RIP Immigration Reform
I wrote this a year ago. My opinion hasn't changed.
In 1986, I lived on the U.S. Mexican border ⎯ on the Mexican side. Occasionally at dusk I would walk along the Sonoran desert sand and stare at the invisible line that separated two disparate countries. Usually there were a dozen Mexicans in dark clothes, toting plastic jugs of water, waiting for nightfall so they could dash across that invisible line to find work. Their wives and children were miles away, most likely living in wooden shacks with tarpaper roofs, subsisting on tortillas, beans and weak broth. These fathers had left their families and endured a dangerous journey, a long separation so they might be able to buy a few chickens, some shoes for their kids, notebooks and pencils for school; things that were unaffordable with the handful of pesos they earned growing corn on their small plots of land.
Several generations ago, my family in Ireland, Germany and Holland made similarly dangerous journeys searching for better economics. Only in their case, they didn’t have to sneak in because America was more welcoming then.
Victor Hugo wrote the classic novel about Jean Valjean, an impoverished man who stole a loaf of bread and was relentlessly pursued by Javert, a self-righteous lawman who had lost his sense of compassion and mercy in the pursuit of justice. I can’t help but think both U.S. political parties are filled with Javerts. They demand fences along our southern border to keep immigrants out, as if by closing ourselves in, the world’s problems will go away.
I have returned to the desert border I used to walk along. Now there is a twenty foot steel fence. The flow of Mexicans continues. Physical hunger and the thirst for opportunity will not be thwarted by fences.
They say amnesty is a bad word. They demand we send working immigrants back to their homelands so they can enter our front door legally, otherwise we legitimize their criminal behavior. Yet this demand for justice ignores the fact the front door has been locked for years and when you are hungry and cold and you know there is someone inside who can lift your burden by providing work, you enter anyway you can.
They say immigrants should assimilate, but one can’t assimilate unless they are welcomed. Assimilation does not mean becoming invisible. Assimilation requires change on both sides, respecting and honoring cultural differences.
In this country there is a clear demand for immigrant workers. There is also a ready supply. Yet our current laws and fears distort the system, creating a black market in immigrant labor. Why not acknowledge the economic and social reality of the situation and establish an open system with clear guidelines and rules that allow guest workers to work legally, allow families to emigrate, and allow business to recruit hard workers and great minds from across the globe?
