Myth, Reality, and Immigration

If you get to the end, there's a treat...

As the controversial Arizona immigration law brings the subject of immigration back to the forefront of the national conversation, it's worth taking a moment to recognize that this thorny issue is one where the rhetoric and reality often diverge from one another. Take, for instance, the prevailing idea that a strong border fence is necessary to keep illegals from entering the country. While both Democrats and Republicans seem to have latched onto the idea that most Americans are for closing and sealing off the borders, any plan to do so butts up against logistics that are overly complicated and expensive. A border fence sounds nice, but is it really feasible to make a fence along such a large distance? And even if we could, would the type of fence we can afford be enough to actually keep immigrants out of the country? Fences can be cut through with wire cutters, can be leaped over, can be dug under; and considering the speed with which road construction occurs in this country, I can't imagine that a concrete barrier could be built with any kind of timeliness.

Such is the problem of the immigration issue. The two parties realize that Americans don't like illegal immigration, and so have to keep the rhetoric tough so as to not seem "soft" on the issue. But on the other hand, any kind of strict enforcement of the issue runs into logistical trouble. The Arizona immigration laws are an example. The lawmakers of Arizona seem to be saying that the importance of finding and deporting illegal immigrants trumps national privacy rights and guaranteed protections against Draconian tactics. By now, most people are aware of the new law requiring all legal immigrants to carry paperwork on them confirming their status, and allowing law enforcement officials to stop anyone they have a "probable cause" to believe may be illegal - actually, the law requiring legal immigrants to carry paperwork on them is over 40 years old. On paper, perhaps that actually looks somewhat fair (and to be sure, the news media has not cast the measure in a very good light) - if you are a legal immigrant, you really have nothing to fear as long as you carry paperwork on you, right?

But in reality, it's not feasible that this will allow those who have obtained a legal status to be treated with any kind of fairness. Even if you had all of your paperwork on you when you were stopped, the new authority police have been given allows for any kind of situation to happen while being stopped. For instance, a friend of mine was once carrying on him medicine that was not prescribed to him - which is a situation many people find themselves in as one cannot always afford the proper medicine, or may be looking to see if a particular course works for them before officially going on it - and was stopped by the police. Under the new laws, the authority given policemen may allow them to use the "probable cause" stamp to snoop around the car and find the medicine, which is illegal and can result in the deportation of a legal immigrant if reported.

Or perhaps more simply, what if a legal immigrant just forgot his paperwork? How many times have I forgotten something as simple as my driver's license? Well, instead of getting to work on time, what likely would happen is the man or woman would be taken to the police station and held until legal status was determined. This is more than a simple inconvenience, it is treating our immigrant brethren (mostly model citizens) as inferior.

The real debate on immigration seems to come from the problem of what to do with illegal immigrants that are currently here. The mythical approach favored by Conservatives is that immigration reform should include measures to deport illegal aliens currently here. Yet even the most tyrannical approach could not possibly sniff out the millions and millions of illegal aliens living in the country now. Not to mention that if, for some reason, everyone in the country illegally just came out and admitted their status, it would prove unwieldy to actually transport such a large population back to their homelands.

And the emotional tenor of immigration rhetoric stems from perhaps the ultimate myth in immigration. What I like to call the "They took our jobs!" myth.

Overall, the work that illegal immigrants do is for such small wages that no American would really have a desire to do such work. The typical jobs that illegal immigrants are able to hold down because of their status are those in manual labor, the sort of thing that American citizens don't generally aspire to anyway. In fact, perhaps the most complicated part of the immigration question is that Americans capitalize on the cheap labor done by illegal immigrants (cheap restaurant food, or low-cost gardening services for instance) because they don't pay them the type of living wage that their work deserves, taking advantage of their precarious situations. How hypocritical, then, to blame them for problems in American society, when indeed the problems are caused by capitalism, greed, and consumerism themselves.

And one final myth to dispel is that of the "security risk" from illegal aliens. OK, yes, theoretically, having undocumented people in the country is risky considering the sort of world we live in Post-September 11th, but in reality, illegal immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than legal immigrants. There are occasional horror stories to grab onto - the illegal immigrant drunk driver who kills someone in their car, for instance - but generally, the risk of being deported outweighs any impetus for crime.

So, as the immigration debate takes its place on the national stage, consider this a reminder that the rhetoric surrounding the issue is often hyperbolic and unrepresentative of reality. Democracy must start with decency, and if we can't see through a blind rage at the mere act of coming into this country illegally (really, it should be seen as quite a compliment that someone still believes in this country while so many want to see us destroyed), then we will act on the issue with a plan that is both needlessly oppressive, and a possible black hole for cost.

Thanks for listening everybody, and for getting to the end, go see this treat from the Onion.

Deidre is off tomorrow, but maybe we'll find someone to fill in for her...