Finding the Moral Heart of the Immigration Debate
Josiah Heyman
José gave his eye and arm to the United States. Working in a mine, a drill steel
fragment lodged in his left eye, while a high pressure hose shattered his left arm. The
doctor reported, “Mr. Hernández could return to any type of work not requiring real good
vision.” He continued to work in mines, docks, and cotton fields for decades more.
The United States gave its heart to Tomás. A happy, energetic seven year old,
tumbling face first over sofa cushions, Tomás has a hole in his heart. Having it repaired
is a matter of life and death. He had not crossed the border to mooch off the medical
system. The hole was discovered in a routine check-up for school. Determined
charitable efforts by doctors and social workers are sending Tomás to an advanced
medical center to repair his heart.
Immigration creates profound mutual bonds. We owe each other something,
often many things. José gives the people of the United States his body; Americans give
Tomás his life. It is through this moral heart that we will resolve immigration policy
debates.
Our mutual bonds go beyond calculation of costs and benefits, though the
evidence is compelling that immigration is a net benefit, fiscally, economically, and
culturally. Persuasion based on carefully researched facts is insufficient, though proimmigrant facts are plentiful and undeniable. Immigrants revitalize our cities. They
commit crimes at a lower rate than the native-born. They work at a high rate, and depend
on few public benefits beyond schools and sparse health services. But as a fellow of the
American Anthropological Association, I find that we also need to consider the
relationships, symbols, and emotions at stake in the immigration debate.
Powerful myths stand in the way of progress in the immigration debate. That
undocumented immigrants willfully break the law, for example. In fact, people
desperately want to follow the law—they constantly plead to be legal, to live in the open,
to be free of smugglers and scam artists who exploit their plight.
The myth is that undocumented immigrants have a free choice. The wait to
immigrate legally from Mexico can be up to twenty three years, depending on the kin
relationship. Meanwhile, they cannot live on the fifty dollar weekly paychecks from
assembly jobs in U.S.-owned factories south of the border. Their farms collapse in the
face of cheap corn and beans under the North American Free Trade Agreement. Laws
work only when they make sense, when it is possible for people to obey them. Until the
laws are improved, they cannot.
Another, truly frightening myth is that immigrants are another kind of people, the
“Others.” We don’t have anything in common. We don’t share food. We speak each
other’s languages awkwardly, if at all. The Others walk on our sidewalks, go to our
schools, visit our doctors, staff our stores. The most dangerous version of this myth is
that they are another kind of human being, another “race.”
As anthropologists know well, race is an illusion, a perilous mistake about human
biology. But race comes far too easily when we speak about The Mexicans, The Chinese,
The Indians. It lurks hidden in speech about absolutely different cultures or nations. By
thinking of separated groups rather than related people, race denies that we share space,
neighborhoods, schools, health, and an economy. We ignore how immigrants care for
our elderly, and our teachers care for their children. We avoid change rather than
embracing it, seeing an external invasion rather than a welcome reinvigoration of our
communities and our cultures.
If we are honest with ourselves, we must deal with the society we and the
immigrants have together created. It is one thing to express our relations person to
person. But as a society, we express it in laws. A comprehensive immigration reform is
our collective national expression of bonds between host society and new immigrants, the
sum of all our individual encounters. A legalization program for settled undocumented
immigrants recognizes the ties and loyalties they have developed in America. A
temporary labor program guarantees safe and open crossing of borders, a dignified and
just recognition of contributions of immigrant workers. A program supporting
communities adjusting to new immigrant populations, helping with hospitals, schools,
police, and fire departments, acknowledges their pioneering role in the magnificent
renewal of America.
Josiah Heyman is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Sociology
and Anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso.