I
was upgrading the landscaping in front of my Petaluma eastside home when this
Mexican man walked up. He looked around thirty, capable, wearing typical day
laborer attire. “Trabajo?” “Si.”
And so he was hired for a day of labor. I was building a low fence to enclose a
flagstone patio, so I had him start with digging the fence post holes while I
measured and cut the posts. I learned that he was sending money to pay for his
wife’s “tumor” operation back in Mexico. He points to his stomach. Wow. Lesson
One: he *really* needs the money. I paid him well. As I started off to get a
sawhorse, he says “aqui”, gestures for the hand saw.
He then makes a perfectly square cut right on the mark, holding the post across
his knee. Lesson Two: inability to speak English doesn’t mean absence of skill.
What
will we do about these people, who have come illegally to America to be
illegally hired by homeowners, contractors, and corporations? The immigration
issue—really, the Mexican immigration issue – periodically moves into the media
spotlight, as it has in recent weeks. I find the debate fascinating,
unpredictable. Some conservatives are calling for mass arrest and deportation,
as embodied in the House-passed immigration bill. Other conservatives argue
that the ambition, work ethic, and Catholic family values of the Mexican
immigrants are healthy infusions to counter the entitlement-minded secularism
that they say is strangling American culture. Former Democratic Governor of
Colorado Richard Lamm argues that excessive muli-culturalism – over-emphasis on the “pluribus” at the
expense of the “unum” -- will balkanize this county
to the point of breakdown. To destroy America, he writes, “Turn America into a
bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country. History shows that no nation
can survive the tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing
languages and culture.” Good point, but we if want to survive a world with
nuclear weapons, we’ve got to develop a *global* identity that transcends all
national and cultural identities.
Some
folks are pressing to hold the *employers* accountable for hiring illegals, imposing strict penalties, drying up demand,
making a border wall unnecessary. Others are calling for the issuance of
national identity cards, to make it clear who is and isn’t a citizen. I’m not
sure I like this idea, not only because of the privacy risks, but because I’d
be sure to lose mine within the first month.
Personally,
I’m against the House’s “build a wall and dump them on the other side” approach.
I support allowing those who are here earn citizenship, which should include
learning to speak English. But I think we are missing the opportunity to look “upstream”
at the bigger issues. Maybe American *could* be destroyed by excessive multiculturalism,
as Lamm argues, but it is already being destroyed by
consumer culturalism and the influence of money in
politics. Apathetic American citizens are falling away from their civic duties,
allowing their government to be taken over by short-sighted corporations. Too
many citizens are trading an interest in voting and politics for an obsession
with infotainment and gadgetry. We need to stop this.
And
why isn’t anyone discussing global population growth? The earth is producing
too many human babies, for a variety of reasons: lack of birth control,
poverty, and oppression of women. Let’s bring this into the debate.
We
also need to address the motivations of the Mexicans (or any other nationality)
who seek to live and work in America. Why can’t Mexico provide what they need? Is
the American corporate empire, in its lust for cheap labor and raw materials,
denying the developing nations the opportunity to grow in ways that are
sustainable and just? Policies of the IMF and World Bank are notorious for
driving the peasants off their subsistence farms so big landowners can grow export
crops to sell to the rich Americans. These peasants end up in vast slums on the
urban fringe, where they can be easily exploited by imperial capitalists. And
if they try to join a union in the maquiladora, as did
mi amigo Adolfo, they risk ending up in Petaluma, standing in front of the
7-Eleven.