On immigration without documents or permission: If it involves minefields, patrols and turning the invaders around, Im all for immigration reform. We should just turn them around politely at the border. Theyre not legal, so they need to go home. My parents came here legally. Its something we hear from a lot of our fellow Americans, and its disgustingly stupid, racist, ignorant and dangerous. A little background- I am a 25-year old, white, apolitical Millennial veteran who lives a middle-class lifestyle, has a strong family relationship, a traditional Christian marriage and a community college degree. In my living family, weve got old European-origin white people, an old wholly-Japanese woman who married a white guy from Nebraska, a Mexican great-grandfather who fled Mexico in the 1920s as a toddler to avoid death squads who married a Native American woman from an Arizona reservation, a Mexican-Indian grandmother who married an Italian dude and had a white Mexican-Italian girl who married a white-Japanese dude. Im a mexican-japanese-italian-irish American who grew up in predominantly-white portions of Southern California and have lived most of my life in the American Southwest. I didnt just see Hispanics on the news or pretend they didnt exist by ignoring them like many Americans do- I went to school with them, socialized with them, bought things from them, served with them and I work with and for them daily. I married a Hispanic woman who is a dual citizen of the United States and Mexico and left her native country because of crime and danger. Many of my closest friends have similar stories. This doesnt make me remarkable, but it does give me some basis from which to speak. The United States of America was founded on a pretty simple principle- that this is the land of opportunity, of freedom and of equality. The United States is not perfect and we have a lot of mistakes in our history, but for the most part, I think that America is the best nation on earth. Thats not just because of our exceptional good luck in geography, the exceptionally good choices of our forefathers and the sacrifices they made, its because their guiding ethics were generally respected. We look today at the exceptions to that with regret and shame, not pride. Today, we are increasingly aware of immigration into the United States. This immigration isnt new, nor is it unpredictable. The economic, security, social and political situations of Central America have deteriorated significantly due to drug trafficking, resource shortages, dysfunctional political leadership and failures of those nations to adequately function. Right, wrong or indifferent, these nations are in distress and are no longer viewed as hospitable by their own citizens. Those citizens have tried for generations to fix their nations and have failed; efforts to fix their nations now are futile and likely fatal. Demanding that they fix their own problems is akin to demanding that the tides cease and the waves part- pointless, wasted oxygen and sound. The problems are already being fixed, by warfare. These people are fleeing a civil war in all but name for fear that they will be killed, continually oppressed and that they will be forced to live through a hell that Americans cannot comprehend. They dont want to live like Syrians are forced to, and so they make a difficult decision and risk their lives and sacrifice much to emigrate from their homes and attempt to restart their lives in the United States of America. Sound familiar? It should. Its how our ancestors got here, regardless of whether they walked across an ancient long-drowned land bridge, sailed a fragile wooden ship across the ocean or took a plane from the Old World to the New. The story doesnt change, just the faces and names. Anyway, a lot of Americans on both sides of the aisle feel that we should not allow these refugees into our nation. We cite anecdotes and stereotypes, we dehumanize them and we demonstrate against them. We punt responsibility for decisions to our elected leaders and we work very hard to ignore the tragedies to our south. We even go as far as to isolate them in warehouses and turn their plights into sound bytes and focus on how to deport them back to their homelands. Those are not American decisions. Those are the decisions of the ordinary Germans of the Third Reich that ignored the Holocaust. Those are the decisions of the ignorant, lazy and fearful who are forgotten by history and derided for their failures. They are the poor choices that create catastrophe. The nations to our south were declared to be within our sphere of influence by James Monroe. For two centuries, we have controlled the governments, policies and economics of Central America, with an eye towards American benefit. Thats necessity- but it also confers responsibility for the situation we find ourselves in today upon this nation. We told the world that we were the masters of the Western Hemisphere. We assumed that position as a leader and weve willingly filled it. That alone gives us a responsibility to help manage this problem, but more than doctrines and ethics, our involvement is simple reality. Latin America is not going to fix itself overnight, and its not going to improve at all in the short term without extensive American intervention. It might not improve at all if we dont intervene in a meaningful way, and it will probably deteriorate if we ignore it, regardless of our rationale or internal politics. These refugees are going to keep coming, and in increasing numbers, and theyre going to come here because were rich, free and a better alternative than Mexico. The only way to stop this is to make America a worse place than Latin America, which is something that few of us actually want and isnt likely to happen unless we make exceedingly bad choices. How we respond to these people and how we treat them is going to be a test of our character as individuals and as a nation, and its going to define the world we live in. If America decides to reject these refugees, to turn them back into the deserts or to deport them back to the wrecked nations they came from or even to keep them in camps and isolated compounds in backwoods quarters of the nation, this nation will no longer be the greatest nation on earth. We will have decided to turn our backs upon people who want to better themselves and their communities and we will have chosen to be an exclusionary, isolated and stagnant society and we will have to live with the consequences of that decision. We will find this path to be very expensive in lives and treasure, to be one of poverty and austerity and sacrifice; and worst of all, well lose the trust that the world places in us. We will lose the supremacy that enables our lifestyles, and we will be replaced as global leaders by another nation. Weve been working down this path for most of the twentieth century, and although weve been able to maintain American supremacy by force of arms, economics and geography, weve also burned a lot of the trust and goodwill that our grandfathers earned with their good deeds and sacrifices and were starting to see the world as it is without an effective America. Just like the DC Comics series where Superman leaves the picture, things get ugly and costly for everyone involved. We dont need to imagine very hard to see where this future leads, we can look at the militarized state of Israel, the isolated and stagnant Iran or at the stratified societies of Mexico, India or Brazil to see what this future holds. Sure, theyre sovereign nations with territory and laws and economies, but theyre not exactly nations that are going to determine the course of global affairs. They are nations that are slowly edging towards revolution and reinvention and are irrelevant on the global stage. Wed create a Gaza on our southern border and wed pay every day for it. Wed sure pay more than we ever would spend in social programs, and wed never see a penny of that money returned to our own economy. A halfway solution isnt enough- that just creates a dysfunctional society that generates its own problems (like we see in the ghettos of Chicago or Detroit or in the perpetually-exploited Hispanic illegals). If America decides to accept these refugees, though, we will have reaffirmed our commitment to the values that forged this great nation from its humble, imperfect beginnings. We will have integrated people into our society and we will benefit from their efforts and their lives. We will find a nation that changes for the better- more Americans, more work, more opportunity and more money for everyone. We will revitalize our economies and avert costly future nation-building; eventually well probably positively change Latin America without spilling a drop of American blood and with a considerable profit. We will gain daring, talented, determined individuals who risk their lives just to live on the fringes of the American Dream, and we will have them here legally. They will make this their home, pay taxes and invest in America (you know, like we do). That makes us stronger as a society and as a nation. It doesnt take much to accept people into the United States. A green card, citizenship papers and an honest opportunity to succeed are all we need to offer; social support programs are investments in people that will pay off if theyre intelligently managed. I think well find that immigrants will be far less dependent than we fear if theyre not forced to live in a dysfunctional underclass thats ignored and exploited. If we allow immigrants to live openly, to bring their families and their assets as possible without fear of deportation or death by exposure, well find that they will be able to support themselves. So, what are the obstacles to this acceptance of reality? Ignorance, racism, a reluctance to explore and a profound arrogance that too many Americans share and that they sure havent earned. They breed poor decisions and cause failure at anything beyond existing. These are the things that make America weak. These are the things that allowed Barack Obama to win the Presidency twice by failing to present a better alternative. These arent going to be solved by a change in immigration law. Theyre things that we are going to have to be confronted individually. If we dont, were going to find that those attitudes have negative consequences that are far better avoided than endured. Money can be found or created or diverted from bottomless pits like the Navys LCS or the Joint Strike Fighter. Laws can be changed and processes streamlined; theyre just excuses now. I think the nation that won World War II and put men on the moon can figure out citizenship. As an American, I hope that we make the right choice and bring these new citizens into the fold. It seems to have worked pretty well for us in the past and I see no reason that that would change now. -Robert Martin, American
Posted on: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 01:53:00 +0000
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