Illegal Immigration
I have held off exhorting on this subject, with both barrels, for a long
time. The reason is that most of my friends are on the opposite side of the
issue from me. Personal feelings and loyalty are important to me. I approach
with hesitation the action of telling all of them that I think they are totally
off-base, and saying that it can only be caused by the fact that they have not
considered the subject logically and rationally. Who would enjoy attacking one’s
friends like that? However, my stomach can only stand so much. It is the time to
come forth with an article, a diatribe if you will, on the subject.
What is the important part of any issue facing the United
States? It seems to me, that by definition, the crux must be whether the result
of any point of view benefits or harms this country. If an analysis of an issue
shows that it detracts from the advancement of the basic principles of the
nation, whether economically, morally, ethically, or legally, it should be opposed.
Some Background
I’ve been considering illegal immigration for decades, and my opinions on
it have evolved. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, I was politically involved
as a socialist. At the time, that philosophy seemed to explain things better
than any other. However, from the very beginning, I had misgivings about some of
the answers given to my questions. When, finally, I was expelled from the
organization to which I belonged, I was so glad to get out. I was very
disappointed that so many of my friends and comrades were distraught about it.
As time went by and what came to be called “political correctness”
took hold, I became more and more alienated from the politics of the left and of
the liberal fellow travelers of the left. The principles that had led me to the
left never changed, though. I just stopped using labels. However, the
alienation I felt was not a difference of how
the world should be improved, but of the excuses many lefties made to adopt as their own
the various cockamamie ideas propounded as legitimate solutions to the problems of
the time.
One of the first to strike me was the characterization of people who
entered the United States, in violation of the immigration laws, as ‘undocumented
immigrants.’ The idea propounded was that those people were not law violators,
but just folks whose papers were not quite in order. Baloney!!! Why were they undocumented,
a reasonable person would ask? Obviously, because they are in this country
illegally. This was was so
transparently an excuse to engage in dishonesty that it could not be accepted by
anyone of rational mind.
At that time I was not yet considering the total effect of such immigration
on the country. I was only thinking of the dishonesty involved in defining
things that way. How could people whom I had known and respected engage in such
a sham?? Regardless, I still had sympathy for the people who were entering the
country illegally, and had not yet figured out that there were negative
implications to the country as a whole.
I have a close friend, a well-respected academic, who wrote a book on
immigration from Mexico. I suggested a title, which he accepted, that
conveyed my sympathy at that time. After all, I had studied Mexico and traveled
there a number of times. I had found that the Mexican people were very warm and
simpatico people. My personal music collection included a great deal of Mexican
music. In addition, I had numerous Mexican friends. Why shouldn’t I suggest a
sympathetic title for my friend’s book?
Evolution of Ideas
Eventually, I started thinking more on the subject. What would be the effect
on this country of basing national immigration policy on a lie, a deliberate
misinterpretation of reality? The people in question were not accidentally
classified as folks without proper documentation, but were people who had
deliberately contravened U.S. immigration laws when they crossed this country’s
borders.
Didn’t I have sympathy for people who waded the river (or whatever) to get
a better life? Of course I did, but I also realized that any pickpocket, car
thief, burglar or drug dealer could rationalize his or her own activities that
way, too. Making a better life for yourself at other people’s expense is not the way
things are supposed to be done in this country, according to its ideals.
That’s why workers, unions and Americans in general have been fighting for
over a century against companies that have adulterated foods, pumped
harmful chemicals into the air and the water, and maintained unsafe work environments,
where people got maimed and killed on the job. Allowing people to continue
sneaking under the fence and undermining the system here, that people have
struggled to build, would be just the same as scrapping all of the health,
environment and safety laws that we have managed to put in place. Wages and benefits are being cut
partly because illegal aliens are willing to work for less. All sympathy for
the illegal foreigner, none for the American workers who have
struggled and sacrificed to improve conditions in the United
States is not going to help the situation here.
Moreover, does this mean that those who followed the rules, made the proper
applications and waited for legal approval for entry into this country were just
a bunch of saps, because they didn’t seize the opportunity and cross the border
illegally, and get a leg up on legality by doing so? The very idea disgusted me!
I’ve never liked people who cut in line. The idea that liberals and leftists
supported the concept that those who were already in the United States illegally
should have a “path to citizenship” over those who chose to follow the legal
process, seemed contrary to all concepts of fairness and legality. How awful
such ideas were! They had raised an ideological barrier between us on this issue
that seemed impermeable,
even though we shared the same long-term goals.
African Americans
In utter contrast to the “feeling sorry for” segment regarding
immigrants is the situation of African Americans, already a part of American
society. They worked astoundingly hard in the 1950s and ’60s to move the country
away from the old, racist “Jim Crow” attitudes and laws, with great
success. The old laws were undone and new laws protected their rights and
equality as citizens. Blacks had new opportunities to
advance themselves in society. All that was needed were the jobs and education to
overcome poverty and ignorance imposed upon them by this society in days past.
The opportunities for many were dashed, especially those who had not been well educated
by American schools up to that point. The floodgates of immigration were opened.
Between 1970 and 1980, about 4.5 million legal immigrants entered the
country (and a certain amount of illegals). Many of these scooped up the jobs
that should, by rights, have been available for Blacks. Moreover, with more
people competing for those jobs, the opportunities improve the wages and
benefits for those jobs evaporated, too. The illegals worked for less and
dragged everything down. Don’t forget that this period was the
beginning of the deindustrialization of the country, and the availability of
good, well-paying, union factory jobs available to those with less education started to
disappear.
These trends increased afterwards, with more and more legal and illegal
immigrants entering the country, and more and more good jobs leaving. African
Americans were among the most squeezed by these trends, and a growing Black
underclass was the result. The promise of advancement and a greater share in the
U.S. economy was gutted by this increase in immigration. Of course, business
rejoiced. Not only were they able to continue paying low wages, but they had to
deal with fewer Blacks, who were traditionally a highly militant and pro-union
segment of U.S. society. How about a little sympathy for them?
Unions
What really clinched my view that something had to be done about this support of
illegal immigration by so many, however, was how unions had started intervening
in the issue. The position of unions had changed, radically, if readers will
excuse the pun. Many radicals from the ’60s and ’70s eventually found their way to
the labor movement. Many in the movement in those years, including me, advocated
such things, but the idea initially fell on deaf ears. This changed.
Unfortunately, many of the radicals who made the move most successfully were not those who wanted to
enhance and reform traditional industrial unionism, but were those who wished to
change the labor movement to suit their New Left, liberal-ish, feminist,
“progressive” new-thought,
which was quite different from traditional American labor radicalism.
Eventually, more and more of those radicals, due to their dedication and
activism, moved into positions of leadership as the old guard of labor retired
or died.
I don’t mean to say that the leadership of the labor movement didn’t need
changing. It did, because it had been slowly but surely strangling unions from
the top by continuing the Cold War, even McCarthyite, anti-democratic style of
leadership, and control of the membership of most American unions. Unfortunately,
the newer generation of union leaders didn’t do much about democratizing unions.
They mostly replaced the old leadership with themselves and continued the rule
from the top. They assumed things would be better simply because of their own politics.
They replaced one set of dictators with another that presumed that they were more
progressive and benevolent than the former.
With the decline of industry, and thus industrial unions, the impact of this
new generation of labor leadership was felt most strongly in white-collar and
service industry unions. There was definitely more energy and organizing being
done, and that was certainly good for unions. However, there was a dark side,
and that showed up in the issue discussed here, among others. Traditionally, unions
concentrated upon what was good for their members, that is, American workers.
They paid the dues, and were the ones who had fought and sacrificed to make the social gains
that most of us in the U.S. benefit from.
Illegal immigration, however, did not have the same goals. Illegal immigrants
didn’t have the same ideals of the immigrants of the past. First and foremost, they
did not have respect for U.S. and its laws and abide
by them. Many illegals, particularly those from Mexico, kept their loyalty with
the old country, not the one in which they lived. They didn’t contribute
their earnings, as U.S. workers have traditionally done, to their new
communities, but sent them back to Mexico to improve that country, not this one.
Worse, they were willing to work for less than American workers, and thus
undermined the gains that American and their unions had made over the last
century or so. The labor movement has traditionally had
a word for workers who behave like this
— SCABS! That is, by and large, how illegal immigrants
have functioned. Unfortunately, union leaders have been too blinded by their
personal ideologies to recognize this and to act accordingly. That was not
always the case. For example, when César Chávez was organizing the United Farm Workers union,
he had no hesitation about calling immigration when employers were using
illegals to impede his organizing efforts. To do such a thing today would get a
union organizer fired.
The New Leaders
The new leadership of some
unions, such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU),
held New Left sympathies for the downtrodden of the world that overwhelmed their
feelings for the problems of American workers. This showed itself in the
support they gave to illegal immigrants, no matter the problems those illegals
caused for the rest of the country and its workers. These goals were much the
same as those espoused by most liberals. Unfortunately, they also matched the
goals of many businesses who wanted to exploit the illegal immigrants to drive
down wages and decrease the power of unions. The liberals and the left were
playing right into the hands of the most exploitative businesses.
I first had my eyes opened really wide when I, as a local union employee, took a course for union
activists on how to deal with immigration issues. It was not at all what
I expected. The course was taught by someone from SEIU, which was
flush with the success of the Justice for Janitors campaign. It had organized
low-wage custodial workers in commercial buildings, a very good thing
to do. I learned that the SEIU was very aware that many of the
people they represented were illegal aliens. The union had made the decision
to cater to the illegals, and had negotiated into their janitor contracts
clauses to protect the jobs of the illegals in case they got deported. The jobs
were to be held open for a certain amount of time so that the workers had the
opportunity to sneak back into this country again and reclaim the job.
It’s
one thing for a union to say that the immigration agents should stay out of any union
organization effort; companies were using them to spirit away union
supporters and take away the chances for a union for the legal residents
involved. The immigration people could sort things out after the vote has been
taken, to the detriment of the union. It’s quite another thing to put into labor
union contracts provisions to aid and abet violation of the immigration laws. I was
flabbergasted!!
It wasn’t just the immediate aiding and abetting illegal immigration that
bothered me. More important is the problem unions have always had of trying to
force employers to live up to the letter of the labor laws that protect American
workers. How can unions hold the high ground of enforcing the labor and
safety laws if they
are themselves subverting the immigration laws of this country? It was completely
unethical, never mind suicide in the long-term collective bargaining realm!
I also watched a bargaining unit the union represented destroy itself. There
were a significant number of illegals working in the plant. They were so fearful
because of their own circumstances that many were not willing to stand up and be
counted for the union, in the face of an arrogant and nasty employer. There were
never enough people to conduct actions that would help the unit improve its
circumstances. Eventually, the local union, since it didn’t have infinite
resources to pour into a dry hole, had to disclaim the bargaining unit, and
throw all of the employees to the wolves.
Other union leaders, not themselves radicals from the ’60s and ’70s, fell for
the same ideas, because they were used to caving in the the policies of the
Democratic Party. That party was itself caving in to the ideas of the liberals, as
they had been for decades, even though liberals today are not the same as
liberals of forty years ago. The result, as we can see if we look, is not only
the betrayal of long-term labor allies, the African Americans of this country,
but more. We can see the continued decline of real wages and the continuing
change of the United States into a Third World-like country, with low wages, low
working standards, and, eventually low safety and environmental standards, too.
Hurling Epithets and Dishonesty
It’s disappointing that, in a democracy in which people are supposed to
discuss issues and try to come to an agreement, many choose to trade in dishonest
information, lie, and degrade and insult those who disagree with them. It’s become
common, and no portion of the political spectrum is innocent of it. On this
issue, those who try to claim the high ground by calling themselves progressives
or liberals are down in the muck. Instead of defending their point of view with
rational arguments, they try to denigrate their opponents by calling them
racists. It makes me wonder if there isn’t some pathological altruism
going on.
In order to make some epithet like that stick, it needs to be based on fact.
However, there are no facts to support it. Against whom are their
opponents supposed to have such a racist animus? There are illegal immigrants
from all races. Perhaps the majority are from Mexico. How are naturalized
citizens from Mexico and those U.S. citizens of Mexican extraction, who oppose illegal
immigration, racists? Such tactics are used by those who don’t have any good
answers to support their point of view. And if a point of view irrationally
favors foreigners illegally in this country over Americans, I would think that
otherwise rational people would abandon such a viewpoint.
Continuing what I said above, why not tell the truth
and not try to distort things? When someone
from another country is in the United States in violation of the law, the person
is an illegal alien. Trying to camouflage the truth by referring to him
or her as someone who is “undocumented” or even an “illegal immigrant?”
A true immigrant is someone who immigrates here in accordance with U.S. law. Others
are just illegal aliens. Such avoidance of the truth does not say much for the
character of the people making such statements.
To take this subject a little further, those who are taking a position in
favor of the presence of the illegal aliens tend to characterize their
adversaries as opponents if immigration. Rallies and demonstrations are
called under the rubric of “immigrant rights.” This is yet another attempt
to distort and cloud the issue, instead of addressing the points that those
on the other side of the issue raise.
That’s yet another lie. Their adversaries are only against illegal
immigration. As to legal immigration, people’s views run the gamut of
opinions. No one is attacking the rights of legal immigrants, but this distortion
tries to make it sound that way. In fact, those people are supporting “illegal
aliens’ rights,” but that doesn’t sound so good, does it?
Another common attitude is this: Why is it that a proud Mexican is someone to be lauded, but a proud American
is someone to be despised? Mexicans are seen as victims of their corrupt and
authoritarian government, but Americans are blamed and identified with the wrongs
of theirs. Such a double standard is dishonest and hypocritical. There really is
an American culture and many people are proud of it and the country’s ideals
and want to protect them.
The Border
People in this country who live away from the border with Mexico don’t really
have a clue about how difficult it is for the people who live there, and in the
border states flooded with illegal immigrants. The illegals hire coyotecriminals
and drug transporters to get them across the border. One of those coyotes
or narcos killed an Arizona rancher, and another shot a Border Patrol agent, and
fired on the people trying to rescue the wounded man. The rancher killing led to
Arizona’s SB 1070, a bill that gave the police more authority for identifying illegal
aliens. That bill is still tied up in the courts, along along with similar bills
in other states. However, important parts of an Alabama bill were approved by a
court.
With the economic conditions here, the number of people crossing the southern
border illegally has gone down [New
York Times], but the number of “drug smugglers and other criminals” has
not, so the border area has become more dangerous. Quoted in that
same
article, “Larry Dever, the sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, which sits north of Agua
Prieta, agreed: ‘The guys smuggling people and narcotics now are more
sinister.’” Further,
“assaults on Border Patrol agents grew by 41 percent from 2006 to 2010.”
For years the illegals
have been trashing the border area, discarding anything they don’t need on the
property of the people living near where they cross. Many steal anything they
might need, food, clothes off the clothes line, even, from the people who live on the
U.S. side. None of this is excusable, and none of it is the sign of the
so-called decent people who just want to improve their lives.
Many, thousands, of the border crashers have died in their efforts. The coyotes
and the other illegals just abandon anyone who is sick or hungry or thirsty and
cannot go on with the journey. Many die in the desert. Others are killed by the coyote
criminals, for raising a ruckus or something. According to the
NY Times, “The number of immigrants found dead in the
Arizona desert, from all causes, has failed to decline as fast as illegal immigration has.”
Some illegal immigration supporters
were angry with the Border Patrol for making it difficult to cross the border at
places formerly easy to cross illegally. They felt that it violated the rights
of the illegals to force them out into the desert, where was difficult to cross,
and where more of them died. What kind of contorted and outright idiotic logic
is that? Does it violate the rights of car thieves to put a theft alarm in a
vehicle? Are the rights of home invaders violated when a person has a gun or two
in the house to defend it? There is nothing in this kind of thinking that
compliments the intelligence of those supporters of illegal immigration.
Other Consequences
Job Exclusions
I was laid off several years ago from my job working for a local industrial
union. Those things happen, given the decline in American industry. Naturally, I
followed the employment ads for union staff positions. What I have found is that,
more and more, job openings come with a requirement: “must be bilingual in
Spanish”, or “bilingual preferred,” and it is not only union
staff jobs, of course. If one looks around, one finds that more and more, an
American must speak a foreign language to get a job in the United States.
This contains another implication: all of those jobs are most likely going to go
to people who, by birth or other factors, grow up being fluent in English and
Spanish. Average Americans who are not likely to have those skills will be
excluded from those positions.
I’m all for people broadening their understanding of the world by learning
foreign languages and studying other countries and cultures. I’ve spent a lot of
time doing that myself. However, it shouldn’t be coerced, and knowing a foreign
language should not be a requirement to get a job in this country, except in a
few very narrow categories. Unfortunately, that is now a fact, mostly caused by
the fact that there are so many illegal immigrants that have not bothered to
learn English after coming to this country.
Social Costs
California and other border states are groaning under the costs of illegal
immigration. Health care, education and social services have costs that are not
reimbursed by the federal government, which is supposed to bear the
responsibility for immigration. However, the government is neither helping the
states with high illegal populations (something like 12 million, maybe higher,
in California), nor is it doing anything to stop the flow. It has stopped making
factory raids on employers who hire illegals, flouting many current laws. It is
even threatening not to process the illegals discovered in states like Arizona
that have decided to do something about it. (I’ve read that such laws were on the
agenda in 17 other states.) While complaining about the
Arizona law, Obama appointees like the Attorney General admitted that they have not
even read it!
Living in California, I see every day costs that never get mentioned in
articles about illegal immigration. People will send money back across the
border, but won’t spend money on their own health insurance or auto insurance,
leaving those costs to be born by others. Illegals drive cars, but not always
with licenses, and when the do get licenses, they often don’t try to learn the
rules of the road. I see people sitting at intersections, not moving when the
light turns green, and not seizing the right of way when it is in their favor.
This clogs up thoroughfares and generally slows traffic, which is itself too
heavy because of the extra-high population levels caused by the illegal
immigrants.
- Public libraries have whole sections for the Spanish-only speaking, and
thus less material for the general public.
- Products in stores have labels with less information because the
manufacturers try to cram both English and Spanish on one label, thus
displaying insufficient information in either language.
- Students from other states in the U.S. pay out-of-state tuition in state
colleges and universities, while illegal immigrants from other countries
frequently pay
in-state tuition. How is that fair to Americans? Fortunately, this seems to
be changing in some places.
The list goes on and on.
Amnesty
I have an idea for a GREAT reality show. A film company
finds out when some outspoken supporter of illegal immigration is going away on
a vacation. Then it moves someone into the person’s house. When the person comes
back, the new ‘roommate’ claims that since he’s been there a while, he has the
right to stay. The film company records the way the homeowner ‘welcomes’ the new
roommate. Of course the film company also has a battery of lawyers ready to go
to court to prevent the homeowner from evicting the new guy, and try to gain him
the right to a room of his own, with utilities and the mortgage paid by the
homeowner. In addition, the lawyers would argue that the new roommate would be
owed a share of the proceeds, should the owner ever decide to sell the house.
All the while, the film company would record the way the homeowner responds to
the new circumstances, and will ask questions of the homeowner. Those questions
would make parallels to the homeowner’s support of amnesty for illegal
immigrants. I think that the ratings would be off the charts. Don’t you?
A real curiosity about this issue is the position of a great many people on
the American left. They support the illegal aliens, many also favoring amnesty.
The curious part is that many of those same lefties take a strong pro-Palestinian,
anti-Zionist position regarding Israel. Why is it that the illegal immigrants of
Palestine, the Zionists, are strongly criticized, but the illegal immigrants of
the United States are not? It truly makes no sense.
It is mysterious, rationally, why anyone would support a supposed “right” for
people who entered the United States illegally to remain here. That is especially
true when it gives the illegals some sort of seniority over people who follow
the legal process for entering this country.
Nothing Right About Illegal Immigration
The simple fact is that illegal immigration has no good points for the United
States, unless one considers maintaining an underclass of super-exploited
workers, lowering the wages of the country in general, a good point. There is
nothing “American” about things like that. It’s not fair to anyone.
The fact is that it’s the constitutional duty of the United States government
to further the welfare and well-being of Americans. This is not being done if it
is not enforcing the immigration laws of this country as written.
Unfortunately, President Obama is flouting the existing laws by trying to
bring about some kind of back-door amnesty by interfering with their
enforcement. The criteria for when the border authorities can intervene and
deport illegal aliens are changing. “Under the new guidelines, officials will use
‘prosecutorial discretion’ to review the current docket of 300,000 deportation
cases, suspending expulsions for a range of immigrants,” says the
NY Times. Instead of being able to enforce the laws on
all border crossers, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement people have been
instructed to concentrate just on criminals and not to conduct factory raids
that previously netted large numbers of violators.
Adding insult to injury, deportation is expensive for the U.S. According to the
New York
Times, it
costs “at least $12,500 per person, and it often does not work: between
October 2008 and July 22 of this year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent
$2.25 billion sending back 180,229 people who had been deported before and come back anyway.”
The Root of the Problem
Mexico
The truth behind illegal immigration, especially that from Mexico, from where
the largest portion of illegals come, is that it
is an indicator of serious problems within Mexico. That country has had a
corrupt, authoritarian and dishonest government since the Spanish defeated the
Aztecs. Despite a revolution in the early twentieth century, Mexicans never
managed to get what they needed: democracy without total corruption, land
reform, full individual liberty, with a constitution that protected it, and an
end to the traditional aristocracy. Moreover, it is ultimately their
responsibility to solve their problems. It is not right to export their
problems onto the people of the United States by way of illegal immigration.
Even though it’s true that the U.S. government can be considered complicit, in
certain ways, to helping maintain the authoritarian government, and to
increasing economic problems in Mexico, the American citizenry never supported
any such thing. They were not informed that their government was doing
such things in their name.
I think most Americans would agree to help Mexicans with their problems. This
country has distributed billions and billions to help people in other countries;
why not our neighbor Mexico? However, doing something like that would, and
should, be contingent upon the illegals returning to their homelands, preferably
voluntarily. Mexicans might have to make another revolution, to rid their
country of its rich and greedy ruling class, of corruption, and, of course, the
powerful and violent narco criminals. They need to take back the land from
corporate interests that have automated Mexican farmers out of their own
economy. Obviously, too, they will need their own ‘Second Amendment’ so that
they can make and defend their gains from the bottom up, without having to rely
upon a corrupt government and military. If Mexicans are not willing to take a stand
and fight for it, with whatever help Americans are willing to provide, they don’t
deserve a good government and a country free of the narcos.
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