On Saturday, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain offered his vision for American immigration policy:

“First, secure the border for real..It’s common sense. Part of [the solution] would have a real fence. Twenty feet high, with barbed wire – electrified – with a sign on the other side that says it can kill you. It’ll be in English and Spanish.”

When David Gregory asked Cain about his remarks on “Meet the Press,” Cain said, “…America needs to get a sense of humor. That was a joke, OK?”

For me, however, Cain’s remarks were anything but a joke. The fact that the Republican co-frontrunner showed such a profound lack of compassion for immigrants is very disturbing. So many undocumented immigrants come to America as a last resort, leaving their families and friends behind to perform cheap, unskilled labor in industries dominated by people like themselves.

 Cain’s fence is also the furthest thing imaginable away from the Statue of Liberty, bearing Emma Lazurus’ words:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”“

Later this afternoon, Paul Lagunes and I are going to present the paper we co-authored with Ruth Ditlmann, “Documenting the Undocumented: A Review of the United States’ First Municipal ID Program” at the CUNY Graduate Center Conference on Immigration.

Here’s our abstract:

There are over 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States and yet, for several years, the federal government has failed to pass a comprehensive immigration reform. This has led cities across the country to enact policies that either try to repel or integrate the undocumented in their midst. With the issuance of the Elm City Resident Card, New Haven, CT, sought to promote the assimilation of its migrants by becoming the first city in the country to provide them with a government-backed ID. This article uses qualitative and empirical strategies, including a rigorous field experiment, to test the policy’s effectiveness in one significant dimension. We found that Hispanics/Latinos are carded more frequently in common commercial interactions than Whites/Anglos. This shows that Hispanics/Latinos, regardless of their citizenship status, are in greater need of documentation. We also found that, because of weaknesses in the card’s design, New Haven’s ID was not always perceived as legitimate. When a Hispanic/Latino presented the Elm City Resident Card to a cashier, the municipal identification fared only as well as the non-government-backed ID it was tested against. Thus we conclude that the Elm City Resident Card’s marginal utility as a form of documentation is currently negligible.

If you’re interested in reading more, click here to download the paper. We would appreciate your feedback or ideas!