I’ve been uncomfortable ever since rhetoric started flying over the current immigration issue. My discomfort is caused in part because, for the most part, it is a discussion about exclusion. Who gets in and who doesn’t, and what do you do with the ones that are in, but shouldn’t be. It’s intellectually trite to admit that we’re immigrants all, but it’s a fact. The only differences are when did we or our ancestors come and what was our cultural flavor when we got here.
A history of immigration is a bifurcated story. On the one hand, we have the story of the rejects, downtrodden and oppressed of other countries prospering under the mantle of democratic processes and “equality for all” in America. On the other, we have the racially exclusionary laws of the 19th century enacted to stem the tide of the “yellow peril” and other “immigrant threats”. Today’s debate is as much a reflection of our fears as it is of our aspirations. We need a flow of immigrants, and some of us even want it, but much of the fight is about where it comes from and what if “they’re not like us”. Part of my problem is that it’s hard for me to believe that radio commentators like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh who are leading the anti-immigrant charge have much real insight into the needs of our own economy, never mind our moral standing in the world, or of how their anti-immigrant rhetoric affects the tone of the discourse. I always imagine them sitting in their studio easy chairs with a microphone in their mouth and a white sheet draped over their head.
I’ve heard all the economic stats, pro and con, and I must say that the American people are not likely to be persuaded either way by a scrum of factoids. I think the pro immigration forces have the historical and moral high ground, but that’s not likely to carry the day either. One way to think about it that should appeal to the masses is to consider what’s in our greatest self interest. It goes like this. It’s been generally agreed that we have about twelve million undocumented persons on our shores, and let’s assume for the moment that half of them are working in some capacity. Most wire and are paid “off the books” of course. My analysis would work even if you halve the number again. We also know that unemployment in the US has been hovering around 4.5%. This 4.5% constitutes what is most likely the “hard core unemployed” or maybe even unemployable. In other words, pretty much every American citizen that wants a job, has a job. It might not be the job they aspire to in their dreams, but they are at work. So the question is, if we follow the Tom Tancredo recipe and round them all up and ship them south, wha’ happens. Well, think about it. Six million jobs that need doing, that contribute to the growth of our economy, and no one to do them. Yes, the sound you hear would be the proverbial “giant sucking sound” of the air going out of our economy. Yet, Sean, Rush and the boys keep thumping the tub of locking down our borders and shipping all illegals home now…..this very minute. And of course when confronted with the facts they throw up “gorilla dust” in the form of invoking “homeland security”.
As I’ve said previously, our immigration law is very complex and very, very outmoded. The overriding principle is to give preference to family members of US citizens and to certain scarce skills. This of course, flies in the face of the economic reality that unskilled workers, who are in the highest demand and where our own labor pool is is shortest, have the lowest immigration priority. There is also a preference for religious workers, but I don’t know if muslim imams qualify here. I suspect that one of the reasons that some in America cry foul and make a case that our current system embodies substantial racial, ethnic and religious prejudice is the history of US immigration law and policy. Let me give you just one example. In the period of 1870 to 1900 we had about 12,000,000 immigrants arrive on our shores. Comparatively with a population of almost 300,000,000 we permit about 1,000, 000 immigrants annually. Percentage wise a much smaller number than in the 19th century. Then a substantial majority of immigrants were from Germany, Ireland, and England, but we also welcomed, in fact, sought immigrants from China. They were needed of course to populate our burgeoning manufacturing base, fill service and low skilled agricultural jobs not to mention building the transcontinental railway. Even though the Chinese constituted only about 150,000 immigrants between 1850 and 1882 out of a much larger number from western Europe, an irrational fear of the “Yellow Peril” caused our congress in their wisdom to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which ended any Chinese immigration for a period of time. It’s starting to sound a little familiar, isn’t it. We needed low paid workers with minimal skills to populate our service economy, we let them in legally and illegally. We needed low cost reliable labor to pick apples, and pick spinach, we let them in. We need unskilled labor for less than desirable jobs in the kitchens of our restaurants, let ‘em in.
But from the dark side we hear, whoa……wait a minute. They’re going to our schools, using our public hospitals, speaking a foreign language……not so fast there. There’s way too many of them all ready. Send them home. Mount up the vigilantes. Build a wall. Send them to jail. Let’s stop the “New Yellow Peril” whatever the real cost to our economy. Hit the delete button on “send my your poor……”. America for Americans.
Where will it all end? I dunno. As Holden Caufield said, “if you spent your whole life, you could never erase all the f*** you’s off the walls”. Similarly, I don’t think we’ll ever vote all the Tom Tancredos out of office, and some people will always tune in on Bill O’Reilly. My hope is that enough of us will realize that the those guys standing around “day labor” corner waiting for a chance to earn forty or fifty bucks for a days hard work aren’t the problem and certainly aren’t our enemy. America would not be quite so economically or culturally healthy without them.
