What a huge subject this has turned out to be--I was so struck by the demonstrations last weekend that I felt compelled to blog about immigration, then quickly realized how little I know about it, and now I'm overwhelmed by the extent and the complexity of the problem. I'm half-tempted to just collect a bunch of quotes from different sources and let them speak for themselves, but since when have I ever allowed something to just speak for itself?
The first thing I did was to speak to a Latina friend of mine, a lawyer who is Cuban-born and married to a Mexican. She was the one who first told me about the bracero program, which in a nutshell was a twenty-year attempt to codify and regulate immigration practices. Mexican citizens were, or so I'm told, invited to do agricultural work in the U.S. for six-month stretches, then they would return to Mexico and, at some point, would be allowed back in for another six months. As my Latina friend put it, this was on the whole a pretty good program: Mexican workers were paid better than they would be at home, we got the benefit of cheap labor and could track who was coming and going, and the workers didn't get trapped in an alien country living in impoverished conditions. Not a perfect situation, but there was benefit on both sides.
The key assertion my Latina friend makes (I was tempted to use an acronym for "my Latina friend," but MLF already stands for something else and I just ain't goin' there) is that for the most part, Mexican workers don't actually want to live in the United States, they want to stay in Mexico. Where they grew up, where their extended families are, and so forth. The bracero program, she said, was therefore welcome: workers came by themselves for that six-month span rather than dragging their whole families with them over the border because they never knew when they might be able to get home again, if ever. This is something I haven't seen covered anywhere else: every commentary, article or editorial I've read seems to assume that all those workers would, as a matter of course, wish to remain in the United States. If my Latina friend is correct, that may be an overstatement.
Now, she admitted that there were abuses of bracero, "but then there will always be abuses of any program." Which is, of course, true. But the advantages are great, she said: since you are documenting who is coming and going, then obviously it becomes easier (though still not easy) to filter out the potential terrorists; plus, if you don't have that constant stream of people sneaking over the border, then any terrorists trying to sneak over the border stand out and are more easily caught. Good and good.
It all seems fairly reasonable (though it would be even better if there were some wage guarantees, and means of enforcing that employers treat their workers as they should). So it was quite a surprise to realize that President Bush's guest worker program sounds quite a lot like the old bracero program, because the idea of George Bush proposing anything sensible is, you know, absurd. And yet there it was, indisputably. It became one of those moments when I happily realized that I'm not one of those blinkered partisans: with perfect ease, I found myself in agreement with the President and accepted it. Okay-doke, easy as that.
Where I disagree is on this whole "amnesty" question. (For one thing, as the New York Times points out, it isn't amnesty.) Because when it comes right down to it, I firmly believe that if someone is contributing to the economic growth of the nation, that person ought to have the right to apply for citizenship if he wishes--to participate in the advantages of that growth. As my Latina friend suggests, maybe a lot of the workers really don't want to stay here, they just want to make good money and go home--but for those who want to stay, they should be entitled to ask. The process should be as hard as it is for anyone, I'm not suggesting that special privileges be accorded; but it just seems unassailably fair, inarguably American, that someone whose labor makes our lives better should be afforded the chance to make their own life better as well.
And now I'm out of time, and can't even comment on people like The National Review's Mark Krikorian, who says "What we’re seeing in the streets is a naked assertion of power by outsiders against the American nation. They demand that we comply with their wishes and submit our immigration policies for their approval, and implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met." That's the sort of thing that just makes me mad, but as I said, I'm out of time. Maybe later.
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