… Or Why Conservative Responses To Illegal Immigration Often Come Across As Bigoted or Even Racist

Maybe it’s just me, (Hey I’m a Mexican American conservative, who lives about 15 miles from the Mexican Border, I used to practice a little immigration law, what do I know.) but every time John Derbyshire, over at The Corner, let’s loose a rant against illegal immigrants, the image that pops into my head is of Bill "The Butcher" Cutting the leader of the nativist gang in the movie Gangs of New York. I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on the Derb as he suffers from a most common affliction; hating that most which you used to be. You see Derb used to be an illegal alien and just like no one hates smoking as much as ex-smokers apparently no one hates illegal immigration as much as former illegal immigrants.

I should know, my dad and the Derb are cut from the same cloth, he also being a former illegal immigrant, and vigorous objectioner to current illegals. My dad was here illegally in the ’50s, back in

the day when, as he assures us, the quality of illegal immigrants was
much, much higher. I assume he
is referring to the influx of illegal
Canadians, Irish, and Brits which was virtually nonexistent in his day.
( My dad’s favorite story from his illegal alien days revolves around
his job as a busboy at Clifton’s Cafeteria, a  Los Angeles landmark. As
he tells it "la migra" raided the restaurant one day while he was in
the dinning room busing dishes. As the officers stepped in to the
dining room he took off his apron, sat down at a table with some
customers and pretended to be having a cup of coffee until they left.)

I don’t have a beef with any of the particular remedies proposed for
stopping illegal immigration. I’m not opposed to a border fence. (Great
build it to the sky if you want but please build it here in the El
Centro Sector we could use the jobs.) I’m not against national identity
cards, though I’m certain most people don’t realize that to be
effective there will have to be penalties for anyone who doesn’t have
their national I.D. on them … at all times. (That they will not be able
to buy or sell without them probably won’t go over real big with
evangelicals though.) I think another amnesty program would be a
mistake as it would be taken as an invitation, by the rest of the
world, to enter the U.S. illegally.

The thing is I don’t believe any of the proposed solutions will stop
illegal immigration.  Most conservatives don’t like to talk about it
but there are a great many illegal aliens from China, and Africa,  in
the United States.
If the oceans can’t keep them out I don’t think a fence along the
border is going to be too effective either. I believe the solution to
illegal immigration lies in Mexico not the U.S. as Glenn Reynolds, (The
fabulously handsome, amazingly erudite and scholarly Glenn Reynolds,
yes that Glenn Reynolds.) states
here. I once had lunch
with a Mexican businessman. He asked why the United States doesn’t help
Mexico build infrastructure the way the EU is helping Turkey. I said
that the United States was probably disposed to help Mexico but it
probably wouldn’t do anything because Mexican government officials
would steal all the money. He didn’t say anything. What could he say?
That said though, the United States has supported stability in Mexico,
stability on it’s southern border, stability during the communist era,
at the cost to Mexicans of corrupt regime after corrupt regime. Think
about it this way, what if the solution to corruption in Mexico were a
communist government which took all the corrupt government officials
and hanged them from lamp posts, would this be okay with the U.S.? I mean
having a Hugo Chavez running the country on its southern border? So the
United States is not completely innocent when it comes to
responsibility for the horrible Mexican economy.

My real concern isn’t the various remedies proposed for illegal
immigration  but that the language, the arguments, the propaganda
conservatives are using in order to agitate for immigration reform are
confirming the stereotype (Well I hope it’s just a stereotype.) of
conservatives/Republicans as the party of bigoted, classists, white,
nativists in the minds of many Mexican Americans. It seems that some
conservatives are determined to do for hispanic voters nationwide what
Propostion 187 did for hispanic voters in California, i.e. assure them
that they are not welcome in the Republican Party. (What exactly turned
out to be the benefit of Prop 187? I must have missed it.)
Conservatives are coming across as the party whose domestic agenda
consists of “Keep the Mexicans out!” , “Cut taxes for the rich!” “Save
the best schools for white people! ” “Oh and by the way, keep those
lazy, dishonest, good for nuthin, welfare cheatin, tax evading, line
jumping, job stealin, terrorist aiding, Mexicans out.”

I’m saying this as a friend, as a fellow conservative, as a Republican.
I’m saying it as a subscriber to National Review, as a sometime member
of the NRA (Okay my wife let my membership lapse.), who unlike all of
these Johnny come latelys actually voted for Ronald Reagan, twice, and
didn’t just read about it in the Weekly Reader.  But I’m also saying
it  as a Mexican American conservative, who lives 15 miles from the
Mexican Border (i.e about 3000 miles closer than most of the guys who
post on The Corner.), who has actually practiced some immigration law,
and as an evangelical pastor. I am writing in hopes of  avoiding the
disaster that some on the right are courting by adopting the approach
of the radical left  in its agitation against global warming or,
globalisim or big oil or MacDonald’s. I thought we conservatives were
supposed to be the reasonable ones. We’re supposed to be the party of
reason. What next, “We gotta keep the Mexicans out … for the children?”

So here’s a brief catalogue of some of the silliness, of some of the
arguments, of some of the conservative rhetoric which I believe comes
across to Mexican Americans as thinly disguised bigotry.


Border Security:

This is the circumspect way for conservatives to say, "Keep
the Mexicans out."  Even Hugh Hewitt, who I
think of as the most reasonable conservative in the blog-o-sphere, has
latched on to it as the correct way of talking about illegal
immigration. While it’s hard to disagree that our border should be
secure this talk ends up coming across as a smokescreen for
anti-Mexican sentiment because the only border that apparently needs to
be secured is the only border through which no terrorists have been
known to enter. 

Didn’t all of the 9/11 terrorists get into the U.S. legally? According
to this article U.S. border police
are more likely to encounter illegal
aliens smuggling weapons from Canada than from Mexico. The guys
arrested for the LAX millennium bombing plot were arrested in Port
Angeles, Washington, (Uhh, I’m pretty sure Washington would be that
state which borders on Canada, no? ) not in San Ysidro, California. And
yet it’s only the Mexican border which must be secured. It might make
the argument appear to be more about border security and less about
keeping the Mexican hordes out if conservatives occasionally threw out
the word Canada. Canada which even some Canadians have  described as a
safe haven for terrorists. Hey, at least for
appearance sake.

So how many  of the 9/11 terrorists entered the United States through
Mexico? Okay well maybe not the 9/11 terrorists but surely Zacarias
Moussaoui or Richard Ried  or Ramzi Yousef? Wasn’t Zacarias Mousaui a
citizen of France? Wasn’t Richard Ried a citizen of England? Isn’t it
Europe that is filled with islamofascist madrassas, and radical imams
protected by European governments? Maybe we should toughen up on entry
requirements from Europe. How hard is it for one of those radical
English moslems to enter the U.S. anyway? Not very, I would guess, a
visa probably isn’t even required.

The Mexican border isn’t all that insecure. First there’s a big mean
desert out there guarding our border.  And, contrary to conservative
opinion, a lot of big mean Border Patrol agents looking for people
crossing that border. Hey I live in El Centro, California (Still a part
of the United States despite the name.), and I have to go through two
border checkpoints to take my kids to Disneyland and one more to get
back home. I bet the 9/11 hijackers didn’t go through that many
checkpoints on their way to Boston and D.C. It’s also much easier to
enter the U.S. with a tourist visa, or no visa, or a false passport
just like the 9/11 hijackers did. There’s also much less probability of
dying in the desert that way. People who have nothing to lose cross
the desert in hopes of getting a job busing dishes for rich white
people. People who have nothing to lose don’t mind risking arrest by
the border patrol. Terrorists probably aren’t in that category.

It’s The Economy Stupid:

Conservatives kinda, sorta seem to argue that illegal immigration is
bad for the economy. National Review Online recently published a blurb
from a Harvard economist demonstrating that the employment of illegal
aliens results in lower wages for certain American workers. (Wow, who’d
have guessed it? You increase the supply of labor and the price of labor
goes down? Man those guys at Harvard really are smarter than the rest
of us. I guess I know now how Harriet Miers feels. Next month a Harvard
physicist will discover that imported water runs down hill.) It’s a
little hard to take this seriously especially since in the past 40
years there are only a handful of years where unemployment has been as
low as it is now. (Click here then
click on the dinosaur and then choose your range of years.) Maybe
illegal immigration is good for the economy.

I think it’s pretty much a given that the employment of illegal aliens
lowers the wages of some Americans, but so what? Is this bad for the
economy? Imagine if some enterprising Mexicans began driving four wheel
drive semi trucks pulling fuel tankers filled with cheap Mexican
gasoline across the desert. They somehow manage to make it by all the
Border Patrol checkpoints to Los Angeles where they set up shop on some
west L.A. street corner and begin selling gasoline for $1.50 a gallon.
Sure some guys who work pumping gas would probably lose their jobs but
would it be bad for the economy? I don’t think so. And I don’t think
that any serious economist would say that it was. When exactly did
conservatives start supporting minimum wages? (Somebody forgot to send
me the memo. Chaka!) Conservatives now apparently believe that there is
some wage floor beneath which the wages of real Americans should not
fall. Did Pat Buchanan take over the Republican Party or something?

There is no economic difference between sending jobs to Mexico to be
done by lower wage Mexicans and Mexicans coming to the U.S. to do the
work. You can’t be in favor of free trade and at the same time argue
that there is some deleterious economic impact from the employment of
illegal aliens. That same Harvard professor might want to investigate
the impact of free trade on the wages of American furniture workers …
if he can find any. The reason we conservatives support free trade is
because we believe that in the long run a free market is the path to
prosperity for the greatest number of people over the greatest period
of time. (At least that’s why we used to support free trade.)

Illegal immigration is the free market at work. Immigration
restrictions are, economically speaking, artificial barriers to
competition. Hey if you don’t like the free market just say so but
don’t just kick the Mexicans out of the market . 

They Don’t Pay Taxes:

How could anyone know this? And since when did conservatives complain
about people not paying taxes? I think some conservatives have been living
on the upper east side so long they don’t realize that the vast
majority of employees have taxes deducted from their pay by their
employers. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s the law. If employers are
failing to deduct taxes from their illegal alien employees then they
are the ones violating the law not the illegal aliens. My guess is that
the vast majority of illegal aliens pay taxes for the simple reason
that their employers are much more concerned with taking on the IRS
than the INS. This article
claims that 60% of illegals pay taxes. Now that we’ve got that cleared up I
guess it’s okay then, right?

They Come Over Here Just To Get On Welfare:

Is there actually some evidence of this? My experience is that most of
these guys want to steer well clear of any type of government office.
It cost them a lot of money, time, and effort to get here and they for
the most part don’t want to risk getting sent back. It’s true that they
use public services like schools and hospitals but there’re a lot of
people out there who don’t work as hard or pay as many taxes who use
those services too, if the issue is really people free riding on our
welfare system. (I have a millionaire relative who’s health care is
paid for by the U.S. Government. I don’t know about you but it seems to
me that money is better spent providing health care for some busboy’s
sick kid.) This is the whole prop 187 argument once again.
Conservatives have apparently forgotten how that turned out for the
Republican party in California. 

Besides that (See above.) they probably pay income tax and they
certainly pay sales taxes, which in California are pretty close to 10%
for everything from milk to Mercedes. If they are paying taxes aren’t
they, at least in some sense, entitled to use the services those taxes
pay for?  Some conservatives seem to think that because they entered
the country without the right paperwork that illegals are outlaws,
outside the protection of the law for all purposes, so they have no
claim to the benefits their taxes support. (Kinda doesn’t square real
well with the complaint that they don’t pay taxes.)  “Hey it’s okay to
steal … uh I mean keep their tax payments and their social security
deposits after all they’re here illegally.” So much for the party of
property rights. So some illegal alien invests his money in a house or
a pension fund, can we steal that too? Hey, why not, they’re here
illegally?  Just because they entered the country illegally doesn’t
mean they are outside the protection of our laws.

I’ve always thought that the lowest form of gringo life were those guys
who take advantage of an illegal aliens status to rip them off or to
abuse them. I helped try a case once in the Van Nuys Disctrict of the
L.A. Superior Court involving an illegal alien gardener who had been
killed as the result of negligence on the part of the Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power. The jury gave us a favorable verdict but
afterwards one of the jurors, a nice looking, 50ish, upper middle
class, white lady, (Okay, your typical Republican voter from the
Valley.) the personification of what Jesus meant by whited sepulchers,
asked how “they” could sue the Department of Water and Power. (It was
never mentioned during the trial that the dead boy was an illegal alien. So
much for her oath to consider only the evidence.) I wanted to slap her
up side her head and tell her that just because someone was here
illegally didn’t mean they could be killed with impunity.

It’s Mexifornia Moron:

Some conservatives argue that the influx of illegal aliens is diluting
if not destroying American culture. I think that conservatives have been laboring under a
little bit of misinformation where this subject is concerned.

Most Mexicans no longer speak Azteci, Mexican American Studies majors
not withstanding. They
actually use the same numerical system and same
alphabet as Americans, (Okay they have couple extra weird letters with
those funny punctuation thingys on them, but who’s counting.) In fact,
amazingly enough, much of their language has the same roots as ours.
The same is true of their history.  Even their religion is pretty similar
(Hey I wish they were a little more protestant than Catholic too and
I’m doing my part to make that happen. Please send you tax deductible
contributions to Imperial Valley Christian Center.) So what’s your
point Big Dan? My point is that having our culture diluted by Mexicans
is no different than having it diluted by Italians or Swedes and a lot
better than having it diluted by people from wholly alien cultures.

We’re not talking people with a completely different alphabet like the
Chinese. Or people who speak  a language whose roots are very
different from English such as Hindi or Arabic. Or people who have a
completely different religious history. Mexicans are as essentially
European as Americans. And yet one gets the feeling that conservatives
feel much better about Chinese (There are an estimated 1 million
illegal alien asians living in the United States.)
or Indian immigration than Mexican immigration. After all Indians and
Chinese are naturally good engineers and scientists and mathematicians and doctors
but how many more bus boys or lawn guys do we need?

(Just on a personal note . I travelled last October to Professor Victor
“Mexifornia” Hanson’s  hometown of Fresno, California. ( I know he
lives in Selma but that’s only 17 miles down the highway and he taught
for years at Fresno State.) Becky and I were on our way to Yosemite for
a couple day pastors conference. We had dinner that night at an
In-N-Out on the Southern edge of Fresno. We spent the night at some
chain motel, I can’t recall the name. We ate breakfast at a really nice
family owned restaurant just off the highway and  up the street from
Fresno State. We then spent a couple nights in a really nice Lodge on
the outskirts of Yosemite. The whole time we were there, not once did I
run into a Mexican employee. Not at the In-N-Out not at the Motel, not
at the Restaurant, not at the Lodge. My thought at the the time was, “I
don’t know what Professor Hanson is talking about, this place is
Whiteyfornia.”)

They Come Over Here To Have Babies Just So They Can Immigrate:

First off a U.S. Citizen child cannot immigrate his parents until he is
aged 21, so if people are doing this to immigrate they’ve got a long wait.
Secondly, and this may come as a shock to some of those conservatives
who see Mexicans as not much different from cattle, but there aren’t a
lot of full term moms crossing the desert to get to the land of free
medical care. Most of the people who do this are entering the United
States legally. No border fence, or group of vigilantes is going to
stop that.

Let’s pull a bus up to the protests and pick up all these illegal aliens.

Ha, ha, ha. This was a remark quoted with apparent approval on The
Corner,
certainly no one objected to it at the time.  But how were they going
to distinguish the illegal aliens from the citizens and permanent
residents? I mean we, Americans that is, don’t have national identity cards. Most Americans
don’t have a passport much less carry it with them at all times. So to
a Mexican American it sounds like National Review is talking about
picking up all the brown people with accents. Hey that actually
happened in California once.

Reconquista:

Talk about a bugaboo. National Review’s April 24 cover featured a photo
of the immigration protests with the caption Hasta La Vista,
Reconquista. I’m sure every MECHA chapter in the country went out and got a copy of that cover … framed.
“ See, we’re sticking it to the man even National Review is
acknowledging our existence.” Thanks for breathing life into a dying
organization.  Coming soon covers on the Nation of Islam’s plans for an
all Black state and the Aryan Nation’s plan to establish an Aryan
homeland.   

They’re jumping to the front of the lIne
(Yeah like these guys are really concerned about the unfairness of it
all.) There is no line. Unless by line you mean something other than a
queue which people enter and exit on a first come, first served basis.
The so called “line” is really a system of preferences and quotas which
congress changes from time to time. So, for example, under the
“Diversity” category of immigrant visas 8,300 visas are set aside
yearly, exclusively for Europeans. (Never have conservatives so liked
diversity and affirmative action.) See here for the
latest numbers and quotas.

As an example of how the so called “line” works, if you were a United
States Citizen and you applied to immigrate your unmarried child from
Mexico in 1994, i.e. 12 years ago, your application is now getting to
the front of the line. But in the meantime that guy from England who
filed the same application in 1995 has already had his petition
granted. As has the Saudi guy who filed in 1996, or 1997 or 1998 or
1999 or even 2000. So if there is a line, those guys all jumped in line
in front of the Mexican guy. Are conservatives upset by this kind of
“line jumping” too?

If it was just a question of first come, first served the first few
million people in line would all be from Mexico.  The reason they are not is
because the congress has developed these quotas and preferences based
on some criteria other than when someone got in line. In fact you could
justly say that the “line” discriminates against Mexicans. So how is it
wrong for congress to do the same thing now for illegal aliens. It’s
not jumping the line it’s just another preference category.

Finally this is a Christian blog, in fact a church blog, so let me leave you with what the Bible says on the subject:

Deuteronomy 10:18  He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.

Deuteronomy 24:17  Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge.

Deuteronomy 27:19  "Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the
alien, the fatherless or the widow.” Then all the people shall say,
“Amen!”

Romans 13:9 For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not
kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou
shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly
comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself. 10 Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the
fulfilling of the law.

I know that somewhere some conservative is thinking, “Yeah but who’s my neighbor?” Which, of course, is another Bible story.