On the Fence | Legislation ignores true issues of immigration

Ian Saxine Columnist

Perhaps the most important domestic issue facing the United States in the next ten years is the one that both political parties refuse to touch—illegal immigration. In this political system, so full of people who are unwilling to take on any issue that can’t be turned into a political advantage (the environment, anyone?), there is perhaps no other topic that is being avoided out of naked political cowardice. In doing so, the Republicans and Democrats are doing their constituents a disservice, since, in the long run, having an unregulated flow of illegal immigration into the country is bad for everyone.

American immigration laws are a halfheartedly enforced farce, alternating periods of amnesty with periods of renewed enforcement, the end result being that the flow of illegal immigration—mostly from the south—is scarcely affected, but families are separated and sometimes deported without changing the overall situation. President Bush’s latest plan, which allowed for an increase in temporary work permits, has aggravated the problem, encouraging more illegal immigration from Mexico. True to form, his administration ordered a stop to various studies on the topic once the White House began to receive reports that the new worker pass was to blame. So, why continue with this ineffective, inconsistent, stupid and cruel system?

How can any rational person justify allowing at least three million undocumented people to pour over the borders each year, not paying taxes and overcrowding schools and hospitals in the areas where they settle? Or, just as bad, if they don’t use those facilities and instead condemn their children to sickness and menial labor? On the journey across the border, immigrants are exposed to harsh desert elements and exploitation by unscrupulous coyotes—people paid to lead immigrants to safety but who sometimes turn on them. Even worse, vacillation by the U.S. government has led to the forming of various vigilante border patrols consisting of a mix of genuinely concerned citizens and bigoted clods bent on preserving their limited vision of an Anglo-dominated America. Clearly the southwest border needs more government regulation, not less.

Both the Republicans and Democrats have avoided this issue at the national level out of fear of alienating the Latino vote, which is a vital percentage of both parties’ vote totals lately. Strongly Catholic Latinos have been voting Republican in far greater numbers, and the Democratic Party’s pro-labor, economic, and socially liberal tendencies still make it the party of choice for at least 60 percent of Latino voters. The Democrats, if they wish to gain new momentum, should aggressively take a pro-labor stance, which would involve a more consistent policy of border enforcement so that U.S. companies would have to hire legal immigrants and pay them a living wage, rather than relying on illegal immigrants and the pittance for which they can be coerced to work. In addition, it should be noted that the Republicans owe it to their big business constituents to not stop the flow of cheap labor from Mexico available in order to keep wages down.

The weakest argument brought to the table, however, is, as usual, that which focuses on race. Every country has a right to regulate the flow of immigration within its borders to a reasonable degree. To insist that it is anti-Mexican for the U.S. to enforce its own immigration laws because it just so happens that Mexicans are the largest demographic of illegal aliens is backwards thinking. Why must we turn this into a racial issue when, legally speaking, it isn’t? Yes, I freely admit that there are plenty of bigots out there who really do want to increase border regulation out of anti-Mexican prejudice, but just because someone supports a good idea for the wrong reason doesn’t make the idea itself unsound. Fascism incorporates a certain element of socialism, so does that mean to be socialist is to support fascism?

Why should Mexican illegal aliens be allowed to cut in line, and then be entitled to services reserved for American citizens and legal residents? Enforcing immigration laws affecting Mexicans is no more prejudiced than giving a speeding ticket to an Asian American who runs a red light. Assuming the law has been broken, what has race got to do with it? I thought the reason liberals make fun of Mississippi is because race has so frequently interfered with the law there.

So, I’m taking my stand. Avoiding the socioeconomic and humanitarian problem on the U.S.-Mexican border out of a squeamish fear of being labeled a bigot lets idiocy and race-obsessive politics win by default—and that would be something to protest about.