If one wants to keep “unwanted intruders” out of one’s yard, one builds the tallest, most ominous obstacle possible – after getting the proper permits, of course.
This is the American way. We barter for land (some would argue the legitimacy of many historic real estate deals), mark our territory and restrict access by “unwanted intruders” with fences and walls.
The beauty of the system is that we get to establish who the “unwanted intruders” are, as well as whom it is that doesn’t want them. Some lobbying groups have made it clear they want conservative members of the Senate to bury President George W. Bush’s pending immigration bill in debate, according to multiple news reports. The “unwanted intruders” are mostly illegal immigrants from our closest neighbor to the south.
Under the currently proposed immigration reform, 12 million illegal immigrants could eventually be decriminalized. They wouldn’t be given carte blanche amnesty, as detractors have insisted, but would be given the chance to “earn” the right to be here.
Eligible immigrants would be given probationary “Z-visas” – which they would temporarily be required to repatriate to Mexico to gain – and would be required to pay a $5,000 fine to atone for their sins of wanting better lives.
Newly legalized immigrants would then be able to do important average American citizen-like stuff, such as pay taxes, obtain driver licenses to access jobs to pay those taxes, indulge in our national consumerism pastimes and access better educational opportunities. All are steps that hold potential to alleviate certain strains on the national purse.
Part of the compromise fails under the guise of “enforcement.” Using enforcement as a prohibitive device may provide temporary emotional security to xenophobes, but politically-savvy moderates realize the inherent sociological, psychological and environmental perils of a 15-foot electrically charged barrier to family unity.
Each time the United States has shifted policy on immigration, it has come at the cost of human dignity and compassion. Past efforts have included the Chinese Exclusion Act during the 1880s. The law was a revision of the Burlingame Treaty of 1868, which created the populist term “illegal immigrant,” consequently vilifying Chinese immigrants.
Following World War II, the United States implemented the Emergency Farm Labor Program, commonly named the Bracero Program. We wanted cheap farm labor but we didn’t want them to stay. Even though migrant farm workers catapulted the U.S. as the premier agricultural kingdom, we wanted them to pick our produce and skedaddle back across the border when the picking was done.
At the same time, while the Bracero Program abruptly ceased (albeit temporarily) the exploitation of nearly 4.5 million Mexican laborers in 1964, Operation Wetback had been in effect. That 10-year campaign to demonize and extricate undocumented Mexican laborers resulted in 1.2 million contraband workers being loaded on buses, trains or ships and transported to the deep interior of Mexico.
The malfunction that brought on the demise of the aggressive “wetback” crackdown was that U.S. citizens were being carded for “looking Mexican.”
The idea that kicking 12 million people out of the country – a solution sought by the most extreme critics of immigration reform – would be a feasible solution to national security problems merely fortifies our adherence to institutionalized racism.
The concept that building a fence will stem terrorism is laughable. Some of the most recognizable terrorist wannabes caught entering the United States have been nabbed at the Canadian border.
It doesn’t take rocket scientists or brain surgeons to recognize that entry through the largest unfenced, unguarded border on the planet would be simpler than trudging across miles of fenced-off, unfriendly desert and rugged mountainous terrain.
However, groups like the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps are soliciting funds via the Internet to build a two-layer, high-tech fence along the southern border. The self-appointed guardians recently celebrated their one-year anniversary for the project by launching building of another mile of exclusionary fencing in Arizona.
A fair compromise with such patriot organizations might be to not only fund their prison-like “Tortilla Wall,” but also toss in a bunch of taxpayer cash for Minutemen to picket a futuristic high-tech, double-decker, 5,500-mile “Canuck Curtain.”
While we’re in a Berlin-Wall-Bamboo-Curtain-style building mindset, we could build fences around areas with large Mexican immigrant populations, like Denver or Los Angeles. Certainly an electric fence around Cal State Long Beach might not be aesthetic in quality, but it would protect us from “unwelcome intruders” intent on laying siege to The Beach.
Although we didn’t invent the concept of walls, fences, cannons, moats and other means of fending off our foes, we have the technology and motivation to build the biggest, ugliest fence on the block.
National security concerns following 9/11 are genuine and should be taken seriously. Prior to 9/11, Bush and then-Mexican President Vicente Fox had laid out a plan to welcome guest workers. That policy would have been utilized in 2000 or 2001, but U.S. foreign policy took a stutter-step and was abandoned for national security interests.
Institutional racism and overt bigotry continue to breed national paranoia in the name of patriotism. Demonizing friends and family on our southern flank with paranoia-based policy is the un-American way.
As certain politicians and bigoted lobby groups drag their feet in the Senate debates, attempting to quell legislation, it might be germane to note that Emma Lazarus’ poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty states, “I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door.”
Lazarus almost certainly didn’t envision stadium lights and mild electrocution as the referred to “lamp” nearly every American child is reared to embrace as the symbol of national heritage and human dignity.
Bad fences don’t make good neighbors; compassionately structured laws do.
