Where I live, race and immigration issues seem much more pressing than anything else at the moment. So I apologize for my lack of things strictly related to feminism, because this is more immediately important to me.

I have been talking to people at work and apparently, Colorado police are randomly checking people on the highway near Denver to make sure they have proper documentation, etc. If they aren’t citizens or legal immigrants they’re being arrested. (I can’t find a news article to verify this, since supposedly the local media doesn’t want to talk about it. But since I know several different people who witnessed this I assume it’s in some way true.) Add this to the fact that the federal government has taken an interest in holding legally accountable the companies which hire undocumented workers, and all I can do is wonder why, if this is such a pressing issue, law enforcement has waited so long to actually do anything about it. I suspect pressure from the companies who benefit from cheap labor has kept the government complacent on the issue.

What’s going to happen to these people who have been arrested in Colorado? Allegedly, they’ll be held at the expense of the federal government until the state can convince it to ship them back over the border. Their property will be seized and auctioned off. They’ll be charged for forging documents and whatever else, and subject to harsher punishments if they come back — ever. They may no longer have a legal avenue to try to immigrate, either. And that’s harsh, but it isn’t my biggest worry. What concerns me most here is that they might not be given access to lawyers, etc., because the police see the issue as: they are not US citizens and not protected by the Bill of Rights. I think this is wrong. I also think it’s important to make it easier for these people to come to the US legally, or to work with the people who are already here rather than simply send them away.

I’m ambivalent even as I’m getting flashes of fascism. While this approach to make sure people are legally in the US may seem draconian and kind of scary, I understand the point and I think, all other concerns aside, that this is a perfectly rational legal approach. (Rational does not mean humane. Rational does not mean morally justifiable. Rational does not mean right.) I don’t think it will actually do anything to solve the problem, but I certainly think enforcing the law and just sending illegal immigrants home is preferable to the “Minuteman” approach where it’s somehow acceptable to shoot random people on sight to protect the purity of our Aryan nation or something. I think any attempt to resolve this issue through law enforcement is really the way to go — and to hear about it being handled from that perspective rather than the alternative is, sadly, a relief. From a legal perspective, I understand why the government doesn’t want undocumented people just wandering around, especially with fears of terrorism. (Is this attitude justified? I don’t know; I think it’s complicated. But I understand the argument.)

The legal issues surrounding illegal immigration which really concern me are thus:

Identity theft and fraud. When people are forced to immigrate without the proper legal channels some of them end up forging IDs and stealing social security numbers in order to work. Identity theft is a huge issue right now, and this makes it even worse. Some of these people are illegally buying houses and cars using other people’s information and while, yes, they’re certainly entitled to and require these things, they can’t do so at the expense of other people. I think this needs to be treated just as it would be if the people committing the crime were US citizens. Obviously, it needs to be addressed. There are already laws for this. We should enforce those instead of making more useless xenophobic legislation that doesn’t deal with the real issues.

Then there’s the issue of tax fraud — which some companies who knowingly hire undocumented workers are committing. (I don’t know that this is the majority of cases, but it does happen. More information and some numbers at The Tax Foundation Blog.) I believe that everyone deserves the work, has the right to work, but I understand why the government would not be pleased with this. Again, if the government cares about this issue, the law should to be enforced. For some reason, all of the sudden, that’s happening. Great. Law enforcement gets around to doing its job. I hear that the executives of these companies are being taken to court, which is good. I think that’s where the responsibility lies, not with the workers, but with upper management. Corporate corruption is an issue which extends even beyond this, but this is one part of it.

I think any excuse the government gives on why it needs to be able to constantly track everyone in the US at all times is total bull — so there goes any legal argument about strict documentation. But these others are, I think, legitimate concerns from a practical standpoint. These are also concerns which are not limited to immigrants — these are legal issues which need to be dealt with anyway, but sometimes the circumstances which make people desperate to enter this country also make them desperate enough to commit related crimes. These are the only legal issues which I can think of which are actually a justifiable concern instead of simply stereotyping or being blatantly xenophobic.

Of course, it’s technically illegal for them to be here and technically illegal to hire them, those who cry, “BUT THEY BROKE THE LAW!” are quick to remind us. Sometimes laws are good. Some laws protect our safety or property. Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean by default that it’s good or bad. Laws are in themselves meaningless. So, yes, it’s breaking the law. Unless there’s other laws being broken which are more serious crimes I don’t understand why this law should be such a big deal.

The problem is that…well, the people making the legislation to deal with the issue aren’t thinking about it this way. They’re appealing instead to xenophobic nationalism. More than that, these are people who casually talk about murder and massive human rights violations as if they’re perfectly acceptable.

Entering the country illegally is a crime, but it is not a death sentence.

Should people be executed trespassing? Would anyone suggest that as an appropriate punishment for someone born in this country?

People should not be allowed to die in the desert. They should not be gunned down at the border. I can’t believe that some politicians approve of these ideas as if they’re good ones. (Well, I actually can believe it, and that’s where I despair.)

They shouldn’t be employed for below minimum wage slave labor, either.

We need to look at the real issues: why are people so desperate that they’re willing to risk death to get here, with only shitty jobs and a whole lot of resentment from the locals as their reward? This isn’t a decision anyone makes lightly. These people are desperate, and what they find here may help a little, but it doesn’t really improve that.

I think the only way to solve this, actually fix the problems at the root of the matter, is to allow more people to immigrate through the proper legal channels. How much would the US economy improve if we allowed more people to enter the country legally in order to work at safe, decently-paying jobs? What the employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers are doing is bad for everyone concerned. It’s bad for the US economy, the US government, and the Mexican workers.

But it’s so much easier to be reactionary. It’s so much easier to appeal to nationalism or racial prejudice than to actually look at these people as people and try to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, and plan accordingly. It’s going to happen anyway, and if we make it impossible, people will still die trying. What can we do to make it safe, economically beneficial, and legal?

Some reading:

Unknown News: The Case for Opening the Border

The workable solution, the only thing that make sense, is to regularize what’s going on anyway. We open up the border to Mexicans. And then the question is, what about everybody else?

Well, the bulk of what is perceived as the problem is immigration from Mexico that’s illegal. So we open up the border to Mexicans who wish to come north.

And as long as there’s not something ghastly wrong with them, that they’re wanted for murder down there or whatever else it is, we come up with a system, we come up with identification for them, we run them through border points so we know who’s coming up, and they come up. And we have a free exchange of labor, just as, with NAFTA, we’re supposed to have a free exchange of capital.

Alternet: Our Fake Immigration Crisis

The script is as old as the Mayflower: A false alarm is sounded that the values, wages and safety of the current roster of credentialed Americans are jeopardized by the “flood” or “tidal wave” or “river” sneaking across our porous borders — be they Irish, Chinese, Jewish, Russian, Mexican or even the freed slaves seeking to earn an honest living in Northern cities after the Civil War. Any and all manner of societal problems are to be laid on these scapegoats, and the same simplistic solution offered: Find and deport them, and don’t let any more in.

Some 2 million immigrant workers now earn less than the minimum wage and millions more work without the occupational safety, workers’ compensation, overtime pay and other protections legal status offers. Consequently, when the president says that immigrants perform work that legal residents are unwilling to do, he may be right — but we don’t know. The only way to test that hypothesis is to bring this black market labor pool above ground.

That approach has been tried in California with some success. José Millan, who until this year ran such an enforcement program as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s labor commissioner and before that for Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, told me that legalization of undocumented workers is essential to improving the situation for everybody.

“I am in favor of anything that brings these workers out of the shadows and into the sunlight; it’s very easy to exploit a population when they’re afraid,” Millan told me Monday. “We would be a better country if we recognized the fact that there are 10 million undocumented workers in our midst, and we would be better off if they were granted the benefits and responsibilities of a legal existence.”

Alternet: Towards a Real Immigration Debate

With virtually no mainstream debate about how so-called “free-trade” affects working people, how easy it is to break unions or how debased corporate America’s ethical culture has become, it’s not surprising that immigration is such a hot-button topic. Working people have seen their real wages and benefits falling, and although that decline doesn’t match up chronologically with the influx of immigrant labor over the past 10 years, it’s understandable that people believe immigration plays a much greater role than it actually does. Immigrants are visible in a way those other factors are not.

But while the high number of immigrants in the United States is an issue, it’s not a crisis, and it is certainly not an invasion. What we’ve seen is a large but finite surge in immigration, mostly from Mexico and largely in response to the effects of trade deals Mexico signed in the 1990s. According to a study by the Pew organization, Mexican immigration “grew very rapidly starting in the mid-1990s, hit a peak at the end of the decade, and then declined substantially after 2001. By 2004, the annual inflow of foreign-born persons was down 24 percent from its all-time high in 2000.”

That timeline corresponds perfectly with the damage wrought in Mexico by NAFTA. According to one of the better analyses of that deal’s impact (PDF), between NAFTA’s passage in 1995 and 2002, Mexico saw “a decline in domestic manufacturing employment” and “Mexican agriculture has been a net loser … [E]mployment in the sector has declined sharply.” Real wages for most Mexicans today are lower than when NAFTA took effect.

According to a Pew analysis of census data, there are an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, up from around five million in the mid-1990s. As a percentage of the population, there are fewer foreign-born in America today than there were in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At less than five percent, immigrants are a much lower percentage of the civilian work force than we’ve had in past eras.

A progressive approach to immigration would punish employers, not workers, for breaking the law. Most analysts agree that focusing on border enforcement doesn’t work. Keeping employers from hiring undocumented workers is the single best way to discourage future waves of immigration. It’s not only more effective than creating a Maginot Line on our 1400-mile southern border, it’s much cheaper, less hostile and has no environmental consequences.

Americans are divided on what to do with those already here. In a recent Pew Poll, 27 percent of respondents said illegal immigrants should be required to return home, 32 percent said they should be allowed to stay permanently and 32 percent said they should be granted temporary worker status.

Trying to send them all home is not really an option. It would only send the undocumented population deeper under cover, cost a fortune and hurt the economy. People that call for throwing undocumented immigrants out “by any means necessary” haven’t given enough thought to the reality of that option. If the news began broadcasting images of poor working families being forcibly removed by armed federal agents — with plenty of crying women and children — all but the die-hard white supremacists would quickly lose their stomach for the policy. It’d be Elian Gonzalez repeated ten million times.

Colorado Public Radio: Colorado Matters Programs on Immigration (This is all audio content and Colorado-centric, but I do think their interviews attempt to portray a diversity of views on both sides of the issue.)

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 at 9:14 am and is filed under Immigration, In The News, Politics, Race, Society.