Blog Spectrum

So the spectrum's general consensus is that American immigration policy is looser than a sorority girl at a party with an open bar.

That is true, and it has been true since America first became appealing to the huddled masses in the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Then, there were the nativists, who argued that immigrants didn't have “American values” and that they would slowly erode the country from within. They argued that a flood of uneducated immigrants would never become a useful part of the American society and economy. What the nativist leaders were really worried about was losing their next election to hostile immigrant voters.

Then, there were the immigrant leaders, who argued for the dignity and humanity of the immigrants, and for every effort to be made to accept these immigrants into our rich national heritage. These leaders, such as Boss Tweed, were just as corrupt as the nativists, and were mostly opportunistic Americans interested in riding the tide of immigration to power.

Two hundred years later, not much has changed. Those who benefit from the immigrant vote want guest worker programs; those who do not want more Border Patrol agents. It's still really about politics.

Since 9/11, today's nativists talk about national security. Caohaoim claims, “there is an urgent need to control our borders...driven by our need for increased security.” This is a red herring. First, many of the hijackers were in the country legally. Second, of those who were not, not one slipped across the Rio Grande with the gentleman cleaning the toilets at your local multiplex. Third, the key to preventing another hijacking was simply to lock the cockpit door and beef up security at the airports. Finally, the most important national security concern today is to begin X-rays on the cargo containers arriving daily at our ports.

But what of our economy? Ryan fears “the negative effects immigration is starting to have on the economy. When cheaper labor comes in from Mexico, U.S. citizens loose their jobs.” Another red herring, and not only because the illegal immigrants usually take service jobs Americans refuse to do. If we did not saddle our children with a fourth-rate educational system, they wouldn't have to compete with Mexican immigrants for jobs at McDonalds while we run desperately short of nurses and computer technicians. As for Ryan's claim that the illegal immigrants “*usually* take the money back home and the U.S. ends up loosing the money that would have been spent in its borders,” that statement is completely without meaning in today's economy. The U.S. “looses” most of the money you spend at the mall, because the shareholders in all those corporations are Saudi holding companies, Japanese conglomerates, Rupert Murdoch, and Wall Street tycoons with their own private islands—all of whom turn right around and pay the salary of anyone who doesn't own their own business or work for the government. Welcome to capitalism.

Look: Today's pro-immigration activists are often just as exploitative as Tammany Hall was. But they have a point when they say that immigrant labor is essential to our economy and that we will be more secure by working with these illegals to weed out the truly dangerous and assimilate the vast majority who come simply for a paycheck. And they have another point when they say that, in this century of corporate power and trchnological marvels, we cannot afford to think of ourselves as a sovereign nation separate from the globe.

But most importantly, we need to remember the promise of America. There is a children's book about my great-grandmother's arrival at Ellis Island which was read to me as a boy. I know, at least a little, what that seven-year-old girl felt when she saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time.

Some of us don't have such a book, and cannot remember who crossed the ocean or why. They have the luxury of thinking of themselves as “real Americans” and of seen the Latino aliens as, well, alien. For me, it's not that easy.

# posted by J'myle @ 3:04 PM