| The problem with your “cutting in line is bad” line is that people’s choice to immigrate without papers has almost nothing to do with “lines” or policies or lawbreaking, and everything to do with the much more powerfully compelling economic organization of the world (and particularly North America). 1) United States agriculture absolutely depends on a certain amount of unskilled labor to function, for which the United States has been importing Mexican laborers in large numbers for at least 80 years. Ending this importation of labor would literally cause the agriculture system in this country to break down. 2) Many parts of Mexico have been economically depressed with high underemployment/unemployment for decades. There are physically too many people for the quantity of available jobs. The undocumented immigrants I know (including my parents’ godson who is a migrant agricultural laborer, including several guys who stayed in my family’s house for a few months in the early 1990s, including 30-50% of young men from many indigenous communities in southern Mexico, etc.) DO NOT want to leave their parents, their wives, their children, their communities to go to a strange place where they do not speak the language to do hard labor, missing their children’s early years, DO NOT want to take on tremendous personal financial risk in the form of huge loans from loan sharks who will happily repossess their family’s home or start sending goons to beat people up if the money isn’t repaid. Unfortunately, the choice is often hover-your-whole-life-just-above-or-below-subsistence-level (i.e. take on personally degrading and dangerous jobs to feed your family, risk starvation, etc.), or clear out and go somewhere else. If the outlet of leaving to the United States were unavailable as an escape valve, I’m quite convinced many would end up either starving or turning to other kinds of desperate action. In other words, not really a choice at all. You’re damn right that a system that has people staying in this country without papers isn’t fair and allows those people to be taken advantage of. You know what else isn’t fair and allows people to be taken advantage of? The whole global economic order. [Note: this is not intended as a call to any particular action; just trying to state facts.] |
Mexico isn't the only poor country in the world. They just happen to be the one that's closest to the US. When my parents legally immigrated here, South Korea was a poor nation. Look at the history of US immigration and you'll see that this is a pattern (eg. Irish and Italians in the 1900s to modern day immigrants from Africa and Asia).
I'm from LA so I'm well aware of the economic contributions of the Mexican illegal immigrants.
With that said, I don't necessarily agree with your positions. Due to the massive rate of illegal immigration, agriculture has been able to thrive on low cost economics. If they didn't have that labor, it doesn't mean the US would shut down. What it would mean is that the US would have to adjust the economics in order to make it viable. This could result in the following:
a) A much larger legal guest worker program. b) Importing more agriculture from countries like Mexico. c) Higher wages for legal farm workers (including legal residents of Mexican origin).
In all 3 of these cases, it would lead to be a better situation for Mexican-Americans or Mexico. In the case of b), it would help the economics of Mexico.
I sympathize that Mexico is a poor country. Like I said before, there are many poor countries in this world. I don't want to sound callous but I don't understand how this is specifically the responsibility of the US. We don't even have a nationalized health system.
Also, allowing illegal immigration does not help Mexico in the long term. It won't fix their lack of economy and unemployment problems. Saying there are "physically too many people" is an excuse IMO. Every country battles the problem of unemployment.