Impractical Policy Making

On Saturday, I attended a discussion with Tom Leppert, a CMC
alum who is running for Senate in Texas. He spoke about why he’s running, what
his goals are, and what his political positions are. One that struck me in
particular was his strong stance against the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act helps
students who are illegal immigrants attend college. He opposed it mainly
because it ignored the “big picture” idea of tackling the immigration issue. He
described that the DREAM Act addresses only a small portion of the immigration
question and that policy must be made by looking at and addressing overall
problems.

This brings up the questions: Should policy making address
short-term issues along with long-term issues? Can politicians address subsets
of issues to make progress without looking at the issue as a whole?

Ideally, all policy making would be comprehensive. However,
politicians must constantly consider not just what would be ideal but what
practically they can accomplish. With our fiercely divided two-party system, it
seems impractical to believe that action should only be taken with the big
picture in mind. Children of illegal immigrants brought here when they were
young hold no responsibility for the decision to illegally immigrate. Waiting
for a broader solution by not taking action for students directly hurts them. Furthermore, though unintended consequences
exist for the DREAM Act, so many more would exist for large-scale immigration
reform. The process for such passage and the amount of changes that would have
to be made after passage due to these unintended consequences will be
incredibly lengthy. In our system, incremental change works best.