A good sign of a weak argument is the presence of a "straw man," which is used to pigeonhole and discredit the opposition. It is far easier to eviscerate a shallow caricature of the other position than to confront its substance. So it is when the White House labels its opponents "the cut 'n' run crowd," so it is when callous politicians cut social services for "welfare queens" and so it is when the bullies of the open-borders crowd brand immigration restrictionists as "nativist" and "racist."
Although Michal Zapendowski '07 ("The Mexican-American War," Oct. 4) stops mercifully short of those ugly words, indicting "white" Americans for "ignorance," "fear," "prejudice" and "Homer Simpson's values," implied that these are the primary reasons for supporting measures to limit immigration, including the 700-mile fence recently approved by Congress. This suggestion is no less unfair or destructive to civil discourse than the accusation that pro-immigration forces support the "Reconquista" seizure of the Southwest advocated by radical Chicano nationalists. In truth, taking a restrictionist position is at least as compatible with a progressive, pro-minority agenda as the alternative.
Tempting as it may be to our liberal desire for diversity, allowing the present immigration crisis to continue - or worse, exacerbating it with some amnesty scheme - is a disastrously shortsighted plan that will disproportionately impact our most disadvantaged and vulnerable populations and dampen prospects for holistic and sustainable reforms to improve and ensure quality of life on both sides of the border.
One common argument of open-borders advocates is that Mexico is a poor country that needs American wealth to survive. In fact, Mexico is a relatively wealthy nation with a severe income inequality problem maintained by rampant corruption and the unfettered self-interest of the tiny ultra-rich Mexican elite.
Illegal immigrants obviously benefit from entering the United States, but they also inadvertently relieve domestic pressure on Mexico's oligarchs to invest their vast fortunes in employment and infrastructure for all Mexicans. Worse, the remittances immigrants understandably send back to their families have become Mexico's second largest source of foreign capital after oil - meaning that via taxation the corrupt leadership actually manages to turn a profit by perpetuating terrible structures of inequality in its society. No wonder the Mexican government prints instructional comic books encouraging citizens to leave their own country.
What happens when illegal immigrants reach the United States? They benefit, but their employers - especially those in the agriculture and food service industries - profit even more. Rather than meet the fair market wages that Americans demand for these jobs, unscrupulous employers exploit the crowded labor pool to dispense artificially depressed rates of pay. More Americans are thus forced to subsist on the meager minimum wage. Unintentionally, then, illegal immigrants become what organized labor once called "scabs."
Many correctly argue that illegal immigrants' presence creates jobs and broadens the nation's consumer base, but, unfortunately, neither is enough to offset the harm inflicted on the American working class. Studies by Harvard University economist George Borjas conclusively demonstrate that immigration from Mexico has adversely affected the earnings of less-educated American workers since at least 1980, while Mexican immigrants' wages have declined relative to the population at large for decades. The incomes of privileged Americans, including policymakers and much of the student body at a school like Brown, have essentially increased because illegal immigration reduces the costs of various expenses. But struggling American workers already reeling from computerization and outsourcing find that such savings fail to compensate for their declining income.
As much as certain activists agitate for a collective "third world" minority consciousness and agenda, the sad truth is that black Americans, who are disproportionately concentrated in the lower classes, suffer most from illegal immigration. In their landmark study of the Los Angeles labor market, sociologists Roger Waldinger and Michael Lichter found that blacks, already suffering from systemic disadvantage and pervasive racism, are edged out of increasingly scarce good-paying jobs by immigrants who are less familiar with their legal rights, willing to work for lower wages, more culturally accustomed to long hours of demeaning work and who are perceived as having "better values" than blacks. Employers then claim that native workers don't even want many jobs in the first place, thus conveniently weaseling out of acknowledging or confronting the tragic legacy of institutionalized discrimination against blacks. Similarly, such an argument ignores other historical inequities based on religious, ethnic and class prejudice.
Those who argue that the United States, as a wealthy nation, should open its borders to illegal immigrants fail to recognize (or, in some cases, care) that most of the burden will fall on America's least advantaged citizens, especially our current minority population. Casting a blind eye towards their struggle in the ideological pursuit of open borders is no less racist than any of Zapendowski's "white Arizonans (who) tote shotguns." The responsible, truly progressive policy stance is to halt the present exploitative system and work towards ways of empowering Mexican citizens in Mexico without increasing the obstacles faced by America's lower classes.
Jesse Adams '07 is searchin' for the ghost of Tom Joad.
