Essay by Martha Quillen
Immigration – May 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
ON THE NATIONAL FRONT, immigration has clearly been a leading issue. But in Salida, it hasn’t quite caught up with Christo’s curtains. Hal Walter’s last column, however, sure brought it home to us. Hal wrote, “To me, any opposition to immigration seems rooted more in racism than in economics.” And in response, numerous people called to tell us how wrong he was.
Of course, I assume that plenty of people agreed with Hal, too, but since he didn’t call them racist, they probably didn’t feel quite as compelled to tell us about it.
For the record, though, I disagree with Hal, too. I think he’s wrong on this, but I also think Tom Tancredo’s wrong. And Dick Lamm. And most of congress.
The critical question, however, isn’t who’s wrong. Or who’s bigoted. It’s “What should we do about immigration?”
And in that light, I think that our entire country is wrong about this issue. Our two-party system encourages simplification, polarization, and blame games, which works all right when there are clear choices. But immigration policy presents a colossal number of choices, many of them complex, internationally significant, and potentially death-dealing. Yet our debates haven’t even bothered to illuminate our choices.
Instead, Democrats have embraced that standard inquiry: “Who’s a bigot?” And answered, “Tom Tancredo.”And Tancredo’s certainly the most influential hate-monger in the crowd — encouraging vigilantes and Minutemen toward violent action, talking about blowing up mosques, and calling for troop deployments to combat hungry vagrants. But the word “bigot” is probably too mild for Tancredo.
The way I see it, we’re all bigots on occasion, because all of us tend to judge some segments of our population too precipitously, whether that be migrants, or gays, southerners, or Texans, liberals, conservatives, or telemarketers. But Tancredo wants to whip our bigotry and resentment into an avenging movement.
And sadly, on the issue of immigration, America seems to have let Tancredo shape the dialogue.
A decade or so ago, Ed and I arrived at a family picnic at his folk’s house in the midst of a discussion about the horrors of immigration. We walked right into it, unarmed and unprepared. Whereupon one of Ed’s cousins declared, “Those damned Mexicans, they’re everywhere, taking everybody’s jobs. We’re just going to have to start shooting ’em, don’t you think, Ed?”
Ed answered, “No,” and went over to greet one of his aunts.
His cousin announced, “Well, I’ve got my hunting rifle. We could head right down there now and straighten that border out.” An uncle, and a distant cousin egged him on. “Damn right,” one agreed. “Let’s go for it,” the other baited.
THE YARD WAS FULL of small groups, all conversing. Suddenly, they grew quiet and moved farther away. Ed’s brother, another uncle, and several cousins went off to play horseshoes, and Ed announced that he should go greet his parents inside.
“You know what we should do?” his cousin goaded more loudly, clearly trying to push Ed’s buttons. “What we should do is kill ourselves some liberals. That’s what would really make things better. We should just get rid of those pushy, ignorant, g*d-d!mned liberals.” The cousin was fairly shouting by then, while his two admirers added caustic comments about how terrible Mexicans and “liberals like you” are.
But Ed merely went into the house.
So, if you think that a few of Ed’s relatives must have had a little too much to drink, think again. They don’t drink — as far as I know. But even if they do drink on occasion, they would never drink at Ed’s parents’ house.
So there must be some really bad blood between Ed and his cousin, you no doubt assume. Except that’s not the case. Ed’s cousin had always been cordial enough before, and thirty minutes or so later, when Ed emerged from the house with his mom and dad, his cousin was cordial enough, once again.
Besides, Ed and I don’t really know those relatives well enough to feud with them. It was a reunion; they were relatives that we see every two or three years — relatives who don’t live in Colorado, or read Ed’s column, or even necessarily know what we do for a living.
And we had certainly never discussed politics with them — we’re not stupid.
Well, come to think of it, Ed is not stupid. I, on the other hand, had just seen a televised interview with Maya Angelou, in which she said that she could understand bigots; what she couldn’t understand were people who just sat there and let friends and relatives be vicious. The silence of onlookers makes them think everyone agrees with them, Maya concluded.
SO I WENT OVER and sat by Ed’s cousin, and told him that I thought he was being unreasonable, unfair, and unChristian to boot, because if I lived in a Mexican village, and there were no jobs, and my family was destitute, and my children were hungry I would swim the damned Rio Grande, too. And if feeling that way is an executable offense, then so be it. He should go and fetch his blasted gun.
Ed’s cousin didn’t exactly apologize, but he quit being so deliberately confrontational, and started explaining how liberals had ruined the whole damned economy. His tirade wasn’t convincing, but I did start to realize how bad things were where he lived. He and his neighbors were in serious debt. There’d been a long drought; they’d lost their crop for several years in a row, and there weren’t any jobs available in their area.
Despite what “liberal” bigots might presume, both Ed’s cousin and his wife are college educated, but they couldn’t find adequate work in their region. His wife, a teacher, hadn’t been able to obtain a position since they’d moved back home to manage the family farm — because students were leaving, and none of the local schools were hiring. Ed’s cousin worked on other people’s farms and his own, and his wife worked full-time as a cook, but they just kept falling behind. His wife was overworked and depressed. His children had asthma from the dust. His sister-in-law seemed to blame him for everything. A friend had committed suicide. His father-in-law was dying. The litany of misery went on and on, until I couldn’t help but realize that Ed’s cousin was scared, angry, burned-out and perhaps even suffering from some kind of traumatic stress disorder.
And talk about prejudice…. All I could think was, “So what in tarnation are you doing in Colorado driving a brand new vehicle?”
Well, what did you expect? Compassion? Hey, this is America, the land where everybody is always sure that everybody else should be doing better.
And that’s what bothered me most about Hal’s argument. First he implied that anyone who supported any sort of immigration regulations was purely racist. And then he wrote, “Otherwise, it would be more logical to institute population control measures, such as limits on the number of children a couple may have, or even tax incentives for having fewer children. If our chief concern is enough jobs or paychecks to go around, or enough basic services and prison space, then we should go right to the real root of the problem — our own burgeoning numbers. After all, Americans are placing a far bigger burden on our economy and various ‘systems’ than immigrants.”
But darn it, Hal, that’s not fair. First off, birth rates in modern industrial nations have been declining for decades. And even though the U.S. isn’t as abstemious as Italy, which has a a -.14% natural increase rate (in other words, more people die than get born), ours is down to .59%, which is certainly better than Mexico’s 1.63%. But on the other hand, Mexico’s is better than Angola’s 2.11%, which is better than Senegal’s 2.38%.
But wait a minute. What does this have to do with anything?
Absolutely nothing. Despite Hal’s contentions, too few children may be more conducive to America’s immigration dilemma than too many. In fact, editor Clive Crook of The Atlantic thinks that Europe desperately needs immigrants because its population is aging, and so does America (except not as desperately because our birth rate is higher). Children, however, are necessary — to do menial labor; fill entry level jobs; pay our social security bills; take care of the elderly; and develop better technology to ease our pain, lift our faces, and replace our joints as we decline.
Ahhh, but here I am off on another tangent.
THUS, ONCE AGAIN, we can all indulge in a typical American immigration debate — circling right past the main concern and on into emotional sidelines. Hal, for example, never actually touched upon the issue of immigration reform. After reading his piece, I had no idea what he believed good immigration policy would entail. For example:
Does Hal really think that we should just let Mexican citizens live and work in the U.S. without keeping track of them? And if so, how will cities, states and school districts calculate migrant populations in order to adequately fund schools, hospitals, and emergency services?
Or does Hal propose that we let Mexican laborers in, but don’t let them use our schools, hospitals and emergency services?
Or does Hal think we should forget immigration reform and leave things just as they are? And if so, what should we do about the migrants expiring in the desert? And desperate migrants suffocating in semi-trailers? And families split apart by INS raids? And the children who get left behind?
Does Hal favor or oppose a guest worker program? Does he think it should be illegal to hire undocumented workers? Does he think undocumented migrants in the U.S. should earn the same minimum wages as Americans?
And what about the ridiculous gap that’s growing between the rich and the poor in our country? Should poor, powerless, non-voting laborers be a principal source of labor in the U.S.? And if so, how will we prevent a deterioration of health and safety standards in our mines, mills, and factories?
Focusing on such issues just might reduce our anger and bigotry.
But it probably won’t hasten viable immigration reform — because serious economic reversals assail Mexico’s poor, and they’re fleeing our way. Newsweek estimates that there were 5 million illegal Hispanic migrants in the U.S. in 1996, and there may be 12 million today; with 78 percent of them from Mexico alone.
IN A New York Times Book Review of Fair Trade for All, Robert Reich writes, “Ten years after the North American Free Trade agreement went into effect, Mexico’s real wages are lower than they were before, and both inequality and poverty have grown.”
Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria, champions immigration, but admits that the United States has a special problem with Mexico. “But let us understand the forces at work here,” he urges. According to Stanford historian, David Kennedy, the income gap between the United States and Mexico is the largest between any two contiguous countries in the world, and Zakaria contends, “That huge disparity is producing massive demand in the United States and massive supply from Mexico and Central America. Whenever governments try to come between these two forces — think of drugs — simply increasing enforcement does not work.”
Poverty in Mexico is entrenched, and growing worse, which pretty much guarantees that refugees will be headed our way — no matter how many rules, regulations, fences, guards, or snipers we deploy.
Currently, millions of destitute foreign workers are seeking jobs and sustenance here in the United States and their willingness to work cheap and under the worst possible conditions is alienating and frightening many American workers.
But Hal is not alone in downplaying the difficulties presented by the recent surge in illegal immigration. Many speakers at last year’s Headwaters Conference also maintained that concerns about illegal immigration were unfounded and racist. That view, however, was in sharp contrast to the presentations by volunteers trying to provide assistance to migrant families. They told tales of fifteen adults living in a two-bedroom trailer, with five children sleeping under the kitchen table; poverty; overcrowding; inadequate winter clothing; the immigrant’s fear of schools, tutors, translators, and others who merely want to help; schools without the money, materials or staff to meet the added demands; the chronic difficulty of finding funds….
Yet Democrats tend to insist that illegal immigrants should create no conflicts whatsoever, because they only take jobs that Americans don’t want; they work better for less; and they cost our society nothing. Such insane assertions would be funny — if they weren’t pathologically myopic.
But Democratic delusions may be overshadowed by Republican inconsistency. The Republican Party champions both virulent anti-integration sentiments and a guest worker program. So what happens if they’re successful? Apparently, we’ll invite foreign workers in so Tom Tancredo’s fans can use them for target practice.
Considering the bizarre nature of the recent discourse on immigration, one can only hope that there are still policy wonks and charitable organizations that are trying to ensure humane treatment and necessary legal representation for illegal migrants; and who are trying to help beleaguered communities provide adequate housing, schooling, medical care, and language instruction for foreign families; and which monitor American workplaces to make sure that the availability of desperately compliant undocumented workers doesn’t imperil U.S. wages or reduce adherence to our health, safety and environmental regulations.
Whether U.S. policy calls for welcoming Mexican workers, or rejecting them, exploiting them, or fencing them out so that they have to fly in, boat in, or conceal themselves in storage containers, they will still be heading our way, because there are no opportunities left for them at home.
SO THEY’RE COMING HERE — some temporarily, and some to stay — just like Europe’s poor once did, legally and illegally. And perhaps that fitting, since U.S. trade policy and agreements seem to have played a major role in cracking Mexico’s fragile economy.
Clearly, our best bet for slowing the flow of migrants across our border and assuring a more beneficial partnership for both America and Mexico lies in bolstering their economy. But such long-term solutions are reliant on the Mexican government and future U.S./Mexican trade negotiations — not on the issue at hand.
In the meantime, however, conscientious immigration reform is imperative to assure the safety and dignity of foreign workers, protect the wages and benefits of American workers, and provide relief for communities besieged by the increasing tide.
In the long run, to deny that there are real and growing problems attributable to America’s current immigration situation will merely rob those in denial of a voice and guarantee that someone else’s idea of reform will prevail. So perhaps those who find Hal’s viewpoint egregious should rejoice.