Both Oars In Right to work, not crime

May 7, 2010

It is true that our country has experienced nothing but economic growth and positive cultural diversification with the arrival of each wave of immigrants from around the world. This should give us the confidence to pause for a moment in the debate over immigration and realize that, in the long-term, we have nothing to fear but xenophobia itself. Immigration is, and always has been, a net positive for our country.

We must also keep in mind that, unless we have no bellybutton and live in a paradisiacal garden, we are likely from families who have migrated for the same purpose people are coming to the U.S. today. Furthermore, we must acknowledge that the percentage of newly arrived people in the U.S. today is about half of what it was in 1900. We can be confident that we still have the space, and the economy, to support and integrate the inflow of people seeking refuge within our borders.

On the other hand, we cannot ignore the fact that, at the moment, illicit immigration has inadvertently contributed to an increase in human trafficking, drug smuggling, and violence, especially along the Mexican border. It is reasonable to be concerned about this and to ask for more vigilant patrolling of the border and severe punishment of those criminals who prey on migrants, especially those who are most vulnerable to exploitation due to their undocumented status. Certainly, we should do everything legally possible to stop those who profit from trafficking humans. 

What we cannot do is indiscriminately mix the migrant looking for work necessary for survival with the criminal, miscreant profiteer who seeks to exploit the opportunity created by the current inadequate access to legal entry into the United States. There is a vast difference between a criminal and a person who crosses the border illicitly to seek work. For one, the worker, providing affordable labor to our agricultural, manufacturing, and service industries, is invited - if not explicitly, then implicitly- by the demands of our economy.

We may disagree about the exact nature of the invitation, but there is no denying that our economy requires migrant labor to churn. This is why raids are conducted not in apartment buildings but in factories, where undocumented workers are most likely to be found. Migrants, legal or otherwise, come here to work. But, they are needed here for work. Reagan understood this and so has every president since. Hollywood does as well, ergo “A Day Without A Mexican.”  

It is quite possible that the real culprit behind the run-up on violence is not the migrant himself but our antiquated immigration policy. Cardinal Mahony hit this point well in his March 19th Washington Post editorial by stating, “Our legal immigration system, basically ignored by Congress for nearly 50 years, is so outmoded and inadequate…There are simply not enough visas for unskilled workers to come legally.” In essence, it is the lack of sufficient legal access that produces the crime, not the demand for workers or the migrants themselves.

I applaud Cardinal Mahony for stepping forward to remind us that the majority of the people caught up in the immigration battle are decent people fighting to survive. The Catholic Church’s strident defense of the migrant’s right to seek work is based in the right to life. For the poor, no work means no life. It is as simple as that.

My gut and experience tells me that the poverty in our hemisphere will not disappear until we open the borders a bit more. We can have doctors without borders, engineers without borders and so on, but, until we have countries without borders, the poor of our hemisphere will be trapped. They will remain sitting with much to give and no job through which to give it. Those who do not want to sit idle will run for the border. Their good intentions will continue to feed the crime machine that has developed around the illicit migration of workers who seek to escape poverty. 

No single state or single law will put an end to the shocking reports of the nightmarish stash houses, twisted versions of the safe houses along the Freedom Trail of old, or the violence, drugs and abuse found strewn along the migrant trail from just south of the border to the various work destinations in the US. For the migrant, we need improved immigration law. We need laws that allow the easy and legal flow of workers into the US. Laws that allow families to stay together and migrants to receive the social services their labor helps support. For the criminal, we need focused laws that punish the perpetrator, not the victim.