The Chris Moeller Archives

Death in the desert

Tonight's "60 Minutes" piece, Dying To Get In, ably demonstrated why the current immigration policy on the U.S./Mexico border is failing us, and why "get tough" crackdowns and wall constructions along the border would only serve to further damage the situation.

Our economy, as well as Mexico's, would be strengthened, and needless deaths would be avoided, if we, once and for all, get serious about cracking down on unethical businesses that hire undocumented workers, such as the Iowa and Nebraska meat packing plants discussed on the show. All employees should have to present documentation for being in the country upon their hiring-- period. When illegal hirings were targeted by law enforcement at these plants seven years ago, 3,500 people fled the meatpacking industry in Nebraska within just 30 days.

I support the liberal issuance of such documentation, work visas or the like, to Mexican immigrants or visitors. The work ethic and initiative demonstrated by recent immigrants are-- and have always been-- the lifeblood of this country's economic and cultural growth. It is racism and xenophobia, only, fueling the argument that the immigrants' presence drains our economy. Corporate cheats doling out slave wages and benefits, here and abroad, drain our economy.

An open border between the U.S. and Mexico would raise the standard of living in both countries, but only if the policy is coupled with employment guidelines that protect workers on both sides of the line. That means-- a minimum wage in this country that is also a livable wage for U.S. citizens. No more five or six dollar-an-hour bullshit. That shameful minimum standard has wreaked havoc for two decades. Americans can't live on that salary, let alone raise a family on it. They're working longer hours and for less each year. Mexicans can profit from that wage, but only if they take their payment back across the border. The mixed signal we're sending to them, as the show's immigration expert explained, is that they shouldn't legally cross the borders, but if they successfully circumvent the bracing heat and potentially-poisonous terrain of the southwestern desert, they're home free.

Building security walls has only exacerbated the problem. As Border Patrol agent Mark Reed told Ed Bradley, fortification encourages more people to enter (now an estimated 500,000 a year.) They bring their entire families with them because they can't pass back across legally or safely. They estimate that twice as many Mexicans are now crossing the border, even as it has been tightened since 9-11. This seems counter-intuitive, perhaps, but the facts seem to be universally acknowledged.

Beefing our own labor laws to protect both American and visiting workers is the simple and ethical solution. Documented aliens would still have a right to work, but under a fair competition for jobs. Let's begin with a full repeal of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Labor Act that obstructs the formation of new unions and restricts the efforts of existing ones. Ending tax breaks that allow companies to export jobs overseas, loot the Treasury, and employ foreign manufacturing workers at slave wages would do as much as anything to create more well-paying jobs for the pool of workers in the U.S., and it would drive up the standard of living for the bottom 99 percent of all wage-earners in the northern part of the hemisphere.

The loudest argument for a border barricade is also the biggest red herring. Terrorists are simply not crossing the Mexican border. The Border Patrol has tallied 1.1 million arrests this year, and none of the arrests have been of suspected terrorists-- "Islamo-fascist" or otherwise. We flatter ourselves to think that they have to come in through Mexico, anyway. If we're worried that the mountain regions of our southern border are too porous, than why not the same region of our northern border? I contend the only reason is racism. It's not the arrival of Muslim fundamentalists many of us fear, but the arrival of dark-skinned peoples from Latin America. Mexico has been a good fucking neighbor to the United States, to say the least-- peaceful and fair, and the prevalent mindset that their people dilute our standard of living or our safety, when the statistics prove otherwise, is shameful.

Furthermore, if we're zero for 1.1 million in our pursuit of terrorists along the Mexican border, then a security wall stretching from Baja to Padre Island, solely for the purpose of their capture, seems like a colossal waste of money. It would consume billions upon billions of dollars that don't exist.

posted by CM @ 7:53 PM