer, and that’s valuable.”