Thread: Illegal immigration is a lightning rod

http://www.maderatribune.com/opinion/op ... p?c=149354

Monday, March 14, 2005
By Thomas Elias - Columnist - The Madera Tribune

President Bush and his pal, Mexican President Vicente Fox, want to solve the problem of illegal immigration by allowing “guest workers� to pour over the border, so long as they promise to return home after three years.

Some anti-immigration activists maintain that’s inviting reconquista, a retaking of the American Southwest by Mexico. Which means there is little chance a guest worker plan - aimed at providing cheap labor for farmers and large businesses - will get through Congress.

That’s because nothing - not gay marriage, the war in Iraq, abortion, you name it - gets Americans arguing as harshly as illegal immigration.

We can’t even agree on nomenclature or numbers.

“Your article quite often refers to illegal aliens as undocumented immigrants,� snorted an irate reader of a previous column. “That is exactly how some people try to change the thinking of others.�

The other side: “It’s very degrading for any person to be called illegal or an alien,� contended Fabian Nú'ez , the Democratic speaker of the California Assembly, in an interview for the Sacramento Union magazine. “A person may be an illegal resident, but alien is not a fitting word.�

If we can’t even agree on what to call the millions of immigrants (between 9 million and 15 million; there’s no consensus on that, either) who snuck into America and now constitute a major presence, why expect agreement on anything else?

Disputes rage over whether the undocumented are an economic burden or contribute as much in taxes as they use in public services, whether they help produce more jobs or take jobs from Americans.

In August the anti-illegal immigrant Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., reported that “… illegal aliens used $10 billion more in federal government services than they paid in taxes in 2002.�

The center’s research director, Steven Camarota, figured the net cost at $20 billion, including state and local government expenses for health care, courts, prisons and public schools.

But that study did not factor in what illegals pay in state and local sales tax, plus levies on utilities, gasoline, cigarettes, alcohol, hotel rooms and more.

If illegals pay an average of just $1,500 a year in those ubiquitous taxes, they contribute between $13.5 billion and $22.5 billion more to government than Camarota calculated - about the cost of the services he and others say they use. And then there’s the huge and unmeasurable sum saved because they accept low wages.

So no one really knows if illegals are an economic plus or minus. Nevertheless, every poll shows that Proposition 187, with its aim of excluding the undocumented from public services like schools and emergency rooms, would pass as widely today as in 1994, when it won 59 percent of the vote. A similar measure, Proposition 200, won by 56-44 percent in Arizona last fall.

Meanwhile, some Chicano activists believe Mexicans are flat-out entitled to be here. The student group Movemiento Estudiante Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) even boasts a “manifesto� calling for an “Aztlan� nation in the American Southwest and northern Mexico.

Nothing hurt Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a former MEChA member, more during the 2003 recall election than his refusal to repudiate this doctrine.

Bustamante inadvertently boosted hard-line anti-immigration groups like the American Patrol, which feed off fear of Mexicans. They see the immigrant tide as an “invasion� aiming to override the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that gave America most of the Southwest.

“The Mexican government is working overtime to overturn Guadalupe Hidalgo,� claims Glenn Spencer, founder of American Patrol, headquartered in Los Angeles.

Nú'ez, by contrast, scoffs at any notion of a reconquest. “College students sometimes have ideas not so consistent with reality,� he says of MEChA’s manifesto. “But their lives would not improve if California reverted to Mexico.�

Spencer answers by advocating deportation of all illegal immigrants, plus enforcing sanctions on businesses that hire them. And he wants Mexico made less corrupt and more efficient.

Nú'ez agrees with some of that, “We have to enforce the sanctions against employees,� he said. “And we must improve things in Mexico.�

Now comes Bush with his “guest workers,� a knockoff of the old bracero plan of the 1940s and ’50s, which admitted workers legally and saw many stay for months, years - or decades. Critics insist new guest workers would also stay here.

But most agree no action would be needed if conditions improve in Mexico.

Nú'ez: “At some point, the Mexican government ought to focus on their own economy - the minimum wage there is just a small fraction of ours.�

But don’t expect internal reform soon, with Fox a lame duck president. Which means there’s also no reason to expect the immigration scene to change soon.

Good article Rick. I placed the text of it in your post because we prefer that you include the text with a link at the top in your posts.

This article in now on the homepage. More people need to know about MECHA and their plans for Aztlan.

W

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