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Immigration and Security
Columnist Tom Hexner Writes: A Rational Approach Faces Fantastic Hurdles
By Tom Hexner, MATT Contributing Writer and president of the International Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University
Friday, July 6, 2007
Famine and Bengal in 1943: did I click on MATT?
Well, in 1943 in Bengal – now Bangladesh – there was a terrible famine. Four million honest people died while the prisoners continued to be fed. Why did people then choose to starve to death rather than breaking into prison to be fed? “Illegal immigrants” break the law so they can work and eat in America and send money home. Is this not a weird analogy?
A good part of the problem is the dangers facing illegal immigrants: navigating the rough terrain around the border; the risk of arrest at the border; and the possibility of deportation if discovered by immigration officials. U.S. rhetoric will not keep Cuban, Mexican, and other illegal immigrants out. We see the reverse of suicide bombers. To achieve a decent quality of life for their families, the Mexicans are willing to risk death.
Doesn’t rhetoric always lose to sincere desire?
Whatever the United States is doing just isn’t working. There are an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants here now, and more come in every day. They break a law to enter, and they break laws to stay – primarily false social security, drivers license, etc.
Hardly a bizarre event: congress did not well up its courage to pass another unenforceable law. Prohibition didn’t reduce alcohol consumption, and marijuana use is as big a problem as ever. Moral principles do not create an enforceable law. Why put wall paper over leaded paint? The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, an earlier attempt to slow the influx of immigrants, has enjoyed dormancy as more and more immigrants mowed more and more lawns of the those who, in principle, want to stem immigration.
But wait! The U.S. government did have a star wars kind of concept for keeping illegal immigrants out: spend billions of dollars to build a 2,000-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Since ever-increasing numbers of border guards have done little to keep illegal immigrants out, it is absurd to think that a wall will be of much help. More importantly, it is a monumental waste of money.
Similarly, deporting illegal immigrants is an expensive process. First, they are put in jail, and keeping a deportee costs more than creating a job for him/her in Mexico. Deportation is funded by taxpayer dollars; money that could be better spent, or money many would rather spend having those same deportees mow their lawn.
Americans cannot have it both ways. Please make sense of the following: exploit immigrants’ sub-minimum wage labor, support attempts to prevent them from entering and spend a significant sum to expel them from the United States. There are too many contradictions inherent in this whole situation. NAFTA, for example, which requires goods to flow freely across the border, operates in opposition to the principles keeping many Mexicans from entering the United States legally.
The main reason attempts to control illegal immigration from Mexico have failed is that little meaningful effort has been made to resolve the issues that bring Mexicans to the United States in the first place. It is clear that the Mexican government should be responsible for spurring economic growth and protecting the border. But on the U.S. side: instead of squandering billions on guards, INS officials who raid the homes of illegal immigrants, and a wall, why not use that money to help Mexico create job opportunities and improve the standards of living in Mexico so that some day Mexico will have to build a fence to keep out the Americans. We need to build a Mexican dream as one step in dissolving the immigration nightmare.
The people of the United States carry the burden of finding a productive solution to the nation’s immigration problem by working with and supporting its southern neighbor. MATT needs to sound the alarm. Not only Mexicans and Americans thinking together, but Mexicans and Americans acting together. MATT has been a winner in cyber space; now Matt has to make a bang in real time.
With huge differences between quality of life and per capita income between Mexico and the United States, it is crucial to have people from both sides of the border working together on step-by-step approaches to reducing and eventually solving the immigration problem. But with the current level of hypocrisy in Congress, the White House, on talk radio, among anti-immigration advocates, and unrealistic liberals, a rational approach faces fantastic hurdles.
After all, who would be hired to build the wall? Here’s a hint: with the amount the government would want to pay, they sure wouldn’t be Americans.
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