How and when did illegal immigration became such a hot topic in this country? I don’t remember anyone even talking about this in the presidential election four years ago. There have long been parts of the nation where it was a big issue, but somehow in the past two years it became this pressing national controversy that masses of people are worried about.
Wikipedia, as usual, provides some enlightenment here.
I guess it doesn’t help that there’s a wide-open Republican primary full of candidates trying to pander to extremists on this issue — people who seem to care less about illegal immigration and more about being overrun by dark-skinned people in general.
As for me, I can’t get myself to worry much about it. I chalk it up to having spent my high school years overseas. Living in Japan for three years permanently changed my perspective on America’s relationship to the rest of the world. I don’t think this country is better than any other country. It’s better in some ways, worse in others. (Many others, yes, but just as we’re not angels, we’re not Satan either.)
More important than our individual national identities are our identities as citizens of the world. Our common humanity is more important than any national allegiance.
There are swaths of ordinary people on this planet who couldn’t care less about the United States. They spend days on end living their lives, going to work and eating and entertaining themselves, hardly thinking about Americans or the United States at all. Fancy that!
And I don’t think there’s a fixed American identity, at least not one that’s going to change just because we let lots of dark-skinned people come over the border. And Dick Cheney and David Addington have fucked up our constitutional system of government more than hordes of immigrants ever could.
It’s not that I don’t think people should come legally instead of illegally. It’s that I just can’t seem to get myself worried about it.
Xenophobia isn’t unique to Americans, by the way, or even to caucasians. For instance, Japan has long dealt with its own ethnic issues.
Someday every human being is going to be the color of coffee ice cream, and then we’ll find other stuff to fight about.
I do recall the issue of illegal immigration arising just after 9/11. It is relative to national security: how can we protect ourselves from terrorists if we can’t even keep out poor foreigners looking for a better life?
We would be far better off focusing on securing our borders and ports than fighting senseless wars overseas.
As for the notion of us all being common citizens of the world, I agree with you. However, the only way to properly appreciate that which unites us is by also appreciate that which makes significant groups of us unique. The diversity of our cultures and national identities is a good thing. To boil everything down into a common denominator, to eliminate all national and cultural and ethnic distinctions, would be a tragedy. We’d end up with something like in Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day.
The US, though, doesn’t have a culture. The majority of our founders and the early colonists were WASPS, and so WASPishness is considered the default by conservatives of “traditional American way of life,” but that’s just the result of a historical accident and a numbers game.
This issue is largely about access to jobs and social-serices/tax-obligations. Ideally we should live in a world where people can freely move about and traffic their benign skills in whatever place they can muster a living. The idea that only people of a local geography can fully participate in the immediate marketplace is bizarrely old for the today’s small world.
The harder problem to solve is the dispensing of services (eg: long-term healthcare, education) and the fair funding of them amongst the market’s populace. The attitude of most Americans would be greatly changed towards immigration if they knew, for sure, that those benefiting from our local infrastructure we also paying a fair share for it.
A common, universal verifiable Identity would solve this problem.
Daniel,
The US doesn’t have a culture? We may not have a “sophisticated” culture, but we certainly have a culture.
See any Wimpy burger stores in NYC? Pachinko parlors?
I think that almost every person in the top 80% of world income probably sees an American brand every day. Probably they all see Japanese brands as well. Beyond that, well… I can’t think of any other countries that have the same worldwide consumer reach.
To the immigration point… I remember this being a huge issue in the early 1980s, although it was more straight xenophobia (Japanese cars, etc) than immigration-focused.
But… people want to come here. Mexico won’t issue drivers licenses to foreigners, period. We do here. As much as some like to imagine it, people aren’t beating down the doors to get into China… or India… or Belgium… whereas people from all over the world want to come here. There must be a reason.
I have my biases- I think that if you were to sum up the key issues- freedom of speech, economic opportunity, freedom of religion, political stability- we may not be the single-best in any given one, but in sum total we have far more to offer than any other country.
That was really well said, Jeff.
Fear is really central to the Republican identity. Their entire platform is fear of the “other”: terrorists, socialists, “liberals,” “the media,” “Islamofascists,” and immigrants. As far as immigration goes, I’m pretty unconvinced that the ones who are really tied up about this (Tancredo et al) actually make a distinction between legal and illegal immigrants; I think racism is what lies squarely at the heart of this controversy. They ascribe all sorts of nefarious motives to “illegal immigrants,” that “they” are coming here to take advantage of our “liberal welfare state” (which is why nearly 50 million of our own citizens have no access to health care coverage?), “they” just want a “free ride” on our tax dollars.
I concede that in the age of Al Qaeda, it is disconcerting (to say the least) that we’ve got thousands of people unofficially crossing our borders; we have the right and responsibility to regulate who enters our country, and immigration reform definitely is a priority. But the reason most of these people are here illegally is because our system is so arcane and busted. These are poor people from troubled areas of the world just looking for a safe place to live and raise families. I bet most of them would try to be here legally if they had any money or government documents and enough time to get through the application and screening process. Yes, let’s fix immigration but can we please stop demonizing people who are just after a better life?
I do not fear people with skin color different than mine so have less trouble with the immigration issue than conservatives have with this matter. I know poeple who made it to this country the hard way through the heat of the border, and are now successes. They are the American Dream.
Many of the undesirable traits of illegal populations stem in large part from the simple fact that they are illegal. They use expensive emergency rooms because they lack insurance or are afraid a primary-care doctor might create a paper trail. They often don’t file tax returns because of the same fear, and they turn to welfare or other social services because their illegal status consigns them to the lowest rung of the economy. We infantilize undocumented workers by relegating them to second-class status, and then we chastise them for being dependent on the nanny state.
It is true that 50 million people don’t have access to health care PLANS, but that just means that they can’t afford insurance (otherwise know as a legalized protection racket.) It is also true that 50 million people can walk into any doctors office or hospital emergency room and be treated for nothing if they don’t have the means. They may only get the basics unless they are dying, but no-one gets turned away… I broke my arm last year skateboarding and it was fixed at the emergency room….I even had a specialist for six weeks post op, and a PT for a month…All free, because I could prove lack of income….There is also a benefit called Medicaid that is funded from taxes by everyone working legally in the USA…(This is what the real issue of illegal immigration is all about) It is being abused by illegals coming into the US and demanding treatment when they don’t contribute to the system (most are being paid under the table…I was when I first arrived here.) It is putting a big drained on the US, and I can totally understand why the politicians are worried….Babyboomers are now of age, and that means Medicare out the bum….Who is going to pay for this if most workers are illegal??? So, give them their greencards, and their citizenship, and bring them on board to help pay for all the bills or we might go broke!!!