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May 3, 2006
A few more thoughts on the "Day without Immigrants"
Some quick thoughts:
1. Based on the worst sort of casual empiricism (I would never do that...), it seems as if the greatest economic impact of the "Day Without Immigrants" was felt in the immigrant community itself. I'm actually rather struck by how little impact it had. And there is a reason for that. In most cases illegal immigrants would be paid the bare minimum even if they were legally working in this country: their marginal productivity is low and hence their wages will be low. And the political landscape appears unaltered. The bottom line is that congress members read the polls and know that no matter how loud these protests become, the great American middle is, rightly or wrongly, on the other side of this issue.
2. The righteous indignation in places like the Mexican street regarding this issue is misplaced. What the Mexicans should really be asking themselves is why so many continue to migrate to the US? Getting down to brass tacks, how did they manage to squander the magnificent opportunity that geography, NAFTA and other factors presented to them (there are poor countries in Africa that would no doubt collectively kill to be in Mexico's position)? We certainly have a lot of hard thinking to do on this side of the Rio Grande, but a little self-critical examination by the Mexican body-politic is also in order here.
3. One critical departure point for any negotiations has to be recognition and endorsement, by all sides, of the notion that the US has a fundamental right to border sovereignty: you are not entitled to violate any of our laws, including immigration laws. Once again, this is one of the ways that this issue transcends the narrow topic of immigration: part of what separates us from Mexico in terms of things like long-term economic perfomance is a generally greater adherence to the rule of law.
4. As I write this I am watching some (no doubt illegal) workers doing landscaping across the street. At one point I walked up to them and asked where they are from. After a friendly but challenging exchange, I learned that they are from Mexico and El Salvador. I also could not help but to notice that these men were up to a foot shorter than me (I stand 6'3" tall), with none of them standing taller than maybe 5'7". I have known people of Mexican descent who are now several generations into the great American race to the middle. They did not strike me as below average in size. I suspect that the difference between myself and those worker has little to do with genetics and a lot to do with nutrition. They came here, without doubt, to escape the environment which left them so short. Whether we like it or not, the poverty of places like Mexico and El Salvador is our problem. It's coming soon to a lawn near you.
I was also struck by the fact that few of them would look me in the eye at first. Everything about their body language was deferential. That changed as I tried very hard to make my body language friendly and easy going. But the point is that our treatment of them has programmed them to see us (and frankly by us I probably really mean upper-middle class white people) as their superiors. Their station in life must inevitably breed resentment. If we do not somehow formalize the status of those already here, in some sense endowing them with some legal recourse against mistreatment, we really will be cultivating a potentially dangerous group of individuals among us.
5. Those Mexicans and El Salvadorans across the street are hard workers. Really hard workers.
Posted by dag at May 3, 2006 11:43 AM