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BEYOND BORDERS
Opponents cry foul over immigration legislation
"Doing the jobs Americans won't do."
By Kenneth Todd Ruiz and Sara A. Carter, Staff Writers
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

America holds a conflicted relationship between its economic dependence on cheap migrant labor and the antipathy of many toward illegal migration.
The immigration legislation before Congress - and particularly the guest-worker program - attempts to answer how the United States can live with immigrants, if it can't live without them.

For many on both sides of the immigration debate, a guest- worker program is an un-American means to formalize an underclass of menial laborers.

"They are moving a type of legislation so they can create a massive labor pool to maintain the economy, an exploitable source of cheap labor," said Armando Navarro, a UC Riverside professor and member of the National Alliance for Human Rights. "(Migrants) will have no access to the political process, yet they are here and they can work."

Voicing similar opposition from an unlikely source is Andy Ramirez, chairman of the Chino-based nonprofit Friends of the Border Patrol. He said the program has racist undertones.

Himself of Mexican descent, Ramirez said the guest worker program amounts to nothing more than amnesty and is based on politicians' elitist ideologies.

"It's disgusting and outrageous that they still look at people as if they are slaves," Ramirez said. "It used to be you could ask your neighbors' kids to babysit, wash the car or cut grass for a little extra money. But now they have been replaced by illegal alien labor - a group of people being used like slaves."

Through March, Congressional and Senate leaders debated immigration-reform legislation, including a proposed guest-worker program - a Bush administration priority.

Among the oft-heard slogans and sound bytes, a common refrain emerges: Illegal immigrants are "doing the jobs Americans won't do."

Bush repeated that theme when speaking Friday in Cancun, Mexico, with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"I also believe strongly that an important part of securing the border, and enforcing our laws, is to recognize there are people in our country doing work that Americans will not do," he said.

Politicians from both sides of the Congressional aisle have asserted how vital gardeners, housekeepers, car wash employees and other unskilled workers are to the U.S. economy.

To many immigrants, both legal and illegal, that language demonstrates Washington's arrogance.

They contend that America, where anyone can aspire to rise beyond class limitations, is no place for legislation that assigns people from one part of the world - in this case, countries south of the U.S. border - unskilled, menial labor.

Even conservative columnist Phyllis Schlafly voiced similar criticisms, writing that the program's "bottom line is to create a subordinate underclass of unassimilated foreign workers, like serfs or peasants in corrupt countries."

That is one of two approaches toward immigrants, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

"There are two models of immigration: You take people in and embrace them, or you take people in and use them as workers," he said. "The guest-worker program ... does not embrace the people, it uses them for cheap labor. It creates a servile class of people."

Yet supporters of the program hope it will benefit the otherwise unprotected workers.

Bringing migrant labor out of the shadows by documenting the workers, some say, could lead to improved labor practices. Instead of avoiding attention, workers here legally could have a voice in society.

"There's a hope that by making this legal, we can improve their conditions," said Fernando Lozano, a Pomona College economist who came to the U.S. as a migrant.

But in countries that have created similar systems, such as Germany and Spain, Lozano said that does not seem to have happened.

In Europe, generations of post-World War II migrant workers from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia now account for about 4 percent to 5 percent of the population, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Although European-born, many have not integrated into society, creating a large, isolated underclass.

In Paris, tensions came to a boil this past fall with weeks of rioting - mostly by second-generation descendents of North Africans.

Yet it is the voices of those directly affected by the proposed program that are frequently absent in the debate.

Selling strawberries Friday afternoon in Ontario, Louis, who did not want to give his last name, said his parents migrated illegally from Michoacan, Mexico, to work in the agricultural industry.

Himself a citizen, he admitted to knowing few details of the proposed program, but said he thinks politicians are speaking about Mexican workers as if they are a lower class of people.

The perception that all Mexicans are laborers is widespread, he said, and Mexican people are viewed as nothing more than a servant class to established American citizens.

"There should be a better way for us to live as neighbors," Louis said in Spanish. "What I wish for was more equal opportunity. I know racism is going to be here for a very long time - maybe it will get better. But we're a lot more than farm workers, gardeners and maids."

He added that he and many of his friends, some legal and some illegal, hold low opinions of themselves because of those stereotypes.

"There are Mexican doctors, dentists and highly educated people," he said. "I would really want for people and politicians to stop believing in the stereotype and give the workers who are here an opportunity to really succeed."

Like the disaffected youth in Europe, it's mostly second-generation Latinos expressing the anger and fierce nationalism most visibly espoused by those who advocate reunifying the southwestern U.S. with Mexico, such as MEChA.

That's a departure from their parents, first-generation migrants, who worked toward integration into the mainstream labor force.

After the bracero program ended in the 1960s, unions representing Latino laborers were created, and working conditions improved.

Migrant parents sent their children to schools in hopes they would outgrow the stooped labor of fruit-picking and move into middle-class and professional careers.

The legacy of Cesar Chavez is often invoked by today's immigration activists, despite the fact that Chavez himself opposed illegal immigration at the height of his struggle.

During his efforts with the United Farm Workers to improve the lives of migrant farm workers, Chavez testified before Congress that illegal immigration was hurting those he represented.

One of his contentions: Employers were defeating UFW workers' organized strikes by bringing in replacement workers from Mexico.

In 1969, he led a march to the U.S./Mexico border and demanded authorities end the flow of migrants.

But in the 1980s, before he died, Chavez changed his mind and began to support new immigration. UFW went into decline, and many of the gains won for the farm workers by Chavez have since been eroded.

Kenneth Todd Ruiz can be reached by e-mail at todd.ruiz@dailybulletin.com or by phone at (909) 483-8555.

Sara A. Carter can be reached by e-mail at sara.carter@dailybulletin.com or by phone at (909) 483-8552.