Let 'Em In Or Keep 'Em Out?

Two matters loom very, very large in the relations between the US and Mexico. One, as has been noted in several earlier posts, is trafficking in illegal drugs and its attendant violence. The other is (as the Mexican government puts it) migration or (as many? most? Americans see it) illegal immigration.

The two are joined at the head (diplomacy) and hip (law enforcement.) In addition both problems are easily distorted by emotion, particularly fear. Yes, and both have a complex history the effects of which continue to be played out today.

The powerful motivations for unrestricted immigration are most obvious when examining the American experience of the Nineteenth Century, particularly the years following the Mexican War and Gold Rush. To put it bluntly without (hopefully) oversimplifying: The American economy desperately needed cheap, warm, expendable bodies if it was to expand.

Thanks to a fungus and British governmental inefficiency and indifference, Irish fugitives from the Famine were available in great numbers just as industrialization based on steam power was getting up and running.

(In this context it deserves mentioning that Southern slave owners would not risk their valuable property in dangerous jobs such as feeding the boilers on river steamboats. That was left up to Irishmen whose deaths cost no one anything.)

The Irish of the 1840s, '50s and beyond were plentiful, hard working, hard drinking and Catholic. Therein resided the rub.

The Irish were culturally different from those who saw themselves as "native" Americans. The old breed was Protestant, and at least pretended they were not hard drinking. The stereotypes of the Irish both revealed the antipathy felt toward the newcomers and the resentment that reality dictated the necessity of their presence.

The American antipathy was predicated on fear. A fear that the newcomers would somehow change the identity of the American nation. This fear was a manifestation of the seemingly never-ending American identity crisis.

This crisis is understandable. The US is unique in being a totally artificial country and nation based not on geography, nor on language per se, nor long standing historical forces organic to the society.

The American identity was based on myths of (at that time) recent origin, a theory of government which was still underdeveloped and a handful of ideas and values the implications of which were only vaguely apparent. Arguably there was not even a genuine national identity yet, but rather a collection of regional identities in search of a common center.

Catholicism per se was widely viewed as a threat to the tenuous national identity. True to the heritage of the Reformation in its more extreme expressions, Americans were deeply, darkly suspicious of the Church hierarchy, to say nothing of its rituals and liturgies, its institutions such as monasteries, convents and parochial schools.

(A flourishing literary sub-genre of the mid-1800s was the (at the least) semi-pornographic portrayal of sexual misconduct behind convent walls or in the sacristies of Catholic Churches. The sexual content was always carefully mixed with a presumed Catholic affection for what were quaintly called, "ardent spirits." This matched the public perception that Irishmen loved whiskey to an outrageous extent.)

American industrial prosperity was built on the bodies of the Irish, and the Central Europeans--Poles, Czechs, Bohemians. (Note the racial epithet "honky" is itself a derivation from the late Nineteenth Century term of derision "hunky" meaning anyone from Central Europe but drawn from the word, "Bohemian.") Later sacrifices to the industrial alter were largely Italian.

It is important to understand that a very large percentage of the later waves of immigrants from Central and Southern Europe were, like the Irish, Catholic. It is equally important to recall that the single greatest reason the US took only the underpopulated northern fringe of Mexico following the Mexican War was fear that the US could not survive swallowing the large number of Spanish speaking Catholics such a move would entail.

The wave of immigration restrictions seen in the first half of the Twentieth Century was driven quite explicitly by the identity crisis. Americans of the early decades of the last century demanded a time out regardless of any consequences to the economy. The demand was typically put in terms of "racial" (meaning ethnic) purity. The fear of a presumed slackening of "Anglo-Saxon" vitality was expressed by religious, political and academic leaders alike.

Congress responded with a series of measures which ramped down the number of immigrants from Central, Southern and Eastern Europe allowed into the US. This practice was not even waived in the face of documented genocide directed against Jews before and during World War II. It did not modify until the mid-1960s.

From that time to the present all measures of immigration reform have been couched in terms of High Minded humanitarianism. Under the rhetoric of Lofty Thinking, the reality has been the squalid needs of the American economy. Even a post-industrial economy needs legions of low priced and relatively expendable labor. The immigrant fills that role.

Sectors caught in a cost-price squeeze such as construction and agriculture need cheap workers. In recent years this has meant illegal Mexicans and Central Americans. It has also meant Chinese and other Asians. In some places such as Boston, it has meant skilled Irish nurses.

It is critical to keep in mind that while the debate the past couple of years has focused on Mexicans since they represent the largest component of the illegal workforce, people of many other nationalities are involved as well. Whatever policy helps or hurts Mexicans will help or hurt the others as well be they from Europe, Africa, Asia or Latin America.

Mexico, the Central American countries as well as some South American nations all rely on the US as a sort of escape valve. The Colossus of the North is the Latin American version of the old frontier--a place where fortunes can be sought, or at least money might be made.

Most illegal workers from Mexico and the other Latin American countries have no intention of residing in the US permanently or even for a significant length of time. Their goal is to make money. Make money and send it back home. Make money and go back home to buy a better life for self and family.

This remittance based approach to temporary immigration is not new in the American experience. At many times in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century nearly as many people returned to their countries of origin as arrived in the US from those countries. Over the years only sixty percent of Italians decided to stay in the US. The rest took their savings and went back to the old country with a sizable grubstake. The same was true with Poles particularly when Poland re-emerged after World War I.

In short, a good case can be made for the contention that immigrants mulct the American economy almost as well as American industry has exploited the immigrants.

At this point the Geek would, if he were the High Minded sort, launch into a hymn of praise for the immigrant contribution to the evolving American identity. He won't. Two reasons: It would betray the three-eighths of his genome which comes courtesy of the Hot Springs Apache. It is unnecessary being self-evident that, at the very least, the American identity has survived the onslaught of Catholics, Jews, Buddhists and may very well survive the coming of the Muslims.

The reality is simple and easy to get a grip on. The economy needs cheap, temporary workers. Immigrants whether legal or not are willing and able to work for cheap. Some of those "temporary" workers will become permanent. Some will not.

A rational avenue must be available for those who choose (or are forced for whatsoever reason) to stay here permanently to assimilate, regularise their status and join as full members in the collective American identity.

This proposition has some very unpleasant implications and ramifications as the Geek would be the first to acknowledge. It has the merit of being a realistic acceptance of past and present dynamics which show no sign of having changed in nearly two centuries. Nor is there any indication that alteration is probable in the near to mid-term.

At the same time the US should not--must not--pursue an Open Borders policy. It is quite impossible for the American economy to absorb any and all comers. Further, it frees the governments and affiliated elites in Mexico and elsewhere from the obligation to take effective measures which will provide a genuine stimulus for folks to stay in the land of their birth. Closing the safety valve is actually an act of international "tough love."

What Mexico (and other countries) needs is not an "Office of Migration" as is the case currently but an "Office of Migration Control." This means that the government and its supporting elite must finally realise that it is not possible to reverse the result of the Mexican War by some sort of population infiltration scheme. The government has to put its resources where its people are not simply where the graft sticks.

Migration control means dropping the fraudulent front of "nationalism." It means allowing, inviting foreign direct investment in the new offshore oilfields as well as in the process of repairing and upgrading the decayed infrastructure of Pemex generally. It means realising that the decades of internal war ended nearly a century ago and the expropriations which might have been appropriate then are counterproductive today and positively fatal to Mexican national interest in the near-term.

Unless and until the Mexican government institutes an Office of Migration Control the US will be justified in building Great Walls of the South, sending the ICEmen into the workplace in armed raids, and other supposedly (according to Nancy Pelosi) "unamerican actions.") Unless and until the Mexican government allows and invites American talent, technology and investment to head South of the Border, we are relieved of an affirmative obligation to serve as the Big Frontier of the North.