On the Fence | Debunking myths about U.S. immigration policy

Ian Saxine Columnist

The immigration debate is still going strong, and in the interest of finishing what I started, I’m going to build on last week’s article about economic issues relating to immigration and discuss another aspect. Most salient in my mind is the question: deporting people who are already here aside, what’s so bad about insisting that people enter your country legally?

This is one aspect of the immigration debate that I find maddeningly stupid. Obviously, the separation of families through deportation is a heartrending scene, and I hope it doesn’t come to that. But simply insisting that people wait their turn is another matter. I’m aware that there are those who argue the idea of national borders is an archaic and inherently discriminatory state of affairs. It leads to nationalism, parochialism, and all sorts of evils, and the nation-state is something to be discouraged.

Sorry, but no, at least not yet. I’ll admit that it sounds like a nice idea, and maybe someday in the future things might be different, but in the meantime, the nation-state is here to stay. I’m all for increasing globalization, and think the United Nations represents a bright future, however corrupt or impotent it might be today, but in the meantime, nation-states are a great way to keep somebody else’s bad ideas from being applied where you live. This is the reason I’m glad there isn’t one unified state in the United States and that I can securely live in Illinois or New York without worrying that Texas’s bad ideas will become the law in my home state (at least, not without a much bigger Republican representation in Congress.)

Nation-states should not interfere with each other’s business without a very good reason; hence my opposition to most things Bush has done internationally. And nation-states have the right to insist that people enter the country legally. This isn’t a case of “too many” immigrants. Hardly. America’s source of continuing vitality comes from successive waves of new ideas and talent joining our national community. This is about too many illegal immigrants, and not just from Mexico, though that is the stereotypical assumption. There is nothing unfair about asking people to enter the country legally. The Mexican government agrees with this principle, and has a history of shooting Guatemalans who try to sneak across their southern border. Undocumented immigrants have been known to bring along other unwanted baggage like non-native species and diseases that legal immigrants are inoculated against. (Some US school districts are experiencing outbreaks of illnesses that all Americans are vaccinated for as children.) And then there is the problem of destabilizing unions and wages that I mentioned last week.

Here at Vassar, certain simple-minded arguments revolving around race are in vogue. I’ve heard the following:

“But Ian,” you say, “that’s discrimination!” No, it isn’t. Just because the majority (but by no means all) of illegal aliens are from Hispanic countries doesn’t make enforcing immigration laws racist. Plenty of Hispanics legally immigrate to the United States every year. Just because this position means that some members of a minority group can’t do whatever they want because it breaks a law does not make that law inherently racist. Let’s be reasonable for a change.

“But by not allowing illegal immigrants into the country, you’re implicitly agreeing with those racists who want to keep non-whites out!” Since when do we allow racist wackos to set the terms of a reasonable debate? Anti-immigrant fringe groups have also been among the staunchest opponents of the war in Iraq. (Although they do it because they claim the war is part of a vast Jewish-Zionist conspiracy.)

“That racist guy over there agrees with you, so you must be racist” is the oldest, dumbest argument in the book. Hitler was a vegetarian. Does that mean we should all head off to McDonald’s?

“Opposing illegal immigration is ethnocentric!” Sadly, I’ve heard this one way too often here. Ethnocentricity involves thinking that your nationality is better than everyone else’s. I think America has a lot to learn from the rest of the world. But nobody else has open borders either. Because they know you need border regulation, too. Opposing illegal immigration is not the same as opposing the continued contributions of legal immigrants of all backgrounds.

It’s very easy to tell if someone isn’t being logical about the immigration debate. Wait for them to play the race card, whether it’s to insist that anyone who denies someone their “right” to illegally sneak into America must be a racist or to say, “America is for whites!” One might be far more offensive than the other, but the ignorance is the same no matter which way you cut it.