Flash backwards 90 years. It's as easy as looking at the picture of my great-grandparents, Oscar and Fannie, who immigrated from Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution. He's young, perhaps 22, standing stiff-backed and wearing a black suit that looks vaguely military, though as far as I know he never served. He's a small, handsome man, the kind girls dream about. Fannie is about the same age, already showing signs of the bitterness that crushed so many of my family's women. Her dress is severe in that timeless, mean-nanny kind of way.
I'm the great-grandchild of immigrants. I can trace my line of descent from Russian progroms through ghettos, slums and times of prejudice to whitebread neighborhoods that don't understand who I am. But I remember. My family keeps our stories alive.
Assimilationist? Oh yes. The melting pot was Oscar's natural environment. He had a dozen little businesses and the occasional job, each the relic of a hardscrabble life. During Prohibition he had a license to produce cosmetics, including cologne, which meant that he was able to order ethanol in bulk. I'm sure you see where this is going. If not, imagine a sepia-tone photograph of my great-grandfather heading out to the lake "for a picnic" with his children and two fifty-gallon drums of pure ethanol in the back of his truck. Imagine the kids playing at the beach, eating lunch, then coming back to an empty truck. A few years later Oscar ran over a little boy who'd run out from between two parked cars. In what may have been a case of "Driving With Accent" he was sentenced to a year's confinement in northern Minnesota. Great-grandma Fannie never forgave him. Neither did some of his children.
English? Check. Citizenship? Check. American Communist Party card with a three digit number? That too. The card itself would be a collector's item by now, but my grandmother burned it during a fit of McCarthy-era paranoia. Oscar hated lawyers, and his love affair with Marx was very serious indeed, though it didn't take. His children and grandchildren were, and are, very firmly wedded to the establishment, though they've all leaned at least a little left. The important thing, in the context of a first-generation immigrant, is that he cared for something other than himself. He became a citizen, he tried to solve the problems of his time, he joined a political party, however crackpot its ideas, and he voted.
One of Oscar's many jobs was translating Russian and Yiddish at the University of Minnesota, and he probably knew Hebrew as well - at least enough to read a little Torah - which made him, at very least, quadralingual. He was a member of the Barber's Union, and worked as a barber during the building of the Alaskan Highway, cutting the hair of American workers in British Columbia and the Yukon.
That's where I come from.
It was a typical family of first-generation immigrants - hard work, joining the political process, trying to make a little money. Successes, failures, children. Freedom.
My other great-grandmother, Bessie Levinson, left Russia following a series of pogroms. According to my father she spoke of this only once in his presence and broke into tears almost immediately. This conversation would have taken place some forty years after she came to America, which doubtless speaks to the magnitude of the horror she encountered.
Oscar's family name was originally something like "Rottstein," pronounced "Rrrotschtien," which translated as "red cup." While coming through Ellis island my great-grandfather, like many immigrants of his time, traded a bit himself to a busy bureaucrat who couldn't spell a difficult Russian Jewish name. In return, he got freedom, and I don't think he ever bitched about the price.
The pogrom, the tears forty years later, my great-grandfather's willingness to trade his name for freedom, these speak of Lesson One in the study of immigration: Other countries suck. I know because I've been there.
Some places are okay, of course, or even nice, but they're not the source of our immigration problems. Mexico is a case in point. Some sixty percent of our country's illegal immigrants come from Mexico, and some further percentage of immigrants travels through Mexico on their way to the US. Back when I was young and determined to see the world I spent a couple months backpacking through that country. I enjoyed everything from modern museums to 17th Century church architecture to ancient pyramids. The culture was fascinating, the people were wonderful, and I had a fantastic time.
But if we measure Mexico by any rational economic or political yardstick, the country sucks. There's a tiny middle class, immense corruption in both business and government, and enormous poverty. The average annual earnings for a family in Mexico are atrocious, unemployment is high, and both working conditions and wages are appalling.
This brings us to lesson two about immigration: When a country sucks, people leave.
Unfortunately, we can't make another country fix it's own problems, but we could at least try. Illegal immigration costs the US a bundle, and the presence of an economic basket-case on our borders makes all the problems much, much worse, and therefore much more costly. If we really want to cut down on the number of illegal immigrants, we probably need to create a Marshall Plan for Mexico, and devise some mechanism by which to keep the plan functioning through more than one US Administration. Once Mexico is stable and on the upswing, and holds promise for those who stay, immigration will stop being an issue. Obviously, this won't be an easy fix, but the proposed alternatives, such as building a giant wall across the border, would treat an entire people like animals who need to be caged.
Let's bring a little realism into the discussion. A fence across the US/Mexico border would be almost 2000 miles long, and after building it we'd patrol its entire length via some kind of vast military operation. Frankly, I don't think the idea is workable - the economic disparity between the US and Mexico makes crossing the border much too attractive - and even if it did work, it would be the kind of giant, expensive project that breeds corruption, sucks away our tax dollars, increases the national debt, and takes forever. The "Great Wall of Mexico" would be the most expensive boondoggle in US history. Helping Mexico become a place from which people don't wish to emigrate seems like a much better plan.
After visiting Mexico I spent a month in Guatemala. At the time, Guatemala was run by a crappy third-world dictatorship that was fighting a stupid guerrilla war against a bunch of unhappy peasants. The military would draft young men at gunpoint from soccer stadiums or concerts, drag the poor kids through Army training, and deploy them as cannon-fodder in their grubby little war. Those who refused to serve would be tortured, shot and dropped from helicopters into urban neighborhoods as "examples."
This brings us to my other great-grandfather, Aleck Levinson, a Jewish kid who was dragooned into the Russian Army some years before the Russian Revolution. Students of history will understand that the Russian Army was not a good place for nice a Jewish boy. Grandpa Aleck got away from the Russians who were trying to shanghai him, swam across the Dneister River, and crossed into Romania. Relating his story to that of a kidnapped and drafted Guatemalan youth isn't hard at all. Aleck worked his way across Europe and into Canada, then crossed into the US where he started a farm in the town of Valhalla, N. Dakota. No living family member knows whether he entered the country legally. The farm didn't work out, so he opened a general store in Redwing, which was burned down by antisemites. He later drove a truck for the Coca-Cola company. His union card was signed by Samuel Gompers. After that he owned a market on Pico Blvd near Fairfax, and later another in the San Fernando Valley. During II he worked in an aircraft factory, along with my grandfather, his son-in-law. They gave blood every six weeks.
Like my Russian-Jewish ancestors, the Guatemalan peasants were essentially sharecroppers, living in little wooden shacks and working land that belonged to a rich family or one of the big fruit companies. Beyond the squalor, they obviously lived in a state of near-constant terror. I particularly remember one town near an Army base. The people who lived there were the most unhappy people I've ever seen in my life. A Guatemalan traveler who got on the cross-country bus or rode in someone's car could expect to be stopped every hour or so by someone in uniform - and you wouldn't always recognize the uniform either...
I've also traveled in the Orient, and I once rode through the slums of Jakarta on the back of a motorcycle, staring wide-eyed at mile after mile of human beings who lived in cardboard boxes and packing crates. Other people lived at bus or train stations, building fires in trash cans, making stone soup every night, and sleeping on bus benches or the seats of their rickshaws. I remember houses no bigger than my laundry room built onto the backs of tiny shops... One dusky blond boy stands out in particular, the obvious result of some European traveler who blew into town one day and got his rocks off. The culture being what it is, the pregnancy got mommy kicked out of her parent's house and into the street.
My memories of Indonesia, still fresh from twenty years ago, make it clear that most of the people there would happily come to the US. Nowadays Indonesia is a democracy, but it was a still a dictatorship when I visited and certain segments of the population still claim, with some justice, to be oppressed.
I could go on and describe conditions in Honduras, Nicaragua, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia, but I think I've made my point. Suffice it to say that if I took a simplistic, anti-immigrant position, my great-grandparents, the little boy in the bus station, and an army of people from Jakarta's slums would come back to haunt me.
I know where I come from. I know where I've been, too.
A big part of the problem lies in how we treat illegal aliens. We've decided that we can discourage them by treating them poorly. We'll deny them rights. We'll make sure they can't complain against the system. We'll arrest them and send them back to whatever no-count third-world shithole spawned them in the first place.
To evaluate this strategy's chances for success, let's go back to the slums of Jakarta, or to the wooden shacks of the Guatemalan peasants, or to any hundred countries where economic opportunity is scant and there's no safety net. From inside a cardboard box the twelve-hour, twenty-dollar day looks like a fantastic bargain. The pitiful fraction that makes it back to Jakarta or Guatemala once a month is life-giving manna, a fantastic gift from heaven. It might allow the illegal alien's family to move into something better than a cardboard box, pay for school for one of the children, or allow someone to buy a pushcart and go into business. From this standpoint, the possibility of getting arrested and shipped back to the hellhole-of-origin is just part of doing business, particularly if you come from one of our southern neighbors. Add a beating or a jail term and it still looks like a bargain.
This brings us to Lesson Three about immigration: Nothing we do to immigrants is as bad as the things their own countries do. The "treat them poorly" strategy can't contain immigration, because it isn't nearly as cruel as the basic facts of life in the immigrant's homeland.
There's a movie playing in my head right now, where my Communist Great-Grandfather is face-to-face with a modern illegal alien, a recent arrival from an "oppressive capitalist state," who came here hoping for liberty, or at least a paycheck, and whose mere presence undercuts the salary of the American working man. Faced with this man who can't vote, who's been rendered unable to fight for worker's rights, higher wages, or a classless society, who sends hundreds of US dollars home so his relatives can spend the money on something built in another country, I imagine Grandpa Oscar blowing his top: "You ignorant schmuck," he'd rumble, "you're stealing from me. You're stealing from this country. Why don't you get your citizenship? Go to night school and learn English. Join a union so we've both got some protection. Vote the goddamn bastards out."
But of course it isn't that easy, and my great-grandfather would know the facts of the matter. He'd know that there's a lot of money to be made by keeping immigrants illegal and underinformed. He'd know that illegal workers can't demand fair wages or complain about safety violations. He'd know that if an illegal alien gives the bosses trouble, it's all too easy to point him out to La Migra and get him hauled away, which points to a system which is badly broken.
Get this: Our lax immigration policies allow illegal aliens into the country, and those illegal aliens either replace US citizens or pull their salaries down. While the US citizen can join a union, request a raise, sue for cause, or report a safety violation, the illegal worker can't do any of those things. Let him try, and see how fast the boss has him hauled away, jailed, and driven back across the border, all at government expense. The next day a new illegal will take his place. You, dear reader, are paying with your tax dollars for this systemic screwing of yourselves and your fellow Americans.
A big part of the problem lies in our refusal to do serious enforcement against companies which hire illegal aliens - and these aren't just small businesses. The farms and food packaging plants which hire illegals are frequently parts of huge industrial combines. In fact, they hire so many illegals that a substantial fraction of our packing plants had to shut down during the recent immigration demonstrations. The garment industry may consist of small operators, but it's a huge industry that feeds everything from small boutiques to giant retail chains like Walmart. The janitorial industry is another gigantic industry composed of both large and small operators that hire illegals. Jail terms, if they happen - and they can, under the law - are short, and the fines aren't heavy enough to matter. In my opinion if you undercut the wages of a legal US worker, or worse yet, an entire class of workers, something really bad should happen to you. Like a ten-year sentence or a fine that will put you so far into the red you need a submarine to see daylight.
As I said, I know where I come from.
This brings us to lesson four about immigration: Big money likes the system, and they want to make it worse.
Consider, for example, the "guest worker" program some of our representatives are pushing these days. It sounds to me like a way to make the current, illegal, anti-US worker arrangements permanent and legal while keeping the whole system under much tighter control. And here's something to consider - if they can bring in "guest" farm workers the next step will be to bring in "guest" accountants, "guest" mechanics, "guest" nurses, or "guest" computer programmers. That's not a pretty thought. Those who want a "guest worker" program are already rich and they want to be richer. They will happily set you against another working person, make you race to the bottom of the wage scale, and sell you both down the river. The fact that you're a "fellow American" will make no difference to them. They only care about the bottom line.
So what can we do? We've seen the negative consequences of a punitive approach to immigration. The end result is a fight no one can win, with American workers battling illegal aliens for a spot at the bottom of the economic barrel. So let's examine the consequences of being kind. What if we treated immigrants like we'd want to be treated if we'd just moved to a new country? What if we were generous, kind, fair, and polite? Suppose we gave anyone who wants to come to the US automatic entry, a green card and a guarantee of equal access to law enforcement, health care, and legal rights, including equal rights under employment law? What if every worker, regardless of their national origin, had the right to complain about an unsafe workplace, ask for a raise, or join a union? This solution would have a lot of benefits for the US worker. It would protect them from bargain-basement competition and make sure that no employer could fire a US worker and hire a cheap, legally defenseless illegal alien in their place.
It's a good idea, but it has some obvious weaknesses. Let's look at the problems and see if they can be cured. First, any new and radically different program will cost money. How do we pay for it? Second, we don't want freeloaders. If someone wants to come here, exploit our kindness, spend as little money as possible here in America and send US dollars someplace else, I don't want them in my country. Third, what about criminals and terrorists? How do we keep them out of the US? These are all reasonable objections, but I think I have some answers.
First, what about the money? The only fair way to fund any immigration program is for the immigrants themselves to pay for it, so under this program, all immigrants would pay a surcharge on their federal and state taxes until they became US citizens. From inside the cardboard box, it's still an impressive bargain. A large fraction of the money would go to the "Marshal Plan" for Mexico. Anything left over would be available to fund other programs.
Second, there's the freeloader issue. Could it be solved if we put some restrictions on the amount of money an immigrant could send home? Most of the countries which produce immigrants have terrible per-capita incomes, sometimes as low as $2-300 a year, so capping the amount of money an immigrant is allowed to send home at $500.00 annually would still double the income of most third-world families. Alternately, it might be possible to adjust the maximum contribution by country - there's a way to influence other countries - or simply put a ten percent surcharge on all monies sent home. I'm not sure the exact mechanism is important, but those who complain that immigrants are sending money home that could be spent in the US have a valid point, particularly given the fact that manufacturing is moving out of our country at an alarming rate. Anyone who violated this rule would be sent home at once. Naturally, immigrants could bring their families to the US, but their spouses and children would also be subject to all the provisions of this plan.
Third, there's the issue of criminals and terrorists. All new immigrants will give up some of their fourth amendment rights until they become US citizens. A part of the extra percentage they pay on their taxes will pay for background checks of whatever depth is necessary, and whatever surveillance might be required to make sure the the new immigrant isn't engaging in terror, espionage or illegal fund transfers, and doesn't have a criminal record in another country. However, immigrants will not give up rights in new criminal or civil cases.
A non-citizen immigrant who is convicted of a crime more serious than a traffic violation will be deported, but not until after they have served their sentence in a sweatshop on Guam. Deportees would be marked with an infrared or ultraviolet tattoo which reads, "US IMMIGRATION FAILURE," and never allowed into the US again.
The plan would also call for all immigrants to work towards citizenship from the moment of their arrival. A new immigrant would have to show proof of enrollment in an English Language course within six months of entry or demonstrate competence in English. If they don't, they'll get rounded up, tattooed as failures, and sent away. Entrants would have to pass a US History course within two years or become fugitives. In four years immigrants would have to pass a high-school civics and civic philosophy course, starting with Plato's Republic, proceeding through the Enlightenment, and ending with the Feminist movement and Martin Luther King. My expectations are arguably too high, but I wish this stuff had been on the syllabus at my high school - I learned the history, but nobody ever tied it together for me. Anyone who didn't pass the US citizenship exam and get sworn in as a citizen within five years of entering the US would be thrown out.
I come from a middle-class family. I grew up in a series of whitebread, pleasant, suburban neighborhoods and never wanted for anything, but I'm aware of my origins - people with accents who lived in the slums and and worked hard. People with two or three jobs and a business on the side, who were happy as hell because they'd left oppression behind and come to a place of opportunity. People who were at least half-happy to pay their taxes if it meant being a US citizen. Even our family Marxist fervently hoped that his children or grandchildren would go to college and join upper management, which is exactly what happened. It's no accident that my father has a PhD and his sister married a nice Jewish boy who "just happened" to be a surgeon. Her husband is the third-generation descendant of immigrants with an obviously Jewish surname, whose father anglicized his last name to avoid antisemitism. This name change allowed my uncle to work around the quota system of the time, an anti-semetic numbers game designed to keep as many Jews as possible out of medical school.
I know where I came from.
I know where you came from too.
If you're not a native American, your family came from somewhere else. "My ancestors came over on the Mayflower," is considered a serious retort to this argument in some social circles, but you guys need to get over yourselves. Your ancestors were members of a religious minority who fled persecution, just like my great-grandfather, and three hundred years later, none of you is remotely close to being a pureblood Mayflower descendant. In other words, you're descended from immigrants. You're a frickin mongrel, just like me, with ancestors from all over Europe and maybe Africa, Asia, and/or South America. Drop the pomposity, drop the bullshit, and stop trying to hog the good country for yourselves. Remember where you came from. If you don't remember, at least drop the pose and pay attention to those of us who do remember. My story is your story, and your latest anti-immigrant rant has offended at least one of your ancestors.
Flash forward to me, with a stop or two along the way. My father getting threatened at school because he was Jewish. My grandfather's clothing store going bankrupt - he still had several gross of mini-skirts when the fad died down. My father passing around petitions for racial equality in the fifties. I know where I came from because my father knows where he came from, and we both make the connection between our immigrant ancestors and current issues of social justice. My father marrying a Christian girl from Iowa in the late fifties. You might think that completed the process of assimilation, but this view would ignore certain complexities. I know where my mother came from too, but let's keep things simple.
A couple years after I finished my travels I made my living as a fly-by-night contractor. Not long after I started advertising I got hired to paint an enormous, two-story house. It was a huge job, much too big for me to do alone, and I'd underbid the job very badly. I tried hiring friends and family members, but they were either too damn slow and lazy or simply untrainable. Finally, I went to the parking lot of the professional paint store nearest the house I was painting and hired a guy named Eustacio for forty dollars a day. His English was awful, he'd left school in fourth grade, and two of his fingers had been broken and never set properly. He knew far more about painting houses than I did and he worked like a high-speed painting robot; far faster than any of the friends or family members. By now you've probably figured out that he was an illegal alien.
Eustacio also had, in abundance, all the qualities Americans admire. He was hard working, ultra-competent, and smart. He'd had the necessary initiative to undertake a dangerous border crossing into a land where he didn't speak the language, find work that paid a fair wage - or would have paid a fair wage to a citizen - and learn a new trade. I'd be happy to accept him as a fellow citizen.
In short, Eustacio was a lot like my ancestors. I wasn't afraid of him. You shouldn't be afraid either.