… and Nick’s response to my article is certainly an intelligently crafted one. Though I could, however, childishly point out that his argument is guilty of a logical fallacy called the appeal to common practice, I believe I will refrain from such and instead focus on the question he ended with:

“Do current attitudes toward illegal immigrants characterize a depraved United States, fat on its own glory, turning a back on the ideals it claims for its past?

To do so, I’ll quote a nice elderly lady who stands in relative proximity to Ellis Island. No, she’s not an advertisement for Sure deodorant.

“Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free…”

Are these the values of America? Despite your opinion of Castro’s Cuba, for example, one could hardly argue the fact that the raft-travelers so frequently sent back when found floating off Miami Beach are indeed poor, tired, huddled, and longing to be free. Still, it is possible that these were never really our values to begin with, just a nice, flattering post-hoc pat on the back from our French friends. But that doesn’t mean they don’t represent something to aspire to.

Compare these words, instead, with the contemporary criteria for legal entrance to the US, whether to live or to to work or to study. For example we now require stout application fees and processing fees (which lets be honest are called institutionalized bribes when we see them anywhere else in the world.) This alone, through ability to pay, suggests that we only want to legally admit middle- and upper-class foreigners to our land of opportunity.

And why? Because it is cheaper for our businesses and our government to have an undocumented labor-force that is not captured by social service protections such as minimum wage and worker’s compensation laws. The ones we let in, well they can afford to be consumers, rather than funnelling their wages back out to families at home, they are beng good participants in the US economy. Now I am not suggesting we’re complacently filling a bunch of sweatshops with undocumented Mexicans, but estimates do place the number of undocumented agricultural workers in American at about 2 million. 2 million people without equal protection under the law, as a thank-you for doing the jobs that Americans have decided they’re too good for. Yet Americans are eligible for things like unemployment and welfare and food stamps.

Don’t misunderstand me on this point, there are more Americans who deserve welfare and unemployment and food stamps than are currently receiving it, to be sure. More than that, there are more people working who deserve a livable wage. But if our problem with illegal immigration was just because we’re honest, law abiding citizens who “chafe at rule-breakers,” then our laws, regulations, and voting habits would not reflect such clear class-discrimination.

Are there security issues that need to be taken into account when thinking about immigration? Surely. Are they new/worse/different/more scary than they were 20 years ago? Thats probably a whole other debate, but the short answer is NO. Indeed it is the geography of our country, the size shape and disposition of our borders more than anything else that makes us most vulnerable. Still, are we intelligent enough as a society to create policy that is both secure and capable of living up to our moral responsibility to support and protect those in need? You tell me.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 2:49 pm by Philip Loring and is filed under Democracy, Feature Stories, Rhetoric. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.