Immigration: Law and Border

I know undocumented foreigners and would not affect scorn towards them in place of the affection I feel. Many willingly close their eyes to felt warmth, replacing it with a suppose-to bitterness rather than just doing what has to be done; others close them to each problem that comes hand in hand with this trickle invasion. 

I don’t want my state, Massachusetts, following Arizona’s extreme lead, but those states bordering Mexico are on the front line of a national struggle and sealing that border is a must step in any reconciliation between Americans and foreigners residing here illegally.

It is difficult to accept that some Americans see similarities between Arizona’s immigration law and earlier discriminatory state laws, while remaining oblivious to the many hardships foisted upon Arizonans who all live on that particular migration route. Can exaggerating this law into an act of racial bigotry be any less offensive than bigotry itself? Justice is blindfolded from personal differences but not from actions that set up a legitimate context.

Profiling:

The members of some races or faiths tend to be caught up in particular problems thrust upon them or of their own making: Tay-Sachs disease (Jews), Sickle-cell anemia (aboriginal Africans), manipulating others through the terror of Jihad (Muslims), and sneaking out of Mexico into the United States (Hispanics). No one should be faulted for noticing any of these general connections, but it is an intrusive way to find the terrorist needle in the haystack that is Islam or any needle that had snuck across the Rio Grand into the Hispanic haystack.

Still, this Hispanic haystack is in Arizona not far from the border, and many of its needles identify so strongly with undocumented foreigners that from time to time they naturally imagine themselves to be one with that circumstance. An Arizona, law-enforcement official requesting papers of such a needle would be more of an opportunity to express solidarity than an intrusion.

For those offended by having been profiled towards uncovering illicit behavior:

Rule #1: If you are approached through a profile, then be as enraged at those of your own people who daily confirm that profile, as you are at the profiler who merely notices it.

Rule #2: If you have at other times taken a secret delight in the illicit act being profiled, then measure your rant of solidarity with inner gratitude towards the profiler supplying your stage.

Greed:

Although greed is usually linked to material wealth, I include here a parallel form of it, progenial greed: an excessive desire to acquire or possess progeny regardless of any impact the quest has upon oneself or others. Far more of those dying in the Mexican drug war are Americans than is commonly recognized. For many, their mothers had delivered them shortly after sneaking across the Rio Grand (progenial greed).

“Grown-up” and bilingual, many chose to thank themselves, not their neighbors, becoming mules and dealers of illicit drugs (wealth greed). Once killed in Mexico, their passports are snatched (wealth greed) as documents for the undocumented, and their bodies left unrecognized as the Americans that they had once been. Had I said this about a Mexican and not a Mexican-American drug mule, no one would have considered my remark racist. Faking concern for 111 million Mexicans 24/7 is going to wear you out, and exploiting this racial divide does require token gringos.

When the Constitution was written, there were no illegal immigrants; but exclusion by virtue of not having survived the journey was formidable. Purposefully delivering one’s progeny into citizenship would have been overly dangerous, unnecessary, and by virtue of the time needed to recognize pregnancy, to plan and to take the journey, rarely even possible. Better transportation and obstetric medicine offered a loophole in our Constitution: citizenship by virtue of the staying power of both child and mother.

Today we are helpless against this because many of us look back at a Constitutional Convention whose comfort-blanket judgement is expected tosurvive the two centuries plus of context shift, while our own judgment has trouble with two decades.

Just as there are millionaires who gained their enormous wealth in exchange for formidable benefits to society, there are large families whose generosity emerges from sons and daughters themselves. The Rio Grande has become an escape valve to the pressure of decades of what: a pride that was oblivious to overcrowding, and by that had taken on an undercurrent of progenial greed. Although crowding and limited resources have imposed a decline in their native fertility rate, no such compulsion is upon those making it state side.

My remarks on Mexicans here without documents are more about the difficult cultural context that surrounds them before emigrating and in no way are to be taken as racial slurs. They are about their growing up along cocaine’s corruptive trail through Central America, or in a state such as Guanajuato which has criminalized both abortions and miscarriages in a single stroke of the pen. See my article, This Land is Whose Land, for other difficulties.

A Counterpoint:

Arizona has its racism in both directions. To claim that it is a major influence on the Arizona law or drug trafficking is to place it way out of its depth. Has racism influenced immigration policy at the national level, or was that policy an awkward attempt to avoid being inundated by immigrants from countries rushing toward their population capacities?

When a profiler goes beyond investigation to a blanket racial contempt or hatred, he or she becomes a bigot; but when a crusader exploits a racial divide by elevating one issue into a lie of ubiquitous contempt, two are infected by a subtle, ingratiating bigotry: one buying into the lie about others’ motives, and one buying into the lie’s contempt as it regards them self. Of course, technically this latter case isn’t  racial bigotry, because in spite of forms offering the choice, non-Hispanic, there is no non-Hispanic race upon which to vent one’s frustration. To me, this is more of an opportunistic bigotry which is what most bigotry has always been.

How do those who were old enough to know non-family, fellow Mexicans before sneaking in, feel about them as they look back across the border? If they didn’t like some of them, can’t I dislike those same for the very same reasons without being “bigoted?” If they feel contempt for those still awaiting  immigrant or work visas, can’t I feel a greater warmth towards those who didn’t cut in line without being “bigoted” in my slight of the others? All of us whether here legally or illegally need to be more conscientious of that moment we scrutinize a bigot not a manipulator of bigotry’s specter.

Alternate Amnesty:

With insecure borders, there can be no amnesty. Such a message would inexcusably seduce on a grand scale those participating in their own social, economic and political systems. This alternative amnesty would in its entirety be more effective and more caring:

• All illegal immigrants hoping to take part should informally certify their presence in the United States before a certain date. Sooner would be better than later. In their country’s recent presidential election, thousands of Brazilians came to my home town in Massachusetts to vote. Fantastically this attains certification both of presence here and of connection there (Brazil). Those leaving by that date would be allowed to apply for visit or work visas after a given period: far less than the current ten years but enough to allow for the essential sealing of borders.
• Those leaving later would enjoy the same visa amnesty but with a waiting period prolonged by double the time of their over stay.
• All of returning visitors would be better monitored and, with a now clean record and proper re-entry, able to pursue citizenship on a par with those who honored our immigration laws. The Canadian, immigrant work program could form the basis of such a standard of appropriateness, but only for an America whose borders are as secure as are Canada’s.