“Meaghan Patrick, a junior at New College of Florida, a tiny liberal arts college in Sarasota, says discussing immigration with her older relatives is like ‘hitting your head against a brick wall.’”New York Times, May 17th. A bad economy makes folks that have lived longer and have more to lose a tad more clingy to the lifestyle and “American way” they’ve grown accustomed to. Mumble stuff like “they’re taking our jobs” or “we’re getting deeper in debt to pay for their social benefits” and even purported liberals become closet conservatives when it comes to immigration. It’s fear, and when a crime wave hit Arizona – kidnappings motivated by the drug wars in Mexico that have spilled over to our side of the border – well, that was more than enough proof that if feds couldn’t control the border, state troopers could. If you look brown and a trooper finds an excuse to stop you in that sand state… better have those proper immigration documents on you… or like it or not, off you go.
Forget about the fact that the drug wars are going on down there because we have too much demand for demon drugs up here. Forget that America is a nation of immigrants that took jobs and land away from the original American citizens – Native Americans – often by violent force. Forget that God didn’t draw these borders; men did. And if you were born a few inches on the wrong side of that line, well, tough… “it’s mine.” Is it really just the luck of the draw? Harsh reality is the greatest divider of generations may not be music or technology; it just may be the difference in how younger folks perceive undocumented aliens… but then, younger folks tend to have less of a vested interest than their elders: “This emerging divide has appeared in a handful of surveys taken since the [Arizona] measure was signed into law, including a New York Times/CBS News poll this month that found that Americans 45 and older were more likely than the young to say the Arizona law was ‘about right’ (as opposed to ‘going too far’ or ‘not far enough’). Boomers were also more likely to say that ‘no newcomers’ should be allowed to enter the country while more young people favored a ‘welcome all’ approach.” The Times. Does this mean that over time, America will soften its increasingly hardening “illegal immigrant” line?
The President is sending 1,200 National Guard troops to patrol our southern border – a move that conservatives are calling too little, too late – and the U.S. Attorney General’s office is making noises like it is siding with angry police officers who feel over burdened with normal police duties and who want the Arizona law quashed. Politicians are inserting litmus tests for immigration policy and tearing at opponents who don’t agree. Yet a nation should be able to control its borders, but the demands for cheap labor – work that actually has made it easier to sustain our lifestyle – seems to have outstripped the country’s ability to control immigration. Where Americans can legally take advantage of unskilled foreigners who work for wages and under working conditions that no American would accept, well they do… They just have a different label for it: “shopping at WalMart,” where cheap Asian and Latin American manufactures dominate the durable goods sections of the store. When it comes to our food chain – from picking crops or slaughtering cattle for our hamburgers – or our construction trades or our lower-end service trades (from kitchen to domestic help)… Americans still want a better price, so undocumented workers fit that bill pretty well.
Tell every American that they’ll have to pay an extra 20-30 percent or more to keep American jobs in and undocumented aliens out, think you’ll get the same reaction? Ask for the cash up front and take a vote. Fact is that not being able to control our borders also creates a miserable trade in well-armed coyotes, ignorant workers who are exploited beyond any semblance of ethical or moral behavior and a whole new set of criminals who prey on them. And a porous border can’t good for a nation fighting terrorists looking for a way to smuggle in some WMDs to take the wind out of the American sail, although coyotes are probably smart enough to turn such folks into to our Border Patrol agents to prevent a vicious counter-attack and a super-beefed-up border. Ever worry about the Canadian border where it is a whole lot easier to cross? Ever ask how easy it is for someone to enter Canada? Pretty easy.
Truth is that there is an ugly side of this issue no matter which side you are on. Think we have an infinite capacity to absorb immigrants? Open the borders wide without limitation and perhaps there will be an ultimate balance… where they are escaping from might not look a whole lot different from this side of the border, so they’ll stop wanting to cross. It’s just not practical. Close the borders and get rid of all the undocumented, and this country stops getting a pile of basic services; life’ll be slowed to a crawl or stop. For those where those services are still performed by America’s legitimate but marginally poor, well, trust me, if there is demand for that labor elsewhere at higher pay, the lack of service at the lowest levels will impact every community in this nation.
Fact is what we need is a lot more common sense. Start with reforming our drug laws so the incentive to smuggle isn’t so damned strong. Admit that we do in fact have lower-end jobs that only undocumented workers seem to want to do (even in times of high unemployment), and then let them do it (no matter how they got here), but collect taxes from them in the process. But at least have a way to record who they are so we can collect that money, one that doesn’t prevent them from signing on because they would be issuing their own deportation orders. Clamp down on employment that takes the form of cash payments and no withholding. And stop thinking that there is a basic solution that any state can implement that will make this all go away. We need some practical, not fired-up and angry, answers.
I’m Peter Dekom, and rational brainpower usually makes better decisions than someone who get emotional whenever a particular issue is discussed.
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