California says yes.
In the news today is a story about Sergio Garcia, 36, who at age 2 was brought to the U.S. by his parents without our government’s permission. Garcia returned to Mexico with his family at age 9, but re-entered the U.S. at age 17 and stayed. An upwardly mobile striver, he worked in almond orchards and a grocery store to pay his way through college and law school. He passed the California bar exam on his first sitting. A legal fight then ensued over whether he could be admitted to the California Bar. This was resolved when Gov. Brown signed into law a legislative bill changing a provision of California law that previously denied professional licenses to illegal immigrants. The California Supreme Court announced today there is no longer any reason to deny Garcia a license to practice law, and he will soon be a lawyer.
Beyond the heartwarming Horatio Alger true-grit story here, Garcia’s case and others (two similar cases are pending in Florida and New York) raise this question: Should illegals be categorically denied access to the American Dream simply for being illegals, or should professional licenses be based on each individual’s qualifications?
Opponents argue illegal immigrants are lawbreakers. Ipso facto, per se, and all that. But pinning criminality on a 2-year-old is a slippery proposition, to say the least. What you’re really doing in such cases is punishing the child for his parents’ behavior, and that doesn’t seem quite right. Now, you can argue Garcia knew what he was doing when he was 17, but do we really want to punish him because the U.S. immigration bureaucracy is so slow and inefficient that he can’t get a visa until 2019? Whose fault is that, his or ours?
The California Supreme Court’s ruling in Garcia’s case won’t open the floodgates to wholesale issuance of professional licenses to illegals. At least, it won’t in the legal profession. All applicants must satisfy a character and fitness requirement before they’re allowed to sit for the bar exam. It’s perfectly conceivable an adult who knowingly flouted our immigration laws could be found to lack the requisite character and fitness for that reason. All we’re talking about here is removing the per se disqualification from California’s admission procedures so applicants in Garcia’s position are evaluated on their merits instead of their status.
That’s not asking too much, given that ex-felons can be, and are, licensed to practice law. A prominent example in our state is Egil Krogh, who was disbarred in 1975 after being convicted and imprisoned for his role in the Watergate crimes. Krogh was readmitted in 1980, and remains an actively licensed Washington lawyer today. If a convicted Watergate conspirator is allowed to be a lawyer, why can’t a person whose only transgression is wanting to live and work in America be a lawyer, too?