By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

Few, if any, topics evoke as much heated commentary on the Somerville News Web site as that of illegal immigration. Regardless of which “side” of the issue one comes down on, most Americans, and most Somervillians, have a sense that the system is broken. Most intuitively understand what Confucius observed 2,500 years ago: rulers who pass laws that they cannot or will not enforce undermine their own authority and weaken the society’s moral fiber.

We like to say that we are a nation of immigrants. True enough. But I don’t think that we want to be a nation of fugitives, hiding in the shadows, feeding a black-market economy, and estranged from full participation in the community. I think most people understand that we can’t simply throw open our borders to all comers, just as they feel that continual integration of new peoples, their culture, ideas, and innovations, has kept our society vibrant.

Between these two broad points lies an enormous territory filled with emotional appeals, misinformation, and honest confusion. Those who have easy and passionate answers amaze me with their ability to either sort through, or more likely, ignore, enormous complexities. I haven’t attempted to write about immigration because I haven’t felt smart enough to say something worth listening to. But, just as I derive simple satisfaction from untangling a badly snarled ball of twine, I’ve been trying to work through my own confusion.

Part of what makes this challenging is that I see at least three levels of confusion. The political coalitions around this issue are disorienting, their arguments are provocative and often hypocritical, and the issue’s underlying substance is complex.

On one side, I see diversity-for-diversity’s sake liberals allied with let’s-keep-wages-low Republicans. On another side, I see damnation-to-anyone-who’s-getting-away-with-anything cultural conservatives allied with don’t-give-away-my-job poor blacks. And then there are unions who have been back and forth on the issue.

To be fair, for almost a century, unions were consistent. Samuel Gompers, American Federation of Labor founder and an immigrant himself, said in 1892, ‚ÄúWe realized that immigration is, in its fundamental aspects, a labor problem.‚Äù 

Right up through passage of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, most unions passionately advocated for reduced immigration and strict enforcement. But Congress dropped strict enforcement provisions from its final version of the 1986 law. Critics who say that it failed to stop or even slow the flow of illegal immigrants are simply stating historical fact. 

In response, some unions decided that if there were to be no stopping of illegal immigrants, they should organize them. This has produced mixed results.  An illustrative example was the much-publicized drive by Service Employees International Union to organize Los Angeles janitors. The organizing campaign was a success, but the resulting contracts specified wages substantially below those of the 1970s. In those days, LA‚Äôs janitors were highly unionized and mostly black. The large influx of illegal immigrants in that decade undermined their bargaining power.

Beyond the vertigo-inducing coalitions around the immigration question, inflammatory charges that they hurl distort and distract from the complex underlying reality. The charge that someone is a racist simply because they believe that laws should be enforced, should discredit anyone making it.

And evoking emotion by holding up vile crimes by immigrants, such as those in Newark and in Foss Park, obscures the hard evidence that illegal immigrants are disproportionately responsible for much less personal and property crimes than are American citizens. They come here to work, not to loot and shoot, and they can’t work if they wind up in the criminal justice system.

The horror of the cultural right toward undocumented Latinos is, to me, another amusing example of its confusion of symbol for reality. Latino immigrants are more family oriented, get fewer divorces, and regularly attend church more often than U.S. citizens. They are much less willing to abort pregnancies. And immigrant and citizen Latinos, together, enter the U.S. military proportionately more than any other ethnic group.

If one can penetrate the confusing politics and loopy hyperbole of the immigration question, the underlying reality is equally confusing in terms of understanding what would be best for the nation as a whole, as opposed to specific interest groups. I’ll share my efforts to unsnarl this for myself in my next column.

And in our own lives and that of our nation, we must ultimately make choices.  No matter how confusing, we have to take our best guess, based on all that we know, and then pay attention to the results.  I‚Äôll tell you what my best guesses are.