To The New York Review of Books, 12/17/81:
“John M. Crewdson’s review of Miller’s On the Border and
Hansens’s The Border Economy, though lengthy, provides little essential
information on the illegal immigration problem, and misinterprets what
information it does provide. Those of us who actually live in the U.S.-Mexican
border region owe it to other readers of the NYR to correct Mr. Crewdson’s
misunderstandings and fill in his lacunae.
“It
is absurd, for example, for Mr. Crewdson to repeat Tom Miller’s facetious
‘calculation’ that it would take two and a half million men, standing shoulder
to shoulder, to close the Mexican border to illegal aliens. In fact most of the
border runs through flat, wide open, sparsely vegetated desert country. Except
for the far-scattered towns and cities, most of the border could be easily
patrolled and easily ‘sealed’; a force of twenty thousand, or ten men per mile,
properly armed and equipped, would have no difficulty – short of a military
attack – in keeping out unwelcome intruders. In and near the few towns and
cities a physical barrier is obviously needed, of the type routinely used
everywhere else to restrict and control access. People do not cut holes through
fences when the fences are watched and guarded.
“Furthermore,
there is widespread popular support for closing our southern border to the
Latino invasion. A recent NPR [National Public Radio] broadcast (the All Things
Considered program) cited various national polls indicating that 80 to 90
percent of Americans now object strongly to these mass immigrations from Mexico
and other Hispanic countries. A poll by Arizona’s Senator DeConcini revealed
that 79 percent of his constituents (and this in a state with a large and
rapidly growing Hispanic population) want the illegal aliens deported and the
immigration laws strictly enforced.
“No
doubt there is an element of ethnic chauvinism in this hostility to Mexicans et
al. – and that element will grow violent and much larger if the influx
continues – but the sentiment is based on the clear awareness that these aliens
do indeed take jobs away from American citizens and that the estimated ten
billion dollars remitted annually from Mexican aliens to their relatives still
in Mexico is money that should be going into the pockets of American workers.
“To
say, as Mr. Crewdson does, that the presence of these foreign millions
‘creates’ employment for American workers is [in line with] the magical
economics of Reagan & Co., that wondrous world wherein food is produced in
supermarkets and rabbits are born in hats. If, as Mr. Crewdson seems to
believe, the proliferation of human bodies somehow ‘creates’ new wealth for
all, then Mexico would be a rich nation without need to push its surplus
population northward, and India and China would be the richest nations on
earth.
“The
actual reason why our immigration laws are not enforced is simple, obvious and
well known, (though seldom mentioned in polite print): there are small but
powerful groups on both sides of the border who benefit from this expanding
northerly migration.
“Cui bono? Is now as always the
appropriate question, and the answer is, first, American employers in all
fields, from industrialized agriculture to factory manufacturing, who thrive on
this unlimited supply of cheap, docile, non-union labor. One simple way to halt
the alien incursion would be to penalize employers, with jail sentences if
necessary, who hire illegal aliens. Simple but politically unlikely to be
enforced; no doubt it will be easier to militarize the international border.
“The
second group of beneficiaries are the merchants on the American side of the
border towns, who do a brisk trade in selling American goods to Mexicans. A
third group are the Mexican-American politicians in the Southwestern states,
eager to expand their power base. The fourth group are the wealthy and dominant
classes in Mexico itself, who require the safety valve of emigration in order
to postpone for as long as possible the next, and inevitable, revolution in
their desperately overpopulated nation.
“American
‘interests’ (the term ‘ruling class’ is now taboo, right?), anxious to secure
access to Mexico’s oil, must therefore appease Mexican ‘interests’ by overlooking
illegal immigration while at the same time offering at least a token response
to the popular demand for a halt to it; thus we have the cosmetic but
ineffectual proposals of the Carter and Reagan administrations.
“These
are harsh, even cruel propositions, but in fact the American boat is full, if
not already overloaded; we cannot allow further mass immigration. The American
public is fully aware of this truth even if our ‘leaders’ prefer to attempt to
ignore it. We know what they will not acknowledge, that the tendency of
large-scale immigration is to degrade and cheapen American life. Anyone who has
made a recent visit to Mexico, to East L.A., or even to Miami, Florida, knows
what I mean.
“When
the call for compassion is raised (a word now hopelessly corrupted by its use
in the mouths of such as Nixon, Carter, and Reagan), we must answer that the
most compassionate thing we can do for nations such as Mexico is to encourage
them, somehow, to commence the policies of radical internal reform and vigorous
population control that are clearly necessary.”
-----Edward Abbey
(Quoted in Postcards From Ed - Dispatches and Salvos From an American Iconoclast, pps. 109-11)
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