Immigration

In the televised debate of November the 10th, US Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican candidate for President of the United States, “suggested donors were tone-deaf on the issue (of immigration) because they did not appreciate the economic impact” of what he claimed was illegal immigrants’ pushing down of American wages. “The politics of it would be very, very different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were crossing the Rio Grande,” he said, adding that the news coverage would also differ if undocumented immigrants were seeking journalism jobs.  “Then we would see stories about the economic calamity that is befalling our nation,” he said.

To suggest that lawyers, bankers or journalists would cross the Rio Grande in search of jobs is to misunderstand the nature of what those Latin Americans are trying to do while risking their lives attempting to enter the United States illegally.  A person risks their life in such circumstances when they are desperate, when to do nothing is to doom themselves and their family to a life of hopelessness and misery.  My grandparents did something similar when they left Russia about one hundred and ten years ago.  The only difference is that in 1904, there was no such thing as an illegal immigrant.  Any healthy person was welcome because the USA was very much in need of bodies to fill the vacancies in the factories that Americans couldn’t fill.  But, later the US government changed the law. 

If a Mexican lawyer, a Guatemalan banker, or an El Salvadoran journalist wanted to live and work in the USA, they would not have to wade across the Rio Grande.  Instead, they could try to find an American law firm, bank or media company who would assist them in getting a job plus a work visa that would give them legal status.  However, very few such lawyers, bankers, or journalists want to come to the USA in the first place because they have work in their own countries.  The problem of the illegal immigrants is that they have no jobs in their own country and no prospects for getting one.  They are poorly educated people with few skills to offer an employer. 

However, what the illegal immigrants do have is a willingness to do just about any kind of work, something that few Americans are willing to do, even in a state of joblessness.  They cross the Rio Grande at great personal risk because there are jobs in the USA that go begging to be filled because no Americans are willing to fill them.  If Americans would do those jobs, if there were no vacancies, there would be no incentive for the illegals to come.  Illegals are not stealing jobs from Americans and, by implication, driving down wages for American workers.  They are instead providing services to the American economy that are being unfulfilled.   

It is said that the USA is a country of laws, where the rule of law must prevail, where the law must be enforced, including laws applicable to illegal immigration.  It is said that to give amnesty to those illegals who are already in the USA would be to encourage more to come.  When President George W. Bush commuted the prison sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, who was convicted of perjury, did he encourage others to commit perjury? 

There is an expression that if one man breaks a law, you put him in jail.  If everybody breaks a law, you change the law.  There are an estimated 11,000,000 people in the USA who have broken the immigration laws. 

Laws are changed all the time, especially when there is a combined desire by both the executive and legislative branches to do so.  At the state level, there has been successful efforts recently to change the laws regarding abortion and voter identification.  I say it is also time to change a law that serves only to deny a select group of immigrants (those south of the Rio Grande) from realizing a better life for their families and who, instead of creating an economic calamity, are improving the quality of the American economy.