Friday, January 05, 2007
Ruminations about Undocumented Immigrants
I don't pretend to have a solution to the problem posed by undocumented or "illegal" immigrants. I know that there is a lot of anger and frustration about the presence of undocumented immigrants, especially those from Mexico and other parts of Central America. Responding to this anger, our political leaders have done or tried to do some rather foolish and impractical things, such as:
- Deny driver's licenses to persons without Social Security numbers
- Build a high fence through the desert we share with Mexico
- Conduct unannounced sweeps through factories to round up persons who may be undocumented immigrants, mainly for the purpose of harassing them and intimidating other immigrants without papers
- Prevent such workers without papers from receiving emergency medical care
- Prevent their children from attending public schools
- Introduce punitive legislation in the federal Congress to make it a felony for a foreigner to be in the United States without a valid visa
- Demand that all six million or so (or whatever the number is) of the undocumented visitors be rounded up and shipped out of the country
There is lots of anger and resentment. It strikes me that the anger is associated with the visible presence of these workers, who are willing to take on jobs with low wages that native Americans are not interested in doing. I emphasize the phrase visible presence. It seems that most of us are happy to have these immigrants taking care of our lawns, serving us food in restaurants, making our beds in hotels, and other necessary but menial tasks. What we don't like is to be reminded of the presence of the people who do these things by finding them congregating in parking lots at Costco, Home Depot, and the like, waiting for contractors to come along and offer them jobs for the day. We believe in a society of equals and we don't like to be reminded that there are some members of our society who are less equal than others.
Labels: immigrants, middle-class anger, undocumented workers
