Immigration Explained

January 23rd, 2008 at 07:20pm Michael Conniff 2

This letter on immigration arrived in the Con Man's mailbox:

During World War II there were few men at home, and men were needed for farm labor. So the United States imported Mexicans. They were just south of the border, and it seemed very practical. So they legally contracted Mexicans to do a certain job at a certain ranch for a guaranteed wage, and these legal laborers came to be known as "braceros", arms, and between 1941 and 1944 fifty-five thousand were imported.

Then after the war, having a taste of this good cheap labor, the farmers and ranchers of the southwest U.S sent lobbyist to Washington to say they needed this cheap labor. There were no Americans willing to do this back-breaking stoop labor. And so a few Mexican-Americans, Okies, Arkies and Philipinos, who had done this farm labor before the war, were forgotten and the importation of braceros was extended for a few more years, and it became a big business. Huge? One hundred thousand were imported that first year so by 1954 more than four hundred thousand were being imported yearly, and god only knows how many wetbacks, illegal braceros, came across the border a la brava .

At the time it was the dream of every young peasant man in Mexico to come north and make his fortune, and in Mexico many farms were forgotten, as the strong young men came north. Legal or illegal did not matter. Hell, the American Dollar was the god of the earth...

In 1963 the bracero program was stopped by the U.S congress. And a drive to deport Mexicans, like the huge "Operation Wetback" of the 1950's, began….

And so one of the largest but least known migrations of men was stopped....

But not really, for Mexicans had always been coming and going across the border for centuries and so it now simply went underground and got much worse. 
Victor Villaseñor, from his book "Macho"

In 1986 President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA).The act made it Illegal to knowingly hire illegal immigrants and required employers to attest to their employees’ immigration status, and granted amnesty to approximately 3 million illegal immigrants who entered the U.S prior to January 1st, 1982 and lived here continuously. Upon signing the act Reagan said, “The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans.” And many of us did.  However critics of this reform claim it failed to stop illegal immigration because the laws subjecting employers to sanctions were not enforced. Yes, in part, because the root of the illegal exodus of people from Mexico, Central and South America is the economic situations in these countries, situations that were supposed to be improved through corporate initiatives like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Instead these trade agreements only served as an incentive for these governments to maintain low wages.

In the case of Mexico NAFTA only benefited the U.S and Mexican elites meanwhile it did nothing to improve the lives of the average Mexican worker whose average wage was reduced by a 20% in the first 5 years of its implementation. Near the end of the year 2006 (Vicente Fox’s last year in office) a report came out, stating that one of Fox’s greatest accomplishments was the stability of the Mexican macro economy. According to figures from official documents, direct foreign investment in Mexico grew by a 60% in comparison to the previous government, which would put Mexico in the second attraction of foreign capital among emerging countries above Brazil and only under China. Those figures are irrelevant to the average Mexican, whose poor purchasing power and unsteady employment constitute Mexico’s every-day reality: Which explains the exodus of more than four million Mexicans during Fox’s six year term in office.
 
Illegal Immigration in particular of people from countries south of the border is partly due to corporate-run U.S government foreign policy. Foreign investment in these countries is ultimately driven by cheap labor. This type of foreign investment is great for Latin American elites who profit huge from leasing and selling of properties and dozens of other business deals they regularly manage to secure, yet while the macro economy of these countries booms the cost of living increases and the poor/uneducated have less access to a decent living wage, education and medical healthcare. And in many cases the only ways to overcome poverty for people under these circumstances are often through criminal activities or risking everything coming up north illegally to work honestly (as ironic as that sounds), the latter benefits the U.S in many ways, for example production, illegal immigrants have the need to work and are in constant fear of deportation, so they work as much as they can with out complaining, also billions of unclaimed taxes go to the federal government every year, and once here and working immigrants are one of the largest consumer groups (stable sales-tax revenues can attest to that). And for instance in Mexico the families of these immigrants depend on U.S wages with which they then are able to consume many of the U.S imported products that circulate in the Mexican market (Mexico is the second importer of U.S goods).These are just small examples of how this wink-wink situation works and why illegal immigrants are not being deported in masses like the hard-liners would want.
 
The truth is that the average American is more affected by the current overseas conflicts than by illegal immigration. The majority of immigrants do not come here to exploit the welfare system, suck the economy dry, invade and destroy American society as a lot of anti-immigrant critics have expressed. No we come here to work thus improve our lives and secure a brighter future for our children. The majority of us immigrants value the fact that in this country hard work has its rewards and we tend to be productive, law-abiding members of our communities (Yes! Law-Abiding) and have been for years.
 
An enforcement-only immigration policy will not work because being poor in the U.S and being poor in Latin America are two worlds apart, when driven by the instinct of survival human beings are capable of overcoming the most difficult obstacles and the exploitation would only worsen.

A realistic and viable solution to the excessive illegal immigration problem is an immigration reform that includes besides real enforcement of employer sanctions and border security a flexible guest worker program, the opportunity for those who qualify to become legal residents and most important the engagement of the U.S government through its hundreds of companies operating in Mexico in creating more just wages in the interest of U.S citizens.  

Entry Filed under: Immigration, Colorado, Con Games, Pitkin County, Garfield County, Eagle County, The West, United Post