The debate in Congress is heating up about what to do about migration. The House passed a bill that would try to eliminate migration by using force both inside the country and at the borders.

The Senate Judiciary Committee led by Arlen Specter is trying to find a way to rationalize the existence of the eleven million undocumented people who are already here without calling it an amnesty and in a way that makes it seem like we don’t condone migration except through our legal channels. Reread the last sentence it has two contradictions in it. Contradiction one: Anyway you look at it allowing the undocumented to stay is an amnesty. Contradiction two: if we had an amnesty in 1995 and an amnesty by another name in 2006 it is hard to deny there is a trend. King Canute could not stop the tide and the US Congress cannot stop the flow of migrants to where opportunities are. Attempts to stop the flow will always fail and will cause misery, angst and bad behavior.

Peter Drucker the great management writer from Claremont wrote that if an organization has to keep making more and more complicated rules to maintain an outcome it desires; it should re-examine the underlying assumption that led it down the path to this increasingly complicated outcome. He suggests that the organization ask; “What are our basic assumptions about this issue?” In the case of migration, sovereign nations assume they have the right to restrict migration solely for the benefit of their current citizens. This is the incorrect assumption that causes the contradictions that Arlen Specter and his colleagues are trying to resolve.
Sovereign nations must recognize that people have a basic human right to migrate, that in balance it is almost always good for the receiving nation and that it is impossible to stop anyway.

So should people who believe in that the Right to Migrate as a basic human right support the legislation now in Congress. Making laws is a complicated process and the final bill will not recognize the basic right to migrate but if it, in the margin, moves in the direction of giving permanent status to the undocumented and does not build more walls between us and our neighbors it is a good thing.

But the real battle for Radical Migration is to change the debate. The ethics have changed. In a world with “liberty and justice for all” people must have the right to migrate. Nations that do not allow migration are on the wrong side of history. Walls are wrong.

For more information on the Right to Migrate visit radicalmigration.com