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The Immigration “Problem”
by Roberto Diego
copyright 2008 Roberto Diego
A recent ICE raid on a major meat processor in the United States supposedly netted several hundred “illegal” immigrants. During that raid and several days thereafter, the meat processor, who provides products to customers around the world, was essentially out of business having had his individual and property rights violated by a government intent on catching "law breaking" illegal immigrants who are intent on bringing us the food that graces our tables. It is not mentioned how much product was lost, how much production time was lost and what the impact of the raid was on the bottom line of the processor, how it impacted the delivery of products to consumers and what it did to the local economy.
Further, it is also not mentioned how many of the employees rounded up in this raid were actually American citizens whose civil liberties were also violated in the raid. Was an apology extended toward these people and do they have legal recourse against the government for the violation of their civil rights? Are we not becoming a fascist state that rounds up “questionable” people and then asks questions later? Are we drifting toward the telltale symptom of fascism where we see only groups instead of individuals? How can you tell that a person is illegal by looking at the color of his skin? How did we get to a point in our society where we are rounding up and deporting people because they come to our country to fill jobs that need them? What justifies prejudice of any kind and is this not a form of prejudice? What justifies jumping to conclusions and asking private citizens for proof that they are here legally? I think the people who should answer these questions are Bill O’Reilly, Michelle Malkin and Sean Hannity.
Their answer will undoubtedly be that ICE agents are honorable servants of our national security and that illegal immigrants should never be hired because they should not be here. They would also say that companies that hire them should be forced to suffer for hiring them and that business owners should be jailed for breaking the law. Seems logical doesn’t it? What they neglect is that now that the window of immigration has been broken by O’Reilly, Malkin, Hannity and others, there is no one to repair it and the cost of repairing it is a diminished ability to fight our real enemies, lost jobs and production, higher prices or rotting meat and vegetables.
In fact, the show where I first heard this story on Fox News, was hosted by E.D. Hill who asked one of the local officials how many people among those rounded up in the raid, even while the raid was still in progress, were drug pushers and violent criminals. This kind of prejudice now has full voice and standing in our society. And we who are American citizens of Hispanic descent must now wonder if we need to carry our birth certificates around with us lest we be jailed and deported. Perhaps a birth certificate is not enough since they can be easily forged. How many of us will someday find ourselves walking the streets of Mexico wondering how we can get home?
In my view, until we decide about our government’s priorities, ours is a country committing suicide. The fundamental principles upon which it was founded are being eroded on a continuing basis because we are split over an important issue; not the issue of immigration - but whether we are at war or not. For instance, many of us have become convinced by demagoguery that the problem is not terrorists who want to destroy us, but immigrants, primarily from Mexico, and we are placing our ire on this group of people; not upon those that would destroy us, but upon those that want to come here to enjoy freedom and live better lives. The voices of this demagoguery are beating the drums of “illegality” and “criminality” against people who have never been considered criminals in the past. They accomplish their anti-immigrant agenda by redefining the issue, using new terms not used in the past that are designed to create outrage. Where in the recent past, we have welcomed immigrants that came here for jobs, now these same people are “law breakers,” “criminals” and “illegal.” Now it is said that they come here to take advantage of our welfare programs and even to take over the country for themselves. They are now called “invaders” and the businesses that process our foods and bring us our vegetables are now looked at with disdain and distrust. Cities that resist the effort to violate the individual rights of these people are demonized as 'sanctuary' cities, a term now considered distasteful. The new definers of this issue have somehow convinced many Americans that it is time to secure our borders and even to imprison and deport millions of freedom-loving immigrants. Though they will tell you it is not their goal to create a draconian backlash against immigrants, the fact is they have opened the door of “common cause” with people in our society who are expressing some of the most vile prejudice and jack bootery since the civil rights era. In fact, the immigration issue has been framed, primarily by O'Reilly, in such a way that hundreds of media stories are encouraging the disenfranchisement of whole groups of people in the name of American patriotism. And since O'Reilly only sees a group on this issue, he is responsible for serious real harm to real individuals.
Is immigration the serious problem that these demagogues tell us? Are there more pressing problems that must be dealt with; problems that are of dire consequence for our nation? Let's take a look at some of those problems. First of all, our country, the greatest in the history of mankind, is suffering worldwide alienation because of the millions of people that hate us. When Americans are killed anywhere in the world by terrorists, people of many nations dance in the streets in front of cameras whose holders eagerly broadcast the glee of America's haters. Around the world, riots and protests are broadcast showing angry faces and vehement gesticulations that tell us we are evil and have done something terrible. That these riots only reveal the utter barbarity of these people never seems to be mentioned. That our country brings primarily trade, jobs and better lives to many of those people is also seldom mentioned. When was the last time you saw the people of Topeka, Kansas acting like idiots for the sake of the cameras on the streets of Topeka?
Our Democrat politicians (in the midst of the worst threat to our nation’s existence), seek not to advance our security or even to fight the war; instead they want to win the next election, doing everything they can to discredit the Bush administration about all issues, even those that involve fighting the enemy. This opposition is viewed by people around the world as proof that they have a good reason to dislike and oppose President Bush. In spite of his flaws, and there are many, what they attack, what they seek to limit and stop, is his effort to fight our enemies. Our enemies, eager to win the war without fighting, target our troops and inflict as much damage as possible in order to gain the support of the media worldwide that is also opposing President Bush on virtually every issue. A victory by our enemies is secretly considered a victory for the Democrats. Bush is unable to fully fight the war for three reasons: first, because his foreign and military policies wrongly promote sacrifice as a reason to fight the war rather than America’s self-interest, secondly, because of massive domestic political opposition whose only goal is power, and thirdly, because of a Vietnam-style syndrome among Democrats that sees every war America fights as lost. One thing the history books will note is that during this time an effort to discredit the Bush administration at all costs placed our nation in more danger than less.
In our universities, the prevailing viewpoint among most college professors is that the U.S. is an imperialist country that has dominated the world through military and economic power. Most college professors view the U.S. as deserving the hatred of the world and, in fact, these professors are the source of much of that hatred. They teach American young people, as well as young people from the Middle East who come here to get educated, that America is an evil country that deserved the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent attacks since. Anything that can be done to stop and/or restrict the foreign policy of our country is deemed worthwhile.
These college professors have educated what has become a “liberal” media that is largely made up of leftists that see their purpose as the disenfranchisement of any and all Republicans, as a matter of right. This leftist media and educational elite presumes it has all the answers and that no one has the right to criticize or even debate its preconceived views about the direction our country should take; which is to withdraw from the war in Iraq.
It is within this context of poor leadership that we should analyze the “immigration problem” in order to see how we have lost our focus regarding our national security. Today (in 2008), a large number of Americans are extremely upset because our southern border is being breached by large numbers of people coming from and through Mexico into the United States. During the last few years we have heard repeated cries on Fox News that our immigration laws are being violated by people who want to break into the country illegally. This “problem” grabbed the attention of the public after a small number of radio and television talk show hosts began to complain that our borders were letting in terrorists. Journalists like Bill O’Reilly began sounding the alarm a few years ago, demanding that our government secure the borders with U.S. troops, insisting that our country was being “invaded” from the south and that troops were required in order to stop it. Eventually, the politicians jumped on the bandwagon because Fox News ran story after story with video footage of these people being rounded up, throwing rocks at border agents, running across the desert, etc., all of this intended to show visually how real and massive is the problem. That most of this footage was the same footage repeated over and over was ignored.
(O'Reilly's main concern appears to be that so many people are coming in that they represent a threat to the white Anglo-Saxon majority and that is something that we cannot have in his view. Apparently, he thinks that all immigrants will be liberals and this would threaten the white power structure by upsetting laws, precedents and political institutions in favor of a different kind of government the nature of which he has not specified. His solution is to stop the flow of immigrants at a level that does not threaten the power structure. I find this argument ludicrous since many Hispanics are already today in leadership positions and you will find that politically they range across the spectrum from conservative to liberal. If I might be so bold, it might be a good thing that Hispanics are taking more leadership positions. Perhaps we can keep this country from becoming a dreadful socialist dictatorship. Perhaps, because so many of us came here for freedom, we might even save the Constitution. Yet, O'Reilly thinks that we should breach the Constitution by placing soldiers on the border, presumably under the premise that the Constitution requires the military to defend us against invasion and these people coming into the country represent an invasion.)
That it is unconstitutional to use U.S. troops when there is no actual military invasion of our country was ignored by O’Reilly and many of the right wing politicians who saw the issue as a way to win votes from a now outraged public. Eventually President Bush caved in, effectively diverting funds from the actual war in Iraq (In fact, we could be fighting the real terrorists where they really are instead of fighting them were they are not). The politicians jumped on the O’Reilly bandwagon and committed themselves to an anti-immigrant position that would later cause the defeat of many of them during the elections of 2006. (Blame it on O’Reilly) That most of the people coming over the border were after available jobs and that their labor was needed by the businesses that could not function without them was ignored. All of a sudden, we had an immigration problem and the problem was not terrorists, it was Mexicans. According to the new mantra that was repeatedly sent out by Fox News commentators, these people were violating the law; they were technically criminals who had little regard for our borders. The premise that they want to down play, that shows the utter illogic of their position, is that only racists would say, "if they are illegal, they should not be here." This position was the virus that is now sinking the right politically because the entire right is starting to look like racists even as they deny that they are racists and especially avoid discussing the question: "Well, then what would you do with these people if they should not be here?" The obvious answer is "deport them" but that is too hard and cruel a pill for the racists to swallow since the mask would fall and they would be exposed. Make no mistake about it, for them, Jim Crow has now become Jaime Marrόn.
Why this charge of violating the law suddenly became an issue, when it had not been an issue for decades, has to be considered. We have to understand what we are getting when we listen to people like Bill O’Reilly. We are not getting news; we are getting manufactured news, often trumped up in order to create headlines and thereby spur, not awareness on important issues, but invented issues that will drive advertising and viewers to Fox News. O’Reilly’s rants about national security are not news on an important issue; they are demagoguery trumping up an issue the effect of which creates a steamroller of public opinion that draws attention to O’Reilly. Of course we have an immigration problem, thinks O'Reilly, look at all the people coming across our border; who wouldn't think so? By broadcasting such a “problem” worldwide, O’Reilly knows that emails will fly, politicians will receive letters and other media personalities will pick up the story, sometimes controversy will lead to controversy and new issues are developed, many times out of a story that has merely been presented in a different and invented negative light. Rather than see these immigrants as job seekers or freedom lovers, they are defined as invaders who want to take advantage of our welfare services; they are now malefactors, criminals and drug pushers. Rather than have a benevolent view of the overwhelmingly good people coming over the border, O'Reilly sought to create a problem that needed national attention and drastic action. He convinces himself that he is fighting for some form of the good, such as national security, victims of crimes, etc., but you can be sure his rationalizations are intended to justify his fight for ratings. O'Reilly is not about news and real issues; he is about inventing issues that spur ratings. He is not a news journalist; he is an entertainer pretending to be a news journalist. He has the aura of a side show host screaming, "hurry, hurry, hurry, get your tickets right here."
News reportage, if it is serious reporting, is a major responsibility for a correspondent because of the huge megaphone that he has earned. If people are given false stories or are led by a story to over generalize about innocent people, then the reporter of the story is doing a disservice, not only to the public, but to the truth as well. The consequences for peoples’ lives can be highly negative, with lives and careers destroyed, hundreds, thousands, even millions of people being discriminated against, politicians writing bogus laws, and worst of all, elevating a non-problem into the national debate that ignores the real problems of our nation. The damage done by the O’Reilly brand of “journalism” on the issue of immigration is significant. Consider the millions of dollars being unnecessarily spent on more border guards, National Guard troops, military equipment and weapons, new technology, even a multi-million dollar fence that does nothing, will stop no one and harms our relationship with people that we need in order to move forward as a nation. Consider the damages being done to businesses that are now afraid to hire Mexicans (even “legal” ones), the damages done to American citizens of Hispanic descent in terms of discrimination, prejudice and sometimes even false deportations, the families split up, the detention camps that are being built and much more; all created by O’Reilly’s need to get ratings and advertisers.
That our nation is discriminating against a large number of Mexican and other Hispanics has been lost in the hysteria ginned up by O’Reilly and others. O’Reilly, seeing the racism that was being developed by this issue, particularly after hearing about the thousands of racist emails sent to Geraldo Rivera after the two men loudly and almost violently disagreed on this issue, has apparently decided to temper his remarks about Mexicans – only after the steamroller he has created is going along on its own power. I suspect that he realizes that the damage being done to our nation is his fault (and he is right to think so). Indeed, the anger he has generated has grown to the point that passage of a comprehensive immigration bill was defeated and U.S. agents began rounding up and deporting even American citizens who looked Mexican. Municipal and state governments are writing new laws to restrict undocumented workers and to eliminate services that they might have otherwise received. Anyone here without “papers” is considered a criminal and even legal Hispanics are feeling a cold chill everywhere they go. Even 'sanctuary' cities that protected these immigrants because they saw them as assets have begun reevaluating their policies.
The fact is that immigrants are coming to America because we have one of the best economies in the world. That means there are job opportunities here for people that want a better life. Yet, there is no efficient “legal” mechanism for them to come to the U.S. In a virtually full-employment economy, there is a need for more people because there is a growing demand for products and services of all kinds. Whether it is picking vegetables, bussing tables, cooking meals, processing meat, mowing lawns, etc., Americans are demanding that someone do these jobs. If there were no jobs, then fewer immigrants would come to this country.
One of the arguments of the demagogues is that we no longer have a nation of laws when we allow immigrants to cross our borders without applying for citizenship. They even go further to state that Mexicans coming across the border have no regard for our laws which means they are the type of people we don’t want because they cannot be trusted to live lawfully in this country. This is said about people who are giving us a compliment by wanting to be here. Is the principle of “obeying the law” so important that no matter what the law is we are supposed to obey it in order to have a nation of laws? What is the meaning of having a nation of laws?
Anyone can decide to pick a law that he wants to enforce and say we must have a society of laws. In fact, cynical politicians do it all the time. What if the law said, that every citizen had to pray to Allah every day at 2 PM? Would we say we have to obey the law in order to have a society of laws? Or what if a law said you have to pay five times more in taxes and that will mean you will starve. Would you cheat and break the law in order to survive? What if they implemented a ban on abortion? Would you obey the law if your future was at stake? After all, we have to have a society of laws. There are laws on the books in many states that require the most ridiculous things. Most of them are ignored by law enforcement because they are irrational laws. Why don't we dust off all those laws to make sure we have a society of laws? Who was it that said a bad law is no law at all? We need to get serious about what we decide to consider laws that we should enforce because then we'd not have enough policemen to enforce them all. They'd be working night and day enforcing some of the most stupid injunctions. And they would have no time to protect us against real criminals.
The idea of a nation of laws and not of men implies that objective laws should determine the relationships among people. It means that the laws apply equally to all men and that no one is considered better under the law. It also implies that the law makes sense, that violation of it is a real violation of an important right. Objective laws are based upon viable principles and the first of those principles is the idea that “all men are created equal.” When you have laws that distinguish between certain classes and groups and provide to some a position below or above others you have bad law. When you have laws that do not allow our nation to import needed workers at a rate that enables our economy to improve and to grow, you have bad law. Why should anyone have to wait in line to get into this country when we need them now? Why should anyone have to get to the “back of the line” when there should be no line?
Further, the idea that “all men are created equal” applies to all men, not just Americans. Equality is a universal truism; a recognition that each man on earth has the ability to think, use his mind, produce and become a citizen of a civilized country. Yet, we continue to treat immigrants as if they were less than second-class citizens, as if they were criminals and undesirable. A just nation recognizes that any person anywhere can exert his right to equality by choosing to live in a free nation. A just nation recognizes the universality of rights and tells the world that it is a nation of free people who want to be here not a nation of slaves that want out.
If you recognize, as did our Declaration of Independence, the following things:
"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them..." you are recognizing and asserting that you are asserting political and territorial independence, because of universal principles. You are affirming, not just that you are a sovereign nation but that you base that sovereignty on principles that apply to all men. You are saying that these principles inhere in the nature of reality, the nature of man and his need to live independently among independent men.
This is more than just an assertion of independence from another nation. This is an affirmation of universal principles; principles that apply to all men. This is totally new in the history of man and that is what makes our society different; makes us unique and makes us the greatest society to ever exist on the face of the earth. Universal principles are therefore the foundation, they are what established our society and the Declaration is our declaration that we intend to affirm these principles as a nation. In fact, that is why we were able to later rid our society of slavery and give equal rights to women. The foundation of our principles; that all men are created equal would not have been fought over if we had established a society based on religion or slavery or female inferiority. Our society, at its founding, committed itself to recognizing the universal equality of all men even though in practice that recognition was not yet complete.
The Declaration of Independence is our founding document, not the Constitution. It is the Declaration that established the fundamental principles which gave rise to the Bill of Rights and gave them a life of their own. As such the Declaration is every bit a legal document, in fact, it is the legal document of all legal documents since it affirms the foundation upon with all rights in the Constitution are founded and it is the foundation upon which any other nation that seeks to establish a proper government should be founded. It is the model of all models that gives authority to the Constitution and makes it possible. You would not have had a Bill of Rights without the Declaration of Independence establishing the principle that "all men are created equal."
This is why our society was so open to immigration in its early years, and why later the Statue of Liberty said ""Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" You could come here, be welcomed here, regardless of your status, your family history, your color, your religion. This society could absorb you because it did not consider you to be a slave, worthless, ignorant, etc., it considered you valuable because you were a human being and you had a right to live here because you had a right to live wherever you wanted to live; it was a universal principle that this is so. It was based upon a proper theory of human value. This was the first nation in history to recognize that important principle and it was the first to live that which it said it stood for.
Properly such a society does not have "citizens" who are here by virtue of a card or piece of paper. Anyone who wants to live here is a citizen because he is a free man and this is a country of free men. Anything that restricts that freedom to immigrate is not part of freedom...it is the opposite of freedom. And this is where we lost it; this is where collectivism crept into our fabric...when our nation began to restrict the freedom to immigrate because we didn't want certain "types"; we began to consider some people as undesirable and that was racism. That was the beginning of what we are doing today on the immigration issue.
Immigrants coming to a free country don't want social services...they want to work, to make it on their own because they know that the country will not create impediments to their success. They want a future for their children in a free country because they know that is the best kind of country for their children. The problem comes when we consider that our provision of social services to immigrants is a net loss to us...it is not, it cannot be...as long as we are free and people come here to enjoy the benefits of freedom. It is a net loss to us only if we make it impossible for people to work once they get here...as we are doing now. In fact, a "sanctuary city" is properly not about giving social services to immigrants...it is about offering open arms to people who want to be assets to society as did our Statue of Liberty. It says, we won't report you to (oppressive) authorities if you come here. We offer you the promise of a free society. It says we consider you an asset...so come here to work and join our melting pot...become a productive citizen.
Immigrants are a net plus for several reasons:
The economies of many of the communities that won't hire "illegals" are in a shambles, they can't hire enough people to pick the crops, which will raise food prices, lower the number of customers for businesses and even put some companies out of business simply because of a bigoted attitude toward immigrants, and pointedly, primarily Mexicans (undesirables). We need a sane policy that views immigrants, people that we need as a matter of our survival, as assets and even as our saviors because we will decline without them.
What caused this attitude toward immigrants? We got away from our founding principles: the idea that all men are created equal and that they have a right to be here if they want to be. Don't tell me that I'm not free to live here. I am and so are you...and so is anyone who wants to be here. It is a law of nature that determines and justifies that freedom. When we start counting citizens and separating out the non-citizens that is our downfall as a nation. Even from a practical point of view, if they can't find jobs when they get here, they will leave of their own free will. And more to the point, a rational policy is that every human being is a resource; energy resides in the individual and effort makes all the difference. People create their own jobs and their own flourishing when they want to work and take care of their families. A good society gives people the freedom to flourish...anyone who wants to flourish. Immigration restrictions are the equivalent of racial quotas and, as I'm sure you will recognize, racial quotas are racism.
In fact, there is a history of disobedience of bad laws and a justification in this country for violating bad laws. The people that drank whiskey during the prohibition era in the 1920s were violating the law because the law was wrong and unfair. The people who helped escaped slaves before the civil war were breaking the law. Soldiers, even today, when they disagree with an order that they think is immoral, will disobey that order. This is honorable disobedience.
The immigration laws of today are not appropriate for our situation. First of all, the immigration departments in our country are woefully under-staffed and poorly managed. They cannot handle the huge numbers of immigrants wanting to live here. The immigration laws are wrong because they do not account for the need of our country for manual labor. They are skewed to let in mostly professionals, presumably under the premise that we want people who are going to be productive citizens. However, these degreed people are not willing to do manual labor like picking crops and other such work. Even our own citizens, people of all ethnic groups, don't want to do it. Because of our immigration policies, we are not addressing the needs of our economy for people who will do the hard work that must be done. So if the immigration laws make it illegal for people to come in and do that manual labor, you have to conclude that the problem is with the laws, not the people violating the laws. You have to conclude that people seeking freedom and jobs will come here illegally and, well, we should thank them.
The “re-branding" by the media of undocumented immigrants as law breakers does nothing to solve the problem of how we are going to fill the jobs of this growing economy. And it does not solve another problem of our own making and that is the aging of America. How are we going to grow our tax base to pay for budget deficits, welfare programs and Social Security for the next few decades? A few years ago, I read that the reason the U.S. would continue to grow economically into the next few decades was because of our liberal immigration policies. This was before we wanted to build walls and keep people out. These immigrants coming into the country then were considered to be replenishing the labor needed to pay into the Social Security system and enable the government to take care of the “baby boomers” that would eventually retire. They were considered capable of production and a net plus to our country because without them we would not be able to continue improving our standard of living.
In fact, Europe is embroiled in this very problem. Because the European worker is also aging, there is no one to pay the taxes for the increasingly growing welfare programs in many of those countries. The people these countries are allowing in are not Mexicans; most are Middle easterners that don’t want to assimilate and they wind up on the welfare rolls. Because few of these people want to actually work, European economies and government services are strained. Here in the U.S., we also have an aging population of Americans who will need Social Security benefits when they get older. They paid into it and deserve it. And there won't be enough workers to support Social Security as these baby boomers age. This is the fault of our government in spending the Social Security funds that we all paid. If we don't do something about letting enough people into this country; young, healthy people who are willing to work and pay taxes, then we will be in the same position as Europe in a few years. I don't agree with social security and the welfare state. I think such programs are confiscatory and a violation of property rights, but until we can figure out how to eliminate them we have to have a sane immigration policy that lets in enough people who are young enough to become productive citizens long into the future.
A free market loses its ability to function if you destroy some of its vital elements; one of these elements is the free market for labor. No one will pick the tomatoes if we don't have enough immigrants here to pick them. That is a fact. You have no idea how many of these people work in the very industries that feed us. Those industries will collapse if we continue to make it impossible for people to come here and work. Understand what I'm saying: you won't eat and the industries that feed you won't be around.
Do you think these immigrants are living the high life working like they do all day? We should be worshipping these people for the back breaking work they do for pennies. They are saving our society and feeding us while we write nasty letters to the editor about them. Try getting this work done with convicts or homeless people or even the working poor and you won’t have enough people to do the work come harvest time; the food will rot in the fields.
The truth is that the media can focus its cameras anywhere but it seldom focuses on real lives wanting to have a better future. This should be what Fox News commentators and personalities should be discussing, not how many “criminals” are in the country. Yet, real news of that kind isn’t going to gin up enough moral outrage to attract advertisers. The method of deception by the media, especially O'Reilly, consists of identifying a problem and then using camera footage to make it appear that the problem is larger than it really is, then proclaiming an epidemic that threatens some value held by the American public. This has been done on the issue of immigration particularly regarding claims that Mexicans take up resources, that they are a net loss to our economy, that they refuse to speak English, that they hate America, etc. I merely ask, why are criticisms aimed at Mexicans mostly when a Cuban need only put his foot on the ground in Florida in order to be allowed into this country? Are Cubans better than Mexicans? Are they better than Nicaraguans? And if you think Mexican immigrants are rooted to Mexican pride, you have never been to Miami and seen Cuban pride. Go into virtually any ethnic neighborhood in this country and you still see signs of ethnic pride. Yet we smirk at Mexicans using the Mexican flag.
Another thing, let's get the history straight. If we are going to talk about the past, talk about all of it and talk about it truthfully. For instance, American treatment of immigrants has not always been the wonderful welcoming open arms that we are told today. Many of these other ethnic immigrants from the past were not welcomed at all but suffered significant, violent and cruel prejudice. Many of them had no skills and no education and came to America because they were outcasts in their own countries. Some of them were even criminals and had no place to go except jail in their home countries. Let's not re-write history here.
And, for those of you who don't know anything about history, there were even blacks and Hispanics fighting in World War I and II. My father, in particular, joined the U.S. Army and fought in Okinawa. One of the main reasons he did it was to protect his family and, hopefully, to get enough gratitude and recognition so he could eat in "white" restaurants. When he came back home proudly wearing his uniform, they still told him he could not eat there. Today, many young immigrant (non-citizen) Hispanics are joining the U.S. Armed Services and fighting along side of Americans in Iraq. Yet, many "talking heads" have challenged immigrants to serve in our Armed Services as if they were ungrateful and not there already.
Individual rights are the province of the free person. A free person has the right to live where he wants as a matter of right. He has the right to freedom of speech, freedom of property, the right to the pursuit of happiness, etc. That individual rights, when they are recognized by a just society, also accomplish economic benefits, is only an indication that such rights are good for man. And it is the individual rights of millions of Hispanic immigrants that are being violated by those who want to keep them out of this country for wanting to work.
Had the immigration “problem” been “framed” properly by O’Reilly, we would be encouraging more immigration as a matter of our own self-interest. We could then have identified the real culprits which are the current immigration laws and our inept government agencies. These institutions should be reviewed, changed and eliminated where appropriate.
Framing the Immigration Issue
To understand what I mean about the fallacy in which O’Reilly and the Right are engaged, let’s look at how the issue is framed by them and how this framing has influenced political opinion, political parties and practical action.
As the issue is framed now, undocumented immigrants are considered to have come into this country illegally. The fundamental frame is that they have broken into the country in violation of our laws and that this represents disrespect for the basic tenets of our country and for its laws. According to this frame, illegal people flaunt our laws and seek to take advantage of our generosity and openness by coming here without going through the immigration process. This “illegality” therefore should move us to decide to punish these people, to turn them in and offer them no services or jobs. According to the anti-immigration crowd, these people should be ostracized because they represent an issue of national security. The rationalization for this argument says that we need to secure our country first before we can make any other changes to our laws regarding immigration. This is, of course, the logical conclusion one would reach if one accepts the frame that the sole defining characteristic of these immigrants is that they are law breakers.
It is of paramount importance that the frame (basic principle) that guides our policies and actions be the appropriate one regarding any issue. The result of using the wrong frame on a critical issue is that related principles are in jeopardy of being misunderstood and mishandled. For instance, the idea that immigrants are illegal because they don’t comply with bad law, sets up the consequence that we must first ensure that immigrants are complying with this bad law before we can engage in any other solution. This leads to policies and practices that are very ugly when applied to the real world. Consider that according to law if a person is known to be in the country illegally he must be reported to immigration officials. Since there are millions of such people immigration officials are in the position where they do not have the human or technical resources to process and export this large number. In order to do this, many more people and computers are required and this is expensive. It also may lead to mass internment of millions of people which requires prisons and temporary incarceration of people. Once we have processed these people we cannot put them on buses or ships since there aren’t enough buses or ships to take them back to their homes. The only solution would be trains and this would be reminiscent of the forced migration of Jews in Germany.
The worst harm that this incorrect frame creates, of course, is that it destroys an important principle in our country; a principle that is one of the insignias of a free society and that is our openness to immigrants. It seems that because of 9/11, we have bunkered down into a protectionist attitude that sees people in other countries as potential killers, aliens who hate us and want to destroy us. That our country has been seen for decades as a haven for those that are not potential killers has been forgotten. That we have defended and assisted people in escaping oppression and tyranny is also forgotten. It is almost an emotional response to being hated and indeed it is understandable that many Americans would feel this way...but it is an irrational response. Because we Americans are good people, we have to understand that the haters want to destroy our strengths, both of our spirit and of our Constitution...and that should make us want to preserve that which they want to destroy, not help them destroy it.
Another casualty of this incorrect framing of immigration is that any politician who tries to have a policy based upon a different frame is immediately excoriated by the media and any rational solution to the “problem” of immigration is blocked. Instead of calling a “legalization process” rational, we call it “amnesty”, which most of the solutions offered to this date are not. The result is prejudice against people based on the way they look. Further, the massive round ups called for by some law enforcement people also capture legal immigrants, separate families, cause hunger and poverty and wipe out businesses that cannot otherwise find workers.
To counter the argument that our economy needs these people because it is growing, the incorrect frame on this issue requires that we come up with statistics that show these people are a net loss to our society which ignores the net gain to our society of immigrants (legal and illegal) in the past. We even tie immigrants to terrorists saying that terrorists can get into this country by means of hiding among these people in spite of the fact that most known terrorists got into this country legally. I wonder how close we will get to the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 where Chinese immigration was halted because “"in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities."
The consequences of framing this problem as one of “breaking the law” is an approach that turns our society from an open society into a closed one that will experience all of the negatives associated with past closed societies such as the Soviet Union, Communist China and others. These consequences are economic decline, racism and slavery. These are the only logical consequences of incorrectly framing the immigration of millions of people into our growing economy. In fact, because of this incorrect frame, we are creating more problems than we are “solving.” This framing was similar to Hitler’s “final solution” and the films that bring the images of deportation into our screen might come to us, not in grainy black and white, but in stunning High Definition.
If the media and other people like O’Reilly had framed the immigration issue in a different way then there might have been a better outcome. In my view, one must first establish a valid principle of human value before one can judge how people should be treated in society. A proper view of human value states that essentially man is good by nature and wants a good life; that governments should be instituted so that all men, as a matter of universal rights, can obtain and enjoy the fruits of their own labor. It holds that man survives by means of reason and that it is this ability to reason that other men should honor and protect through government. Once we give man the benefit of this proper principle, we can then foster a proper life in a proper society based upon laws that make it possible for each man to act in his self-interest. With this proper frame, we protect the rights of all men to live where they want because that principle is universally true of all men. Toward this purpose, we allow him to immigrate, to work, to educate himself and to prosper. When he honors us with his presence in our society, we are benefited from all the good things he can accomplish. If we see impediments that make the process of living difficult for people in our society then it is logical that we remove those impediments and give human living the possibility of flourishing. That is a sane policy.
It is a demagogue who comes into an issue like immigration and seeks to use it for his own agenda. He establishes the principle that a society of laws is more important than freedom regardless of whether the laws restrict human living or not. In O’Reilly’s case this is what we have. His demagoguery on this issue is a direct result of his desire to get high ratings for his shows and make millions of dollars through the sale of advertising. O’Reilly does what he does, not because he wants to be a responsible journalist, but because he benefits significantly from creating and framing issues in a way that creates controversy and conflict. Even worse, he takes both sides of the issue, claiming that he understands the desire of immigrants to have a better life while he also demagogues issues like “criminal illegals," using U.S. troops on the border and sanctuary cities.
Where honest commentators try to find fundamental issues and frame them objectively, people like O’Reilly will frame them in the most negative way by identifying clear villains and clear victims. This is why he always says he is “looking out for you.” But he is not looking out for anyone other than himself. He is all about collecting large advertising fees with his television and radio shows and selling large numbers of books, not by being objective but by framing issues in a way that draws attention to him. In fact, his scam is that he garners only the facts that support his view, ignoring the wider picture of a free country that is a melting pot of diverse people all coming to this country because they want individual rights. From his war on judges to his made up war on Christmas, O’Reilly has stoked the fires of controversy solely for himself – not for the sake of truth. Other demagogues make it an issue of “defending” America and take over the issue of patriotism, law and order and security, thereby destroying the meanings of these terms and creating a windfall of voters who have been duped. The concrete result of this framing? Real lives really devastated and economic loss to America. The long-term result is a less secure nation that has squandered it's money fighting freedom-seeking people rather than terrorists.
By starting with a proper principle of the need of people for freedom and prosperity, we can frame the problem of immigration differently. For instance, we start with the premise that people are good, that they work hard and that they want a better life, we don’t need to develop policies that restrict their lives; rather we have policies that give them the freedom to prosper. We assume immigrants are here to blend in, to earn a living, to learn about our culture and to make a positive contribution. We recognize that people are coming here because we are free and prosperous and they see an opportunity to enjoy that freedom and prosperity for themselves. This is consistent with the foundation of our country.
Let’s find the real reason for the so-called “illegal immigration” problem. If one were to do this, one would study the issue by considering all of the facts. One will study the immigration laws and ask some questions based upon a proper theory of human value, not upon prejudice and distrust. For instance, why should an immigrant have to prove that he wants to be here by studying for a year and answering 100 questions? Why can’t he just get about the work of becoming an American like many immigrants in the past have done?
A proper framing will require a study of the history of immigration to our country. One will notice that immigration has had a number of historical precedents, from periods of complete openness to periods of severe regulation of immigrants. Through out that history, immigration has for the most part contributed to the well being of our country and given people who have lived in poverty the opportunity to enrich their lives by means of hard work and assimilation. During some periods some of us have not liked the types of immigrants coming here so we segregated them, discriminated against them and made life harder for them. In other periods we openly welcomed immigrants and even extended voluntary charity to some of them.
The fact is, immigrants are a rich resource for our country. They bring diversity to our melting pot, new ideas and young people willing to work hard to build their own American dream. America is a country of hope, not one of fear and hatred and because it is unique in offering freedom to all, a unique type of hope is engendered among people who hear about how great it is to live and work in our country. This situation has come about because our founders understood that freedom would bring willing, hopeful and positive-living participants into the American story. They saw that this country would become a haven for those seeking a better life through hard work and property rights.
Presently, our immigration regulations are intended to accomplish the following goals according to the Congressional Budget Office:
“First, it serves to reunite families by admitting immigrants who already have family members living in the United States. Second, it seeks to admit workers with specific skills and to fill positions in occupations deemed to be experiencing labor shortages. Third, it attempts to provide a refuge for people who face the risk of political, racial, or religious persecution in their country of origin. Finally, it seeks to ensure diversity by providing admission to people from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States.”[1]
Notice that our immigration policy does not include the vital goal of ensuring our country is admitting enough people into our country to fill jobs that need to be filled. The second goal is close to filling labor shortages but it focuses primarily on people with skills rather than the need for manual labor. In fact, this issue does not appear to be important at all. Could it be that our immigration services are not focused on the correct priority? Certainly, ensuring that families are not split is important but when we need manual labor shouldn't our priority change? Don’t we have a labor shortage in our country right now? Isn’t that labor shortage the reason that we have so many undocumented workers here? Could it be that this omission in our immigration goals is creating big lines of unskilled or lesser skilled people who would never be allowed to come here legally though they are needed? In fact, many people from other countries come into our country to work, not always to immigrate. Some of them will realize that our society offers many advantages that their home country did not offer so they work here for years; their children are born here and they become Americans in spirit. But there is no immigration priority to handle these people. Yet, the conservative right asserts that to be illegal is to break the law and disrespect our society. Perhaps it is we who are disrespecting these people.
The media can frame this “problem” properly by drawing attention to the inadequacy of our immigration laws and the restrictions they place upon people wanting to live and work in our country. It can point out the problem as being caused by “us”. It would identify the needs of our economy for workers and it would advocate a solution that more quickly processes these people so they can come here.
Had the conservative right framed the issue properly as an issue of inadequate immigration policy, there would have been no controversy. Americans would have identified the key issues affecting our nation and our need for labor and they would have come up with rational solutions. And the new mainstream media that consists of Bill O’Reilly, and his Fox News friends would not have been able to make a poorly framed issue over immigration. Bill O’Reilly, in particular, would not have able been able to use yelling instead of logic to prove his point that we needed troops on the border and Sean Hannity and Cavuto would not have been able to say, “But they are ‘illegal.’ They should not be here.” And Ms. Malkin would not be able to recommend that Americans snitch on so-called "illegals."
At the present time, even the Democrats have been caught in this trap set by Fox News and the right. When they debated recently and learned that middle America had accepted the “breaking the law” frame wholesale, they scrambled from their previously immigrant-friendly position to one approximating the conservative position – which created a serious problem for the leading candidates who wanted to pander to Hispanic voters. Now, if they say or do anything to bring some sanity to the issue, the media draws attention to it. So they are trying to decide whether they should accept the right’s mantra: “But they are ‘illegal.’ They should not be here.” Millions of votes hang in the balance.
The conservative right frame ignores whole areas of knowledge such as the knowledge that immigration is good for our country no matter the time, that immigrants want to assimilate (really they do) and that ethnic pride can only be exacerbated by the society that does not welcome people and forces them to the fringes and the ghettos. The right-wing frame sets up a scapegoat that we can blame for all kinds of made up problems such as criminality, economic decline, ethnic divisions and terrorism. We have stooped to the practice of treating people that want to come here for freedom and jobs to fourth class status, no freedom and no jobs.
The truth is, there is no such thing as an “illegal” person. Recently, O'Reilly did a segment with Megyn Kelly where she described an "illegal" alien in New York who had sued the government for violating his Constitutional rights. When Ms Kelly pointed out that he was suing under the Constitution, O'Reilly exclaimed that he didn't think "illegals" had Constitutional rights. Ms Kelly averred that indeed they had such rights whereupon I wrote the following to Mr. O'Reilly by email:
In fact, only acts can be considered illegal. Each person, objectively, is a sovereign with rights. To claim that a person is “illegal” is to denigrate the individual and to proclaim that rights are not universal, that they apply selectively and are politically conferred. The loss of sovereignty by one individual means the loss of sovereignty by all. No one can be secure in his citizenship when citizenship is considered a privilege. According to this faulty reasoning, as long as there is an “illegal” in your family history, you have no right to be here. How many generations do you go back?
The immigration laws are wrong and it is disingenuous to say that because Mexicans, of all people, don't follow the law we should punish them and call them parasites. Immigration laws are not being enforced because they are unenforceable. To make them enforceable would require a massive government bureaucracy that shuts down all immigration and reduces the number of people coming to this country straight out. Notice, there is no call by most politicians for a sane immigration policy. They merely want to stop immigrants from coming into this country. Whenever you hear "we should enforce the immigration laws" you can bet that this politician is either uninformed, a demagogue or a racist. Listen to these people and you will see that there are other “laws” they would like to enforce (that are unenforceable) and you will get an idea of the kind of society they want for us. Look at their intentions to punish businesses that hire “illegals,” or to punish women for wanting abortions, or to disenfranchise people who don't accept The Ten Commandments in our public buildings and you will see that enforcing unenforceable laws is what they are all about.
If we want to resolve this immigration issue we should recognize that the issue is about a society of proper laws and the real solution is to develop a fair immigration policy for people that want to come here and work. We do not need troops, a massive immigration bureaucracy or even a fence. We should get back to the basic principle that “all men are created equal” and we should live up to the charter that we created that made us the greatest and most rational society in the history of the world.
In some periods of our past, immigrants were viewed as assets, sovereign individuals, not law breakers. That is when America was America, not now when we ask a person how many degrees he holds before we consider him for citizenship. Yet, the uneducated immigrant was the seed that brought us some of our most distinguished and accomplished citizens. His hard work led him to a better life and eventually he left the fields and the back breaking work for a Teamster job or a university post and citizenship. The honored guest became a fellow American. He was often replaced in the fields by a new seed of Americanism from another country.
Recently, a judge ruled that a local bust of day laborers was a racist act because the arresting officers just looked the skin color of a group of people and assumed that they were illegal. In my opinion, we are a country confused about who our enemies are. Today, when terrorists are doctors and have valid visas, we look at “illegals” and attempt to make life more difficult for them. What does that accomplish? How does that make us free or even secure? How many troops do we need on each border in order to keep these people from crossing? And will that really stop a terrorist from getting in when we have an immigration policy that is so inept and so inefficient that we can’t even stop terrorists from coming in legally?
Is it possible that something has gone wrong here? Is it possible that our insecurity after 9/11 has pushed us beyond rationality and that we are becoming paranoid? Yes, there is a threat to our national security but is that threat solved by jailing Mexicans, building fences, hiring border guards, installing cameras and putting people in refurbished prisons? Isn’t that what our real enemies want, for us to take our own freedoms away from ourselves so they don’t have to do it? Isn’t the destruction of our values what our enemies seek?
It takes courage to see unfairness and disagree with demagogues trying to steamroll opinion in favor of their own agendas. The key to understanding what is going on with the immigration issue is to understand that over generalization about the character of individuals is wrong. Over generalization is committed when you look at some individuals and assume bad things about them as members of a group you don’t like. Are they legal? Many are U.S. citizens. Are they criminals? Only a small percentage of them are criminals, a smaller percentage than the general populace in the US. Do they have allegiance to the U.S.? Some of them carry Mexican flags (and so do people of other groups). Are they terrorists? They have done nothing to indicate that they are. Are they on welfare? How can you tell by looking? Indeed, the proper thing to say to people like O'Reilly, Hannity, Malkin and others is "Have you no shame? Do you intend to turn our society into a fascist state merely for the sake of having said that you did it?" Indeed, one has to think that they are in denial about what they actually advocate as the political solution for a problem that they have invented. Roger Aisles apparently has no shame either for letting them run roughshod over the only Network that has the promise of providing a real alternative to the liberal propaganda arms in the media.
The fact of the matter is that Bill O'Reilly and his Fox News compadres are the mainstream media. They have successfully complained about the monopoly of the left and now have the ears of most of America. They can now do the things the mainstream media did in it worst days of dictating moral standards, inventing the news, skewing opinion, creating scandals, etc. They are the new monopoly and, well, they are just like those people they have displaced. If they can create a story and get higher ratings all they have to do is rationalize it and convince themselves that they only rely on facts. That the facts are only those selected for the sake of the story and the agenda is irrelevant to them. To paraphrase one of their predecessors, the news is what they say it is.
The real issue here is that individual rights are universal and ours is the first society that identified and recognized universal rights. Our Declaration of Independence says “All men are created equal...” Having a policy that treats some people as unequal is a violation of our basic principles. Rights, when they are applied to all human beings acknowledge the right of each individual to live where he wants; he should be welcomed into the melting pot because coming here is a compliment to us; that we have the best and freest country that is worth living in. We are all threatened by some of the draconian "solutions" to the immigration issue that are being contemplated as of this writing. Building fences and putting troops on our borders are defensive, weak approaches to a real threat. We need to be on the offense against terrorists. They are in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Europe and some of them are here. We should stop wasting resources at our borders and use those resources to defeat our enemies where they are. We should stop building fences to keep freedom-seeking immigrants out and start building deterrents that keep criminals and terrorists out.
We need a rational, long-term solution to immigration that helps us solve real problems. A rational immigration policy does not build a needless bureaucracy that makes life harder for people seeking freedom; a rational policy creates more freedom and leaves people alone to live and prosper. Once we realize that freedom and individual rights are what make our country great, and that these principles are why we are hated around the world, we should be able to identify our real enemies (here and abroad) and take them out.
First, we should recognize that we need immigrants in our country to improve our society. Secondly, we should acknowledge the disservice we have done to this particular crop of immigrants in violating their individual rights. Thirdly, we should provide a positive mechanism that will enable those that want to work here to find those opportunities. We need a real overhaul of our immigration laws and agencies so we can ensure our national security while still inviting and welcoming people who want, as a matter of individual rights, to join the melting pot. We should reject the national hostility ginned up by O’Reilly and his crowd. And we should welcome those people who would do anything to escape the drudgery of bad societies in order to find freedom and the promise of a better life in the United States of America.
[1] Immigration Policy in the United States, February 2006 by Congressional Budget Office, http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/70xx/doc7051/02-28-Immigration.pdf
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