Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Global Perspectives On Immigration Reform
France is debating a law that says that legal French citizens who were not born in France should be
stripped of their nationality. That includes children of two French nationals but whose child may have
been born abroad. Taken on a US level, that would wipe out Sen. McCain for a start along with half the
US corporate executives ex‐pat kids. Six of the Iron Curtain countries, now part of the EU, are debating
laws that could strip people of their nationality if they do not have two parents with previous local
nationality and one country is even saying that children of naturalized citizens could be stripped of their
nationality even if they were born after their parents became nationals and if they commit any
(equivalent federal) crime. Meanwhile, the USA is considering repealing a Constitutional Amendment
that says if you are born here, you are an American, period.
In S. Korea, on the other hand, they are still saying any Korean from the north who makes it across
the border is automatically a citizen of their democratic state. However, there is discussion there that
seeks to limit that amnesty by saying the escapee had to be a Korean, not Chinese or of post WWII
Japanese ancestry. India and Pakistan have an expulsion order on kids born “over the border” and
children born in disputed territory (Kashmir) often go decades before being recognized as a national of
either country.
Some of these laws are being discussed as a result of latent racism, prejudice and religious
intolerance, sad to say. Once common trait shared across the world is this: no border is ever really
secure. But mostly, the global look at immigration reform has been born from over ‐population and
human density stress conditions. Too many people are chasing too many jobs, food and living. We feel
crowded. Locals feel threatened and it is always easier to blame the person who is a stranger or recent
immigrant.
When I worked in the Mojave corridor (between LA and Bakersfield) in the mid‐‘80s, trainloads of
immigrants would pass through town with Delmonte and other producers’ logos on the slatted train car
sides. These were, for the most part, the people who pick and package the lettuce and other perishable
vegetables you eat, all grown in the Bakersfield region. In talking with a Delmonte supervisor of one of
the trains (they often would stop to eat in the only fast food joint in Mojave – Taco Bell), I learned that
each year Delmonte would file the proper paperwork with the Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS) for temporary workers’ permits and proceeded anyway to load their freight cars south of the
border (Mexico). “We only get 10% of the forms processed before the harvest season, the INS never
gets its paperwork done, so we load up the people we need and bring ‘em through.” I asked, what about
the INS guards at the border? “Oh, them? They see we filed, know they’ll never get the paperwork done
in time, and wave ‘em through. Americans gotta eat.”
When George Bush rightly said Americans should carry a Passport as proof of ID when crossing the
border (meaning Canadians and Mexicans would also have to show theirs) what he forgot to do was
fund the State Department passport office… at one point the estimate was a 6 month wait for a
passport. So, in an emergency measure, Congress approved money and the State Dept. hired back every
retiree at golden rates of pay to catch up with the backlog. Yet, there is still a wait for a passport a
document you, as a citizen, have a right to.
The INS is underfunded, under manned and hirees are not, shall we say, taken from the top echelons
of the hiring pool. Like the TSA workers at the airport, numbers count more than quality. What Israel
does with 20 highly trained personnel at the airport in Tel Aviv perfectly for over 40 years, the same size
airport here requires 200 personnel and, somehow, one doesn’t really feel any safer.
And that is perhaps the point here, people need to feel safe in their own country.
The “insecure border” we have is not really the problem, it is the poster child. The problem is that
people do not feel safe. People living along the border do not feel safe because drug elements traverse
the border every day, heavily armed with criminal intent. People in Detroit do not feel safe because they
are under‐employed and resent anyone getting a job that an American should have. People in California
do not feel safe because their hard‐earned tax dollars are being spent on people who didn’t pay into the
system as illegal immigrants. In times of plenty, in times where the country as a whole feels
economically safe, such worries would be shrugged off. In times of stress, in times of over‐population,
safety becomes a number one priority.
Safety is not unimportant. Feeling like you have elbowroom before the next guy bumps into you is
genetic human nature. It is called defensible space in architecture, a lawn in rural housing, room to
breathe in the American pioneer spirit. Every human wants to have a sense of place that belongs to him
or her. Encroachment on the beach near the sand castle you were building made you mad as a kid. It is
the same when you are an adult. It is the same for the nation. What we have to do is establish the cause
and then remedy a cure. This is a nation of immigrants (including the Indians) but most of the
population is only 1st or 2nd generation. For most, it is easy to feel threatened by taunts, draconian laws,
discriminatory rhetoric, and bias towards one ethnic group or another. Tomorrow it may be Greeks that
are targeted or Russians or Ethiopians.
We’re all Americans if we came here legally and have the right to stay here legally. Those that are
here, supporting the backbone of American industry and the food chain, may have come quasi‐legally
because of our government’s failing, not their own. Should they be punished for our government’s
failing? And what about those that come here totally illegally? Should we simply chuck them all out?
How are we going to explain the deaths and terror that would result if we rounded up and expelled
11,000,000 people (a version of Crystal Night) to our children? Wouldn’t America the Land Of The Free
be tarnished with xenophobic behavior like that?
The solution to the nation’s unease over illegal immigration cannot be solved by draconian measures.
We have decades of wrongful INS activity to undo, decades of underfunding to remedy, and decades of
misunderstanding of the importance to the American economy and culture of the immigrant worker to
rectify. Does this mean we should do nothing? No, I am not saying that. But what we decide to do in the
short‐term (for example secure the borders better) should support what needs to be done in the long‐
term. Let’s not have another order to get everyone passports without thinking that through. Let’s not
say we want lettuce on the East Coast without understanding that 80% of those workers need to come
from a country whose workers are willing to work for far less than American wages. Let’s not proclaim to
be the Land of the Free without respecting those who have died to preserve that freedom, freedom no
one ever said was exclusively American. If we think freedom is exclusive to American citizens only, then
pull up the drawbridge, retire overseas factories and industry, and call back our soldiers from every
foreign land and never go back. If we did that, America and American ideals would quickly perish all
across the earth.