D  e  s  e  r  t   E  x  p  o  s  u  r  e        January 2008

The A-Word

The border crackdown needs to be accompanied by a legalization process — amnesty — for those already here.

Anybody who isn't confused about border issues once in a while isn't being honest. The whole subject is a can of worms. It's a thicket of issues replete with ironies. These issues often bend back on themselves, or turn in spirals.

For example, people who sympathize with Mexican farmworkers and the way they're exploited tend to sympathize with undocumented border crossers. But the Border Agricultural Workers' Union (UTAF in its Spanish acronym) in El Paso has for a long time urged stronger policing of the border because illegal immigrants crowd the chile fields and push down wages.

These people were proved right last year when the relative absence of illegal workers did, in fact, drive up the price per bucket. (It made one elderly gentleman in Hatch laugh last fall when I asked him how long the price per bucket of chile had remained the same — it's been something like 25 years.)

When I hear about the number of border crossers being reduced because of increased vigilance by the migra, I admit I feel as if a wound is being staunched — the "wound" that is the border, as many people describe it. It's a relief that at least locally the number of deaths of border crossers has gone way down. Some of the bleeding of the wound has been staunched.

Obeying the law brings a feeling of intactness, and breaking it brings a loss of control. This is true even though the closing of the border and the deportations bring great hardship to thousands of people, people I've spoken to face to face and care about. I'm not comfortable about this contradiction. I feel like creating a giant funnel or pipeline across the border to bring food to these people.

But I also had tears spring to my eyes when I read about President Bush's proposed "Z-card" or "Z-visa." This would be a temporary ID given to working immigrants who've passed through a probationary period, and would be the first step in a path to citizenship. It would be such a relief to so many people.

Bush has always talked about the need both for tightening the border and also for creating a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants. Though I vote Democrat, I've agreed with Bush when he talks about his plans for the border. The problem lies in the fact that the border-tightening is being done and the legalization of workers isn't.

A process of legalization is so important for those crossing the border to work in the fields or wherever, so they won't have to pass through the extraordinarily difficult obstacle course (through hell and high water, literally) to get to the jobs that Americans pay them to do.

But the way public opinion is running these days, I have doubts that a legalization process will happen soon. The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson ran a story about an illegal border crosser on Thanksgiving who came across a nine-year-old boy who'd been in a car accident with his mother. The mother eventually died. The man gave the boy his jacket and built a fire as night fell, and in the morning he went and found help, probably saving the boy's life. The border crosser allowed the migra to send him home to Sonora, Mexico.

The ghastly thing about this story is that the overwhelming majority of letters to the editor about it were negative, claiming that liberals were trying to make this man into a hero and referring to the paper as the Red Star. There are lots of these letter writers, and they appear to be well-organized.

There have been demonstrations in Phoenix recently by Latinos protesting US immigration policy. They've been harassed by Minutemen chanting things like "Born in the USA! KKK!" When a trio of Mexican singers strolled through the crowd, a Minuteman with a bullhorn shouted, "Make way for monkeys!"

I've worked with Mexicans, both legal and illegal, in the chile processors in Deming and a bit in the fields, and it strikes me that there's a lot less hatred by Mexicans toward Americans than vice versa. They aren't spending time either envying or hating Americans. They live in their own world and have little contact with Anglos, They just have fun and work hard.

A path toward citizenship for illegal workers is not just a matter of "rewarding illegality," as understandable as that attitude may be coming from anybody who respects the concept of law. Something like the proposed Z-card is needed to correct a serious maladjustment in the labor situation, partly caused by the inability of the US to fulfill its own quotas for the acceptance of foreign workers. It's estimated that only a third of the yearly quotas are filled because of the very long process one has to go through to apply. I've talked to a farmworker in Hatch who said it took him five years to bring his wife here.

A legalization process is also a necessity for logistical reasons. All you have to do is stop and think for one minute what it would take to get rid of the 10 million or so illegal immigrants working in the US. How many trains and buses and army trucks and airplanes and ships would it take to transport them? For this reason alone — the fact that it would be impossible — there has to be an amnesty program. It's the only way to bring a state of law.

And you have to think of all the rights violations that would come in the wake of such a witch hunt. There are already Latinos being taken away at night by policemen. In Long Island on Sept. 27, in a raid on supposed drug dealers in several houses, only one of the 11 Central Americans arrested and put in jail was involved in the drug trade. In Chaparral, NM, and a few nearby towns in early September policemen entered Mexican immigrants' homes on false premises, such as saying they were responding to a 911 call, and then had the people deported.

Think also of the effect that a mass deportation would have on the US economy, which depends to such a large extent on the cheap labor of immigrants, mostly Mexican.

And besides all these reasons, there is the fact that these immigrants are working hard for low wages in conditions that are often sub-standard. There ought to be more respect for them, and concern for the way their labor rights are neglected.

There needs to be a legalization process for illegal immigrants. Amnesty is not a dirty word. It's a de facto necessity.