Sometimes bad things do get fixed. As part of a quick round-up at the old
optimism corral, let's look at the current state of immigration law, which
was plunged into disastrous cruelty by the Gingrich Congress in 1996.
It was a classic example of Mean Politics, nativist hysteria fanned by
wildly exaggerated tales of illegal immigrants coming here to live on Easy
Street on our generous American welfare payments, etc. Ever since then,
civil libertarians who tried desperately to stop the bill at the time have
had the sour satisfaction of saying, "We told you so -- we told you so."
The amount of human misery caused by a stupid and brutal law and its
stupid, brutal enforcement by the Immigration and Naturalization Service is
beyond accounting. Anthony Lewis, the New York Times columnist and civil
liberties specialist, has made a crusade out of telling the pathetic stories
of families ripped apart, responsible fathers who've been supporting their
young children being deported for petty brushes with the law that took place
decades ago, young people adopted and raised in this country suddenly being
sent back to a place of which they have no memory, no understanding, no
language.
One young woman who was adopted by a military couple at 3 months is about
to be deported to Ethiopia for voting, which she had been raised to think
was her civic duty. Cuban kids like Elian Gonzalez are the only exception to
the INS practice of promptly deporting children who arrive here illegally;
this gross inequity has produced understandable resentment. It's not only
cruel -- it's nuts.
It may be no consolation to those families already so disastrously
affected, but the sheer volume of suffering has finally reached a level
where even the original sponsors of the bill are talking about changing it.
"We have a responsibility to go in and do a little tweaking," said Rep.
Brian Bilbray, R-Calif.
One thing you'll want to watch for as we go through the tedious process of
fixing this mess is the sight of Congress -- which created the mess in the
first place -- sternly holding hearings to demand why the INS is doing these
awful things.
Because Congress told it to, of course. I love these deals where
politicians sternly call in bureaucrats from the IRS or the Education
Department or some other agency to demand why they are doing awful things --
when it was Congress that told them to do them in the first place.
The welfare reform bill of 1997 was similarly pocked with stupid and cruel
provisions, like taking food stamps away from legal immigrants and kicking
handicapped kids off Supplemental Security Income. Some of these provisions
were later quietly fixed by Congress and even more quietly fixed by the
Clinton administration.
I point out, again, that the suffering caused by these laws was easily
foreseeable. Congress was warned again and again what the consequences would
be, but it was in the grip of ideological fervor and Republican hubris, and
could not be bothered to listen to any "bleeding hearts." It is now in the
grip of plain old election-year politics, so we can expect many goodies.
Even international bodies do sometimes fix things that are patently wrong
in response to public pressure. For reasons unclear to me, the mainstream
media seem to have decided that anyone who questions any aspect of
globalization is an extremist nut, despite the rather obvious fact that
global poverty is growing under the kind auspices of the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization.
But you may have noticed that the World Bank, in response to pressure from
all those nutty, tree-hugging, whale-saving protesters -- like the
AFL-CIO -- has just agreed to commit "unlimited money" to fight the AIDS
epidemic in Africa. More than 50 million Africans are infected by AIDS, and
it is spreading fastest in Africa, India, China and the Caribbean.
Furthermore, the World Bank is accelerating debt relief for the developing
world in response to a growing movement demanding debt forgiveness for the
poorest nations. Much of that debt is owed on the infamous "inappropriate
technology" efforts of the '70s, in which gigantic, expensive projects were
favored over simple, inexpensive measures to provide real help in poor
villages.
Since the World Bank folks are now committed to helping fight AIDS, perhaps
they can help convince the pharmaceutical companies to provide cheap AIDS
drugs in Third World countries. Even easily affordable antibiotics would
make a tremendous difference. The drug companies are naturally fighting such
efforts because they want to hang on to their profitable patents.
"The new commitment on AIDS came as finance officials sought to show they
were at least as focused on helping people and nations that have not
benefited as much from globalization as they are on speeding the
international march of capitalism," reported The New York Times. See?
Raising Cain works.
Here in Texas, where we specialize in passing dumb laws made worse by dumb
bureaucrats, we are about to enjoy the effects of the Ogden Amendment.
This started with a terrible amendment by state Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth in
1997 that would have required anyone with knowledge of sexual activity by a
minor to report it as a case of sexual abuse to a law-enforcement agency --
including doctors, nurses, attorneys, clergymen, social workers, mental
health workers and workers at family planning clinics. This would quite
naturally have the effect of keeping sexually active teen-agers from seeking
help with birth control, sexually transmitted diseases, emotional and
psychological problems, etc.
The Texas Medical Association hopped right on that one and got much more
moderate language introduced in the '97 bill. But in 1999, State Sen. Steve Ogden
came back with a rider removing the more moderate language and enjoining the
Texas Department of Health from providing funds to any group that does not
comply with child-abuse reporting guidelines.
The department has now drawn up guidelines almost as bad as the original
Wohlgemuth amendment. Among other gems, teen-agers seeking any kind of help
or care will be asked to provide the names, ages and gender of any and all
of their sex partners.
Great -- in order to get birth control, you have to name the boy you're in
love with and get him labeled a "sex offender." This is going to be great
for the teen pregnancy rate, already sky-high in this state.
Sigh. Guess we'll have to keep raising Cain.
Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers
and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
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