In the last column I wrote for WSN, I said:
But I can think of everyone as human, with emotions like my own. It’s all right to look at the big picture, but never lose focus of the small ones: the illegal immigrant who would rather die than face deportation because his family depends on the American dollars he sends home; the biology student who experiments on mice to avenge the disease that killed his mother; the homosexual who wants society to recognize his equality, whether it offends a Republican’s broken marriage or not. Doing that gets you pretty damn close to truth, I think. And you can never go wrong criticizing those who refuse to think on a human scale, people who think in manifestos, philosophies and religions rather than blood, sweat and tears.
I think the NYU College Republicans should start thinking about people before policy.
Illegal immigration, at a macro level, could be harmful. It has the potential to depress wages, yes, and we all know that immigrants are the main source of bird SARS outbreaks.
But zoom in for a minute. Imagine that you live in an impoverished country. (To clarify, I’m not writing about Mexico, specifically. In their original Facebook posting, the College Republicans seemed to imply that the immigrant to be “caught” would be Mexican. That’s why the event was racist.) Abysmal wages paid in U.S. currency will feed your kid and send him to a decent school. You might clean floors at Wal-Mart or harvest fruit for 12 hours a day — it’s a sacrifice. And, yes, it’s illegal. But the illegal migration of a single person has no effect on the American economy. To that person, migrating illegally entails choosing between the well-being of his/her family or protecting College Republicans against an abstract fear. I know what choice I would make. Do you?
On the 2/22 WSN news article about the event, Matthew R comments,
The people who enter this country illegally are not handleing themselves with any “class or dignity”(reference to above post), if they had any, they would go through the proper channels to enter & remain in this country legally. There are laws on the books for reasons, and if you don’t like the laws, there are proper means to have them changed, but according to the laws of this Nation, illegals are just that; breaking the law, and should be sent home, or put in jail for their crime.
To me, it’s insane to expect people to respect the “proper channels” over the well-being of their family or their personal happiness. You’re preserving legality at the cost of morality. People will migrate illegally until there’s no longer incentive for them to do so.
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Mike, this is valid and heartfelt, but as a policy statement, I think it has problems.
First, I’ve got to grant you a something:
I, for one, think a retort to the wage-depression argument is that Americans wouldn’t do the jobs immigrants do even if the immigrants weren’t there. I don’t think it’s an issue of “they’re taking our jobs” - the jobs they take wouldn’t be taken otherwise.
The problem I see is that making immigration policy from the point of view of a single person is untenable. What would happen if we made other policy like this? Take people who are actually U.S. citizens, for instance. We recognize that individuals have certain hardships, but we also recognize that we can’t cater to their each and every need because that’s unsustainable on a macro-level.
On the immigration question, there needs to be a compromise between U.S. citizens and non-citizens. We have to make some kind of demand on people who want to become U.S. citizens, or else citizenship means nothing.
On the other hand if immigrants just want to work and make money, and don’t consider themselves Americans (I’ve noted that this is substantially the case) thats fine, too. Institute a guest worker program.
I think the biggest reason large numbers of Americans are concerned about illegal immigration (and they are - it isn’t just wacky right-wingers who have a problem with this) are so because they’re afraid that immigrants aren’t assimilating. They’re afraid immigrants aren’t becoming Americans, and are instead forming enclaves of foreign nationalism.
Personally, I share this particular concern only half-heartedly, but I still understand it. I do think that certain immigrant groups are taking longer to assimilate into American culture today than other groups have in the past, but I have little doubt that they will become Americans eventually.
The pressing question is, can we adapt our policies to accommodate all the immigrants, and make sure they become Americans? We have in the past, but not by throwing up our arms and saying there’s nothing we can do.
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