Note: this is an essay that I wrote in April, 2008. Since then, much in the world has changed - the market crash, two presidential elections, etc. - as have some of the details and statistics listed here. For example, the duties of the Border Patrol are now performed by a branch of Homeland Security - U.S. Customs and Border Protection, with a workforce of more than 45,600, making it the largest police agency in the country.
The basic thrust of the essay remains the same.
* * *
The United States is a country of
immigrants; most of us are either from somewhere else or descended from people
who came from somewhere else. But many
Americans are upset that there may be as many as eleven million people living
and working in our country illegally.
Many citizens and politicians claim that illegal immigrants from Latin
America sneak across our southern border to take jobs away from American
workers or unfairly collect welfare and Social Security. In the wake of the terrorist attacks on
September 11th, 2001, there are even more strident calls for
strengthening our borders. But what
really hurts America is not illegal immigration itself, but our policies for
dealing with it.
Instead of
stopping or even slowing down illegal immigration, stepped-up U.S. government
patrol of border-crossing points popular with those intent on illegal entry has
only resulted in increased numbers of crossings at other locations, to the
inconvenience and possible danger of Americans who reside in these areas. Through the nineties, the U.S. Border Patrol
targeted four major geographic areas considered by them to be trouble spots:
“The segments of border that were to be fortified were those traditionally used
by 70-80 per cent of unauthorized migrants entering from Mexico . . . the logic
of immigration policymakers was that if they could effectively control these
main gates, ‘geography would do the rest’” (Cornelius para. 9, 10). A problem with this line of reasoning is that
it does not take into account the high level of motivation of those seeking to
enter the U.S. If entry is made more
difficult, the desperate will not be deterred; they will simply try harder:
“The most unambiguous consequence of the post-1993 border enforcement strategy
has been to redistribute illegal entries along the south-western border, away
from the larger border cities and towards more remote, undeveloped areas. . .”
(Cornelius para. 21). Some migrants
choose to brave the dangers of crossing mountains and deserts. Others simply travel through suburban
communities situated along the unguarded stretches of the border, often passing
through the driveways and yards of residential developments to avoid detection
by local police, or they traverse farmland and ranches, like the ranch
belonging to a man named Larry Vance, whose story is documented by Chris Strohm
in the National Journal: “[Operation
Gatekeeper and Operation Hold the Line] reduced the flood of illegal immigrants
and drug smuggling in those regions, but the flow has moved to the Tucson
sector in Arizona, which is where Larry Vance lives. Border control is like a balloon: squeeze one
area, and another area expands” (Strohm para. 12). Residents in the vicinity of the new routes
that illegal immigrants take do have a legitimate complaint. As with any location where a high volume of
foot traffic was neither planned for nor counted on, these default crossing
routes have a deleterious effect on the quality of resident lives in these
border communities. Remote from any
sanitary facilities, migrants leave waste, litter, and in their travels
sometimes damage property and kill pets.
Conservative pundit Phyllis Schlafly claims the situation to be much
worse: “The increased crime rate is frightening” (Schlafly para. 13). Schlafly attributes Arizona’s increase in car
theft and other crimes to illegal border crossers, though she offers no evidentiary
statistics. She goes further, claiming
that Arizona residents “risk home invasion and personal attacks” (Schlafly
para.13). This statement is
disingenuous; how does Schlafly determine the level of this risk she claims the
residents of Arizona lay in fear of?
Whatever their feelings about the moral background of the people
crossing, most experts are in agreement about one thing: “The U.S.’s borders,
rather than becoming more secure since 9/11, have grown even more porous” (Bartlett, et al para. 3). Some have even suggested fencing in the
entire border.
The proposed
“fence” or barrier between the U.S. and Mexico will be a massively expensive
construction project that will forever require huge amounts of tax money
budgeted for its maintenance and will ultimately fail in its purpose of stopping
the flow of illegal immigration for the same reason all security fences fail:
people will go over, under, around or through them. At least initially, fences seem the ideal
solution to the problem of keeping out the unwanted; good fences make good neighbors. Politicians of a conservative bent like to
talk about fences between the U.S. and Mexico; it helps them appear to be tough
on illegal immigration and sound like stalwart protectors of the American way
of life. Trent Lott, the former Senate
Majority Leader “endorsed putting U.S. soldiers on the border with Mexico to
protect the country against illegal immigrant invasion” (Francis para. 1). Something that pro-fence politicians don’t
like to talk about is how much a 2000-mile barrier will cost the American
taxpayer. Indeed, it’s difficult to find
anyone willing to hazard an estimate of the overall cost of such a monumental
construction project. In an effort to
get a rough price per foot, I telephoned two fencing contractors and asked for
the cost of a ten-foot high chain link fence; both said that they would need to
look at the job before quoting a price.
Bush administration officials have suggested that a “Berlin Wall” style
barrier could cost as much as $8 billion (Hall para. 6). Brad Benson, spokesman for the U.S. Customs
and Border Patrol Initiative, proposes that a double fence topped with razor
wire, like those fences used to encircle prisons, would cost $3.3 million a
mile (Stone para. 21-23). I believe that
it’s fair to say that Mr. Benson has grabbed this figure out of the air. Consider that hundreds of miles of the border
cover inaccessible stretches of desert and mountains: massive road-building
projects would be necessary before labor and materials could be transported to
where the work is being done; workers remote from any town would need to be
housed and fed on-site. These costs all
need to be factored into any estimate.
It is worthwhile to look at our country’s experience with fence building
in the nineties. Operation Gatekeeper
closed off the border in the San Diego/Tijuana area. That 14 mile run of fence was made of
government-owned surplus steel aircraft landing mats left over from the Vietnam
war (Cornelius para12). With the free
materials it was estimated to cost the taxpayer $14 million, or a million
dollars a mile. The actual final cost
was $77 million (Stone para. 32). Keep
in mind— prices for the proposed fences are only construction estimates, a
one-time cost; none include the cost of maintenance, which will be ongoing. The other point that pro-fence politicians
are reluctant to concede is that fences don’t work: “Moreover, the record of
the past decade is that fixed fortifications do not stop unauthorized migrants,
any more than they stop mechanized armies; they simply rechannel them and
create more opportunities for professional smugglers to cash in on the traffic”
(Cornelius para.27). Keeping in mind
former Senator Lott’s desire that our military patrol the border, it is
worthwhile to note that as military security goes, fixed fortifications always
fail. It is impossible to successfully
substitute technology for manpower when it comes to security. The two greatest examples of fortification
failure occurred in World War II. The
French-built Maginot Line was intended to halt the onslaught of the German
Army—the Germans simply marched around it through Belgium. The second was Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. Millions of man-hours were expended in the
construction of a series of reinforced concrete walls and bunkers on the
northwest French coastline in an effort to stop the allied invasion of Europe
(Ambrose 38, 115). As horrific as D-Day
was, those beaches were taken in less than three hours. No fence will stop those seeking entry:
“Migrants and professional smugglers constantly probe for the weak points in
the primary fence. It is possible to dig
under the fence; 14 trans-border tunnels, used to smuggle migrants, drugs or
both, were discovered along the California-Mexico border in the three-year
period 2001-2004” (Cornelius para.12).
The Border Patrol does its best to make improvements and fix problems
with the existing fences as they are discovered: “In some areas the Border
Patrol has made it more difficult to climb over the fence by erecting vertical
extensions made of fine mesh wire, angled back into Mexico” (Cornelius
para.12). In my service as a member of
the Philadelphia Fire Department, I have on many occasions breeched this kind
of fence with simple hand tools or just climbed over them with portable ladders: “The primary fence can be cut through with
acetylene torches and even simple saws” (Cornelius para. 12). Nevertheless,
walls and fences are something that politicians like to sell and Americans like
to buy: “The Secure Fence Act of last year authorized the building of 700 miles
of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border” (O’Sullivan para. 11). Fences aren’t the only things we waste money
on when it comes to keeping illegal immigrants out of the country.
The costs of the current policy of
incarceration and deportation of illegal aliens apprehended in the U.S. are
prohibitive and need to be re-examined or abandoned entirely. Just as barricading the border proves to be
expensive and ineffective, so is the detention and deportation of those found
to be working and residing here illegally.
The legal machinery necessary for the arrest, jailing and removal of
illegal aliens has helped to swell the size of government, even under the
auspices of recent and current less-government-is-better-style political administrations:
“While the federal regulatory apparatus has indeed shrunk over the past
twenty-five years, the criminal justice system has attained an unprecedented
size and scale” (Schlosser 215).
Unfortunately, when it comes to illegal aliens, the system fails. Like our home-grown offenders, unless the
alien is arrested for a violent crime, he or she is likely to be let out on
bail or released on his own recognizance; having little or no investment in the
community, it is unlikely that this person will be seen again, as “most people
charged with an immigration law violation do not even bother to show up for a
court hearing” (Bartlett, et al. para.
58). Deportation doesn’t seem to be an
effective deterrent to illegal immigration either. Most of those deported simply turn around at
the border and re-enter the country.
Imagine for a moment that all illegal residents (and it’s estimated
there are currently 11 million in the U.S.) could be rounded up; the logistics
of transporting this many people out of the country is at best daunting. The paperwork and investigatory backlog
created by these policies is mind numbing.
For example: “In 2002, a policy change caused immigration authorities to
re-submit 2.7 million names to the FBI for added scrutiny: it took five years
to complete the reviews” (O’Beirne para.13).
Instead of wasting even more time and money on an expensive system that
doesn’t work, policy makers need to work harder and come up with plans that
benefit the people who live here as well as the people who want to come here:
“The only practical solution is to give these unauthorized workers and their
families a way to earn their way to the right side of the law” (Jacoby para.
30). But some fear that this kind of plan
will result in a loss of jobs for American workers.
Rather than taking jobs away from
Americans, immigrants are doing work necessary to the U.S. economy that most
native-born Americans are unwilling to do, regardless of wages, and are even
creating new industries beneficial to the economy that would disappear in their
absence. The popular, prevailing notion
in this country is that the influx of illegal aliens is responsible for most of
our economic ills. This belief dies
hardest when it comes to jobs. The
feeling is that wages go down because hordes of foreigners are banging on the
doors of factories and shops around the country, offering their labor for a
fraction of the going rate, and that “once the supply of low-paid illegals
dried up, . . . wages would rise, bringing American workers out of the shadows
to do those jobs that Americans ‘won’t’ do” (O’Sullivan para. 8). The reality is that illegal immigrants don’t
gamble; no one comes here in the hopes of displacing American workers in order
to secure employment. People come here
to fill vacant positions, either taking jobs that have always been done by
those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder or those jobs that Americans
have abandoned as not worth having anymore.
As Schlosser notes, in the 1970’s the United Farm Workers (UFW) made
great strides in bettering the lot of crop pickers in the California grape and
lettuce industries: “California adopted some of the most pro-union legislation
in the country, guaranteeing farmworkers the right to collective bargaining, a
minimum wage, and unemployment compensation” (Schlosser 89). Like most successful union movements, the
UFW’s efforts improved conditions for other, non-union workers. Then things changed. In the eighties, Ronald Reagan’s presidency
fostered a governmental sentiment that was decidedly anti-labor. In keeping with this spirit, “successive
Republican governors, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, gutted the
Agricultural Labor Relations Board and relaxed enforcement of the state’s tough
labor laws” (Schlosser 89). Farmworkers
that could find more gainful employment did so.
Illegal immigrants filled the void.
Farming was not the only industry whose jobs were rendered worthless to
the native born: “Until the late 1970’s meatpacking was one of the highest-paid
industrial jobs in the United States, with one of the lowest turnover
rates. Today it is one of the lowest
paid, with one of the highest turnover rates” (Schlosser 216). All of these jobs still need to be
done. When Americans allow their
government leaders to make decisions that ruin working conditions for other
Americans, the desperate fill the abandoned jobs. Journalists like O’Sullivan are wrong;
expulsion of all illegals would hardly raise wages: “And even if there were fewer
immigrants in the United States, wages for low-skilled jobs would not
necessarily rise. On the contrary, in
many instances the jobs would simply disappear as the capital that created and
sustained them dried up or the companies mechanized their production” (Jacoby
para. 21). Even if O’Sullivan’s claims
were accurate, “it hardly makes sense to lure an American to a less productive
job than he or she is capable of by paying more for less-skilled work” (Jacoby
para.19). Jacoby’s point here is well
taken: everyone deserves to earn a decent wage, but this doesn’t mean that
there shouldn’t be a reasonable wage differential. Another consideration is that we are going to
need the help: “Between 2002 and 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, the U.S. economy is expected to create 56 million new jobs, half of
which will require no more than a high school education. More than 75 million baby-boomers will retire
in that period. And declining
native-born fertility rates will be approaching replacement level” (Jacoby
para.7). Without employees, businesses
fold. These jobs would not be by filled
by Americans if all undocumented foreigners were to be expelled; they would
simply disappear.
The popular notion that people from
other countries enter the U.S. illegally to take unfair advantage of welfare
transfers and social services is unfounded and falls apart under even casual
scrutiny. Right-wing journalists and
other apologists for the current administration encourage this belief. In an effort to cast Democrats as welfare
friendly and unconcerned about the plight of working Americans, O’Sullivan
writes about the influx of illegal immigrants in the National Review: “Obviously the Democrats like this sort of
thing. The expansion of the
welfare-receiving classes—in addition to being a good thing in itself, in their
view—will expand the constituencies for the big government and ‘compassionate
spending’ they want” (O’Sullivan para.20).
O’Sullivan ignores the fact that right now, after seven years of a
Republican president, government has never been bigger. There is no denying that like some native
born Americans, a percentage of the illegal immigrant population will not
follow rules, will break the law, will cheat on their taxes and abuse the
system. Pointing to the spectacular
exception plays well on television and makes for memorable sound bytes; all of
us old enough can remember Ronald Reagan’s “Welfare Queen” speech in North
Carolina during the 1980 presidential race, or how George H.W. Bush torpedoed
Michael Dukakkis with the Willie Horton ads.
These exceptions almost always make a disingenuous point. Tamar Jacoby notes: “The vast majority of
immigrants who make the trip to the United States do so in order to work: if
you are going to be unemployed, it is better to be unemployed at home in Mexico
than in New York or Chicago” (Jacoby para. 10). Indeed, if we move past the jingoist
hyperbole and look at the hard facts, we see that quite the opposite of what
the xenophobes claim is true: “Labor force participation among foreign men exceeds
that of the native-born: the figure for illegal immigrant men is the highest of
any group—94 per cent. And immigrants
are less likely than natives to be unemployed” (Jacoby para. 10). Even an appointed head of a government agency
charged with border security notes that “the majority of people trying to sneak
into the country are Mexicans seeking work” (Strohm para. 14). A final, conclusive proof that the
they-come-here-for-welfare-theory is wrong is that “the US welfare reform law
of 1996 . . . stimulated no mass exodus of unauthorized migrants, and there was
no let-up in the massive wave of new immigration occurring in the second half
of the 1990’s” (Cornelius para. 34).
People come here to work. The way
they get here is what we need to consider.
By maintaining
restrictive immigration quotas, the U.S. effectively abdicates control of
immigration and places that control into the hands of criminals. America’s experiment in the 1920’s with the
Volstead Act proved conclusively that any attempted prohibition of a commodity
desired by a sizeable segment of society is doomed to certain failure. One reason is that the illegal nature of the
commodity in question makes it expensive and attracts a vicious criminal element
eager to capitalize on the opportunity.
The obscene amounts of money then at the criminal’s disposal make it
possible to compromise enforcement. In
the American southwest, the border situation is out of control: “In response to
the problems, New Mexico declared a state of emergency along its southern
border on August 12 (2005), and Arizona did the same three days later” (Strohm para. 5). Prior to the nineties, it was relatively
simple for someone to get across the border unassisted. As the trip has been made more difficult, it
is necessary to secure the assistance of those unafraid of authority: “As
border control has tightened, a higher percentage of migrants have sought
assistance from professional people-smugglers—coyotes—to reduce the probability of apprehension” (Cornelius para.
22). These are not all small one or
two-man operations; some are large well-organized criminal enterprises:
“Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Migracion estimates that at least 100
large-scale people-smuggling rings now operate in Mexico, with thousands of
smaller operations involved” (Cornelius para. 22). Another reason that prohibitions fail is they
do nothing to quell the desire for the prohibited commodity. On the American side of the illegal
immigration problem, employers need workers.
On the Mexican side, people need jobs.
LeMay notes: “Illegal immigration results from both push and pull
factors” (LeMay 255). Criminal activity
on the border is not limited to people seeking entry and those who take money
to help them; some Americans that reside in close proximity to the Mexican
border seek to staunch the flow of illegal immigration by taking the law into
their own hands: “A final consequence of the post-1993 enforcement strategy had
been to stimulate organized vigilante activity on the US side of the border”
(Cornelius para. 24). It is easy to
understand an honest citizen’s frustration with an intolerable situation for
which there seems no redress: “Frustration over the problems, however, has led
to a proliferation of citizen border-watch groups. The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center
says that some 40 such groups are active on the southern border, and it
considers some of them hate groups” (Strohm para. 17). As violent and single-minded as either the
smugglers or vigilante groups seem, the root cause of their crimes is the
responsibility of American employers that cheat by hiring undocumented workers:
“Companies that are willing to break the law gain a competitive advantage over
those that employ legal residents, that pay good wages and fully pay their
taxes” (Schlosser 217). Which brings us
to the heart of the matter: our government doesn’t really want to change
anything.
The distribution
of resources to the enforcement end of immigration control reveals that the
U.S. government is more interested in appearing to be concerned about illegal
entry than actually wanting to bring illegal entry to a halt: “The problem is
one of the U.S.’s own making. The
government doesn’t want to fix it, and politicians, as usual, are dodging the
issue, even though public opinion polls show that Americans overwhelmingly
favor a crackdown on illegal immigration” (Bartlett, et al. para. 5). Many politicians, regardless of party
affiliation, love to be seen and heard while they make speeches about
protecting our borders and standing tall against intruders. That’s why they like to encourage
strengthening of border security—even if the legislation passes and money is
spent, it doesn’t really change anything: “Expenditure remained relatively
modest during the 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s and early 1990’s; it then quintupled
from $750 million in 1993 to $3.8 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2004, and the
size of the Border Patrol was tripled to more than 11,000 agents” (Cornelius
para. 7). In this same period, the
amount of illegal border crossing increased.
The fact is that few in government want to bring about any meaningful
change. If they did, the laws to do the
job are already in place: “Since 1986 the United States has had legislation
that penalizes employers who knowingly hire unauthorized foreign workers, but
enforcement of employer sanctions has always been at a token level. By the end of the 1990’s, the Immigration and
Naturalization Service was devoting only 2 per cent of its budget to worksite
enforcement” (Cornelius para. 28).
Another set of numbers really makes the disparity in enforcement
strategies obvious: “Staffing levels clearly reflect the low priority assigned
to workplace enforcement: by 2001, only 124 immigration agents were assigned to
full-time workplace enforcement in the entire country, compared with 9,500
agents on the border” (Cornelius para. 28).
Employers and those dependent on the business generated want no part in
tampering with the prevailing ineffective strategies in place to deal with the
illegal workforce: “Complaints by employer groups, community organizations,
local politicians and members of Congress led the Clinton administration to
call off Operation Vanguard” (Cornelius para. 31). If our politician’s desires in this direction
were genuine, it would be relatively easy to stop illegal immigration— swift
enforcement of existing laws and stiff penalties would have a stunning effect;
after the CEO’s of two or three large employers of undocumented workers were
jailed and fined most others would be intimidated. As hiring of the undocumented slowed and
stopped, most border-crossers would stay at home, but “the overriding reality
is that most members of the US Congress have little tolerance for the
disruptions and constituent complaints that a systematic crackdown on employers
of illegal immigrants would inevitably generate” (Cornelius para. 32). We are left with the current program of
fighting the war against people who have nothing to lose and giving a free pass
to those with the money and power to influence policy-makers: “The absence of
consensus on alternatives locks in the current policy mix, under which
unauthorized migrants bear most of the costs of ‘control’ while benefits flow
impressively to employers and consumers” (Cornelius para. 44).
If you have a
legitimate point to make, the best way to proceed is calmly, using a
well-reasoned, fact-based argument. If
the point you are trying to make is false and indefensible, then you distort,
confuse and do your best to appeal to people on a base emotional level. In my research for this paper I sought out
opinions on both sides of the immigration question, looking for good, solid
journalism. The anti-immigrant side of
the argument was not well represented; indeed, in seeking the conservative
point of view I mostly encountered a shrill sort of xenophobia that bordered on
hysteria. Republicans do this well. Since the seventies they have been successful
in persuading the white working class to vote against its best economic
interests. They do this by
claiming—between the lines, of course—to be the party that will protect them
against blacks, homosexuals, atheists, . . . and the Mexicans, too. All of these groups are a wonderful
distraction when it comes time to conceal from America its real enemies— men
like Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling of Enron infamy, or our current president’s
brother, Neil Bush, who was a key player in the Silverado Savings & Loan
Scandal of the eighties and nineties and who emerged from that criminal outing
not merely unscathed but enriched (daddy was VP and then President during those
years). These three men alone (and there
are many, many more just like them) have done more harm to America and its
citizens than any number of illegal immigrants could. Americans have choices to make. They can recognize and address the real
problems with the present immigration system or they can allow our wasteful and
useless policies to continue. If we
really want to slow illegal border crossing a good start would be to work with
Mexico and offer alternatives to the people from “the roughly 5 per cent of
Mexican municipos (counties) which contribute the lion’s share of migrants to
the U.S. (Cornelius para. 38). Neither
the U.S. nor Mexico seem to be in any hurry.
We can resolve to no longer tolerate “companies that are willing to
break the law to gain a competitive edge” (Schlosser 217). Or we can be happy with the status quo. I think it is a horrible mistake to accept
that there are eleven million among us who are effectively second-class citizens. This is not a moral observation, but one
grounded in what I consider to be preservation of my own best interest. If there are neighbors of mine that are
routinely and legally treated poorly, who’s next?
Works
Cited
Ambrose, Stephen.
D-Day, June 6, 1944: the Climactic
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Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Bartlett, Donald L., Steele, James B., Karmatz,
Laura, Levinstein, Joan. “Who Left the
Door Open?” Time September 20, 2004:
51-66.
Cornelius, Wayne.
“Controlling ‘Unwanted’ Immigration: Lessons from the United States,
1993-2004.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies July 2005: 775-794.
Francis, Sam.
America Extinguished: Mass
Immigration And The Disintegration Of American Culture. Monterey, Virginia: Americans for
Immigration Control, 2001.
Hall, Mimi.
“Momentum Builds For Fence Along U.S.-Mexican Border” USA Today November 17, 2005: 8
paragraphs.
Jacoby, Tamar.
“Immigration Nation.” Foreign Affairs Nov/Dec 2006: 50-65.
LeMay,
Michael C. Guarding the Gates: Immigration and National Security. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Security
International, 2006.
O’Beirne,
Kate. “Animosity and Amnesty: a Grand
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O’Sullivan,
John. “Comprehensively Awful: What
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Schlosser,
Eric. Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black
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Emma. “A Bust and a Blow to a
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Phyllis. “Unsafe Life On The
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Nat. “El Paso As Prologue.” National
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Chris. “The Wild, Wild Southwest.” National
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