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When some people say “immigration” most people are hearing something else.

I have to say that while I’ve done a fair bit of writing as of late, at the same time I just haven’t been able to get the blogging engine going. This case of “bloggers block” has been going on for almost a month now. It started back during the “port issue”. At 8:00 am the day it happened I was livid at the idea. At 8:30, after I thought about it for a minute, I relaxed a bit. By 10:00 I had done enough research to know that it was a baloney issue, and the shrapnel like phrases of “Arabs in charge of our security”, “selling our ports and our security to the highest bidders” were just a pile of nonsense. By three o’clock that very day the story broke, I couldn’t care less about the issue any more. It just didn’t look to me to be a real issue. It was widely and repeatedly misunderstood and it was propped up to be something other than what it was. Most of what was being said just wasn’t true and frankly it still isn’t true. After a few days I had the distinct feeling that I was being manipulated, that some people’s reactions just weren’t genuine, but spun up and full of froth.

Of course it didn’t end there at the first few days, once the tinder of the underbrush of senselessness started smoldering, the tall trees of logic started to catch fire and burn. We had to sit through day after day of hot lead pouring down from above. It got to the point that you couldn’t talk about it without someone going into full froth mode.

Last year we had the “Harriet Miers kerfuffle", which I couldn’t stand and I begged off of blogging about because it just drove me crazy and that issue was mild compared to the “Ports Kerfuffle”.

Now we face the “Ports issue on steroids”, that being the issue over “Illegal Immigration”. Talking about Immigration is like talking about abortion; no one has ever changed anyone’s mind on the subject so talking about it just annoys the hell out of everyone when the subject comes up. It’s a subject that you can only talk about with people who already agree with you and frankly, what’s the sense in that?

When I hear people use the word “immigration” to describe what is going on, I find it funny because the problem being discussed has almost always has nothing to do with immigration at all. But the problem is, you can’t even talk about the issue in rational terms. “Immigration” isn’t “Migration”. Immigration is a legal process of becoming a citizen of another country. What’s going on now is something more akin to tribal “hunter gatherers” following a pack of bison across the plains for food than the legal process of joining another country.

So now its time for full disclosure. First off, I was born in Southern California, which is many ways the Capital City of the third world in the Western Hemisphere. I lived most of my life south of the San Bernardino Mountains before I went to High School. My father was born in San Pedro and his father was from Germany. After my father left the Navy, he ran a mill in Gardena, and later worked at a variety of furniture factories in the industrial district of LA. To say that my father spoke Spanish at work goes without saying, because that’s who you worked with when you worked in those kinds of jobs. In my own life I’ve worked in commercial landscaping, at a plastic pipe factory and for two summers I worked on a peach orchard in the upper Sacramento Valley. Did I speak Spanish while I did those jobs? You betcha, because that's who I worked with. In my little tiny slice of life, I’ve either worked beside or worked for, went to school with, played with, mowed lawns with immigrants both legal and illegal documented and undocumented for most of my life.

But just wait a second, my "full disclosure" gets even better.

My mother’s side of the family is from Canada. In 1933, my grandparents and their extended family of about 12 cousins, grand aunts and uncles, up and moved from Kitchener Ontario to Lansing Michigan. Unfortunately they didn’t bother to talk to anyone in the government about the process of “legally” immigrating , they just up and moved. They were self-sufficient, they weren’t rich by any means but they had enough to enjoy a good life, they never took welfare or any state support and they paid taxes and like most Americans, they did pretty well, but they didn’t vote. Because as they said at the time, "that would be wrong".

And they never looked back. Was it illegal? Again, you betcha. Did that bother them? Nope! not in the slightest. They felt they were voting with their feet. They wanted a better life for their kids and America was clearly the place to do that in. They never felt any shame about it; it was a simple fact of life. They voted with their feet. Legal immigration from Canada was extremely limited, so there wasn’t any way to go about it. This country represents more to people all over the world than just a place to work. People all around the world are inspired by what this country means to them, not just the poor mestizos who come up from the south but even for working class Canadians.

So, I think I have a view towards immigration that most people don’t have. I know the migrants pretty well, and I have to say this.

I like them. I do. I really do.

They work hard. They take care of their families, heck unlike many Americans they've actually bothered to have families. They aren’t spoiled little babies who cry every time something needs to get done or sit around and sing “ oh woe is me...” every time something goes bad, they get out there and do what needs to be done. They don’t whine about how bad things are today and how they are being ripped off by the man. To the migrants, this is a great place to be with great opportunity and hope. To the migrants, these are the good old days.

Now, remember, I’m the very worst sort of “Right wing Republican” that every liberal has a picture of taped to his dartboard; I’m “Snidely Whiplash” in the flesh. I’m supposed to hate people who have a skin tone is darker than ivory soap. I’m supposed to be against anything that doesn’t look like it came off the set of “Our Town”, but I don’t. I’m supposed to be the one sneering at the low riders and the maids and the landscapers. But I’m not sneering at them. I’m happy to have them, and frankly I’m glad they are here.

Most of these people who come here are the hardest working people you ever met. Most of them are the nicest people you ever met. Most of them took their lives in their hands to get here, many worked in conditions of near slavery, indentured to a “Coyote” just to make it here and after they get an underground job, they get to do something hard, smelly and well frankly something we don’t think our “little junior” should ever do, that being the very worst sort of manual labor. This might very well be the “push button world of the Internet” but there is still one hell of a lot of things that require a certain amount of sweat and endurance to get done.

After payday comes, these people very often go to Western Union and wire a good portion of what they make back home to feed the parts of their family that didn’t make the trip. That takes guts, it takes heart and soul to have the discipline to take a risk like that, not for yourself but for your family, knowing that at any moment they could be killed, jailed or deported back to wherever they came from, all to work at a job in the most menial conditions, only to send most of the money back home.

It’s important to me that you understand that most of these folks we are talking about don’t come here by choice; they do it because the alternative is very often, starvation. They aren’t crossing the Great Sonora Desert to mow your lawn so they can get a 50 inch plasma TV. It takes more than that to make a man take that risk, and very often it’s the look in his kid’s faces at dinner when there isn’t any and there might not be any tomorrow either. You couldn’t get me to walk 5 miles for a TV, but if my kids were hungry, I’d cross the Sierra Nevada in midwinter if I thought the only place with a job was in Reno and I had to feed my kids.

It’s not politics and its not “shiftless immigrants” that is causing this migration, its biology; you do what you have to do to take care of your family. These people are not motivated to take these risks by crass consumer greed, unless you consider a full stomach to be a luxury.

Put yourself in the Mexican state of Oaxaca with no hope of getting any sort of job and money is hard to come by even under the best of conditions. Now stand by and watch as members of your family die of Tuberculosis or Chagas disease or tetanus, diseases that immigrants live with every day but the average suburban American has never seen outside of history books. Then imagine your cousin comes in and tells you he can get you a job as a dishwasher in El Paso for 5 bucks an hour and all the hours you can work, and realize you haven’t seen the equivalent of 5 dollars for over a month. How fast would you pack you bag, say your goodbyes and start walking north? If you don’t understand the near magnetic, almost salmon swimming upstream pull that would have on you, then you my friend have never been hungry, you’ve never buried members of your family from common diseases and you have never lived life without the hope of a future.

That lack of experience doesn’t make you a problem; it just means that you are an American. The world of want and fear and disease is a far off place from the lives and minds of most Americans. It’s an every day horror and nightmare for the lives of the average migrant.

Let’s all just stop saying that they are up here “living on welfare”, shall we? There just isn’t any welfare anymore; they are up here working. If they can’t find a job they make a job. You see them at the end of every Home Depot parking lot. You see them there, a line of men standing and waiting for work. You doing a little landscaping project? you want an extra hand to help you put in lawn sprinklers? 5 bucks an hour and lunch and you’ve got yourself a deal mister! While I often find my brother legal citizens on street corners with cardboard signs begging for money, I’ve never seen that from a migrant. What I have seen are immigrants selling bags of oranges or roses on street corners.

Selling Fruit. Basic Commerce. It’s a job and they aren’t begging. I wouldn’t do it, but I’m not hungry enough to consider it. If my kids needed food, you can bet I’d be the best and biggest orange selling white guy you ever did see. If they didn’t buy oranges here, I’d move to Canada. To feed my kids I'd do anything. The law will just have to wait.

Its not politics at work here folks; its just biology. A man does what he has to when it comes to feeding his family. It’s why thousands of men packed up their families and left Oklahoma for places like Bakersfield California in the 1930’s. You talk to any long term resident of California and you are likely to find an “Oakie” not too far away, which again, makes me laugh. 2nd generation oakies in California, talking about the evils of migration.

When most people use the term “Illegal Immigrant” they are really saying something else, and frankly what they are saying is something I don’t like to hear. Many people who are the most exercised over the issue of “Immigration” just don’t like Mexicans, which I also find to be funny because most people who think that way wouldn’t know a Mexican from a Salvadoran or a Costa Rican or a Honduran. They just know they don’t like them “darned Mexicans”. I can’t help thinking that many of the people screaming about “illegal immigration” today would have been burning the “Oakies” out of their shacks 40 years ago.

So, does all of my fond feelings for the immigrant condition mean that I’m all for free and unfettered access to the US?

No.

Does it piss me off when immigrants continue to fly their flag over the US flag and speak of “La Raza”?

Oh, you bet it does! Big time baby...

And are their bad people that come into this country illegally? Sure there are, and I cant stand that fact that Mexico gives protection to murderous criminals so long as the death penalty is in effect here in the US. I also don’t think for a second that being illegal gives you some special variance on the ways of the world.

Do I think there should be a border fence and more border guards?

Yes.

All 2000 miles should be fenced and patrolled and penalties for crossing illegally should be enforced.

Is that a big job? Sure it is, but we are a big country and we’ve done big things before. If we can dig a trench through the jungles of Panama, we can sure as hell put up a fence here at home. I seem to remember that we went to the Moon awhile back; that seemed like a big job too, but we did it. In that same time frame, we built a whole Federal Interstate Highway System, we don’t think much of it today, but it was a big job and it got done somehow and now we cant hardly live without it and yeah there were a fair amount of people at the time who were against it and said it couldn’t be done. They were wrong, just as those who say a wall can’t be built today are wrong. It seems to me that without that basic tool of governance in place, that being a legally recognized and respected border, none of the other provisions that are currently in discussion over “immigration” really matter. You either have a border or you don’t, and right now, we just don’t.

I don’t think the key issue about “immigration” is about the people involved because as I’ve said, I like people. Its the governments that I can’t stand and in this case there is two governments to work on, and for some reason we always ignore the other partner in this little game of ours and concentrate on the people instead.

This is a serious mistake in my opinion.

The government we share a border with is every bit the failed state the Iraq is (or was ) and every bit as dangerous. The socialist policies of the Mexican government have allowed poverty to expand at the same time that other Socialist governments in such as India and China have now seen the light and have opened economic liberty to their people. The result of wealth has grown in those two places, while poverty has grown in Mexico.

Why is this? How can a country with large oil reserves be in such poverty? Easy. Socialists run the oil company. PEMEX is the worst run oil company in the world, and what’s worse, PEMEX is the largest tax base for the country.

In addition, Mexico has severe restrictions on the ability for non-citizens to buy property in Mexico, and what’s worse is that non-citizens have less than equal access to the law in Mexico, and as a result, property rights are often subject to “squatters” overrunning the property. This makes in nearly impossible for foreign companies or individuals to justify putting capital to work in Mexico. It’s a simple rule that if capital isn’t coming in then people are going out, and that’s exactly why Mexicans, Hondurans, El Salvadorans are leaving and always will until that issue is corrected. Mexican citizens have found themselves in a condition where they have more rights as illegal migrants in the US than they do as legal and proper citizens of Mexico.

So, while the rest of the world gets wealthier, Mexico gets poorer, which feeds the cycle further. Mexico is a country where its only major export is its own people. The Mexican economy is floating on the money wired back from the US from Western Union on paydays. Its absolutely pathetic, but that’s the Mexican government for you.

Would I offer amnesty to people who are here illegally? No. Frankly, I wouldn’t offer them citizenship at all. I would offer legal residency, but citizenship is not an option for anyone who first takes steps to violate the laws of the country. The status of legal residency, which can be revoked for any felony. Legal residency means we know who you are, and you have to keep in touch, failure to do so means your status is revoked. Legal residency also allows people who have kids born in the US to remain in the US with no fear of separating the family. It also would mean than access to those privileges that come with citizenship are limited to the legal resident. Legal residents should expect to get no support beyond basic services, if they lose their job and you are no longer employable, well it might be time for them to pick up stakes and leave.

I’m sorry my friend this time it didn’t work out for you. Yes, its true, you pay taxes and you can’t vote. Yes, that makes you a “second class citizen”, but you are also a guest. If we like you and you like us, we might upgrade you to the route of taking the test to be a citizen. If you pass that test, then you are in fact a full citizen but until then you are a guest, so long as you follow a few basic rules.

If you cant, we can and will have you deported.

Should we give legal residents a driver’s license? Sure, but the country of origin and the immigration status needs to be stamped on the front. I don’t know why this is so hard to implement, and no one wants to solve this and say what it is. It’s a “drivers license”. It’s not a passport. You can have a driver’s license if you are not a citizen, so long as it’s clear what your citizenship status is.

So when it’s all said and done, I just can’t get excited about this issue and since its sucked up all the oxygen in the blogosphere, its sapped my “blog-a-bility”. It’s not really about immigration at all. That’s a legal progression exercise. That problem seems solvable and pretty straightforward to me. No matter how much everyone wants to whine about how bad the economy is, the reality is there are more jobs than people and people are naturally coming in to fill the resultant vacuum. I think a border wall is necessary and proper and I don’t have a problem with it in any way. I don’t think one is necessary across the Canadian border because the population is so small and the majority of the border if fairly remote. If it starts to become a major problem, then I will change my mind, but for right now, small ones should suffice in Washington and New York and Maine.

I think it’s entirely possible for people to come to the US to work and not be citizens or enjoy the all privileges that citizens get. I don’t have a problem with that, although I know the ACLU would have kittens at the idea of such a thing, but its common practice in 192 countries around the world, I don’t understand why it would be a problem here. Citizens and non-citizens enjoy equal access to the law, but they are not equal in the eyes of the law.

Citizenship means something; just as a country and its borders do as well.

Posted @ April 05, 2006 06:11 PM | Current Affairs

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