Critics of illegal immigration can make many cogent arguments to support the position that the U.S. Congress and the Colorado legislature must develop effective and well-enforced immigration policies that will restrict the number of people who migrate here legally and illegally.
It’s true that all forms of immigration exert influence over our economic and cultural make-up. In some ways, immigration improves our economy by adding laborers, taxpayers and consumers, and in other ways immigration detracts from our economy by increasing the number of students, health care recipients and other beneficiaries of public services.
Some economists say that immigrants, legal and illegal, produce a net economic gain, while others say that they create a net loss. There are rational arguments to support both sides of this debate, and it’s useful and educational to hear the varying positions.
However, one of the disturbing aspects of this debate is that critics are excessively harsh in their judgment of illegal immigrants. They talk about them in dehumanizing terms, casting them as hardened criminals who are unlike the rest of us, who shamelessly flout our laws and who have no sense of community or duty.
“What part of illegal don’t you understand?” critics ask. “Round them up and kick them out. They’re destroying our country.”
But illegal immigrants are mostly hard-working men and women who come here looking for employment so that they can support their families. And they find work here.
The United States is like a conflicted household in which the husband continuously complains that he doesn’t like the people who are remodeling his kitchen. But every time he kicks them out, his wife rehires them. By coming back again and again, they’re defying the husband’s wishes, but how can we blame them when it’s the wife who keeps calling them back?
Migrating to find employment is a part of human nature, and it’s a characteristic that we’ve often celebrated in the United States. We’re proud of the original European settlers who crossed the Atlantic to establish this country. We’re proud of the families who climbed into wagon trains and migrated to the West. We’re proud of the immigrants who moved here with nothing but a few dollars in their pockets and through strong work ethics and sacrifice became successful.
“The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel precisely because it reveals a strong, proud, courageous, Depression-era American family that packs up its meager belongings and travels West looking for work. The Joad family is inspiring, because no matter what happened to them, they maintained their dignity and determination.
If jobs had been available in Mexico, there’s no question that the Joads would have crossed the border instantly. If they had, would we have stopped regarding them as a hard- working, courageous American family and instead seen them as hardened criminals who should be feared?
In order for our immigration policies to be effective, we must accept the reality that people will always migrate toward better jobs, particularly if they’re facing dire prospects at home. After Hurricane Katrina hit, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to relocate. If Congress had passed a law saying that it was illegal to leave the state of Louisiana, then hundreds of thousands of people would have left the state illegally, not because they’re evil scofflaws, but because they were determined to support their families.
Illegal immigrants aren’t bad people. They come here because this is where the jobs are. If we really want to stop illegal immigration, we have to severely penalize the industries that hire them, create a high tax on any goods or services that use illegal immigrants or create an easier legal process for crossing the border so that workers don’t have to sneak into the country.
Former Bronco Reggie Rivers is the host of “Global Agenda” Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. on KBDI-Channel 12. His column appears every Friday.
