How to address symbolic and emotionally-charged arguments about migration and
the U.S.-Mexico border
Josiah Heyman, University of Texas at El Paso (identification purposes only)
jmheyman@utep.edu
Sept. 23, 2005; rev. July 21, 2006
This may be reproduced and used with prior permission of the author.
(1) Illegality (breaking the law, etc.). People often are disturbed that the law is broken
in unauthorized migration. We can understand this, since we are reasonably law abiding
and law respecting individuals. However, when broad forces drive people to leave their
homes in search of work and to reunite with family, and when the law (complete with
extensive law enforcement) does not stop them, it may be that the law itself has failed
and there is a need for a better solution (e.g., fair and just development in Mexico; safe
and legal temporary migration to the U.S. with earned legalization). A good analogy is
the failure of prohibition in the U.S. in the1920s.
(2) Emergency (sense of impending crisis, panic, vulnerability, etc.). States of
emergency declared by various governors are political publicity designed to make them
seem “on top of the issue.” People need to be careful with political rhetoric and also
with dramatic news shows designed to sell advertising time. Unauthorized migration
along the border has been quite stable in recent years (actually slightly declining, to judge
by arrest rates). It rises and falls largely according to the state of the Mexican and
Central American economies, and also demand for labor in the U.S. Migration flows
shift back and forth along the border, moving ahead of the concentration of law
enforcement; this means that as some areas of the border seem to be in an “emergency”
(first Arizona and then New Mexico), others become quiet (San Diego county, urban El
Paso). Whichever side of the immigration issues you are on, there is little need for panic
and little reason to hope for quick fixes; this is a set of issues that has built up for a long
time and needs to be addressed over the long run.
(3) Invasion (fear of demographic change, fear of separatism, etc.). Unauthorized
migration is not an invasion in any meaningful sense of the word (it is a large movement
of people over time, of course, but so is the population boom in Texas in the last 30
years). It does not involve an armed enemy. The government of the U.S. or its states are
in no danger. Large segments of the domestic U.S. population support the “invasion” by
providing jobs, rental apartments, etc., and of course benefit enormously. The “invaders”
are not cohesive, they slowly but surely enter the U.S. mainstream, and are largely
patriotic (expressed loyalty, military service, etc.).
The population of the U.S. is not being demographically overwhelmed, though it
is gradually changing; the number of unauthorized migrants is approximately 4 percent of
the U.S. population and growing by about .17 percent (of the total US population) a year.
The Latino population is growing rapidly, but this is largely due to U.S.-born, U.S.
citizen Latinos. If so, fear of invasion suggests hidden fear of Latinos as people.
There is no meaningful case of separatism in the U.S. involving voluntary
immigrants, with or without documents. These are people who choose to come to the
U.S., after all. Separatist movements in other countries (e.g., Quebec/Canada) involve
conquered people who were in place before the conquerors came in.
(4) Fear of workers. Poor workers, including those in physically demanding, dirty, and
stigmatized jobs, are often feared and disliked because of distaste for their occupations
and because of the poverty in which they live (because of low wages). This is applied to
immigrant workers, such as day laborers, especially when they are in fancy areas where
they are seen as “eyesores” and “dangerous.” Yet such jobs are socially necessary, and
we should value and admire people who fill them. Immigrants are not especially
dangerous; their violent crime rates are lower than those of comparable U.S.-born
populations.
(5) Fear of families, women, children, and use of social services. There is a common
fear of immigrants as bringers of/producers of children. But this expresses a resentment
of a normal, healthy human process, one that we should cherish. Indeed, the U.S. is an
aging country that needs immigrants to maintain a healthy young population. A society
with a shortage of children and young families is a very dysfunctional society indeed.
The demographic facts needed to discuss this issue are listed under item 3, above.
The use of taxpayer dollars is complicated. Immigrants are mostly young
working adults and young families. They benefit society significantly through taxes and
social security withholding. They do use schools and emergency medical services (but in
general they underutilize health services). This tends to cost local governments the most.
The largest benefit is to the federal government. The overall cost/benefit analysis is close
to break-even, with a net benefit from immigration. Besides, it is morally questionable to
think purely in cost/benefit terms. These are children, after all, whose well-being is at
stake.
One of the main objections is that U.S. citizens only (only sometimes legal
residents) should have any right to social benefits, health services, or education. It is
ours, and outsiders have no right to it, is the thinking. However
(1) immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, have access to few social
benefits--no welfare, and only basic health services such as emergency room care and
public health such as vaccinations. Only K-12 education is a universal right, by Supreme
Court decision (Plyler v. Doe). So the social services issue is overestimated.
(2) Immigrants of all legal statuses more than pay their dues to society, by
working hard and paying withholding taxes, and more generally contributing to the wellbeing of all of us. We all owe each other something, an immense web of mutual debts,
including both citizens and immigrants.
(3) Some things it is appropriate to consider restricted personal possessions, like a
car, say. But some things are so fundamental that we cannot just personally possess them
and ignore everyone else. We cannot afford to live in a society where large numbers of
people do not receive primary health care so they transmit preventable diseases or end up
in terrible shape at the emergency room, costing many more dollars than the prevention
would cost. We cannot afford to live in a society where millions of children do not attend
school and do not receive an education.
(6) Fear of language change/loss of cultural traditions. “Cultural fundamentalism”
(akin to racism but using cultural difference as a justification for fear and
prejudice). People often fear different cultures and feel a sense of communication
barriers when encountering languages that they do not know. When familiar places and
landscapes change, this leads to a strong sense of loss. The best answer is to ask people
to have a sense of history. The United States is a powerful cultural system with a long
history of including immigrants, to some extent assimilating them, and also being
enriched by immigrants. Vast numbers of German, Italian, Spanish/Latin American,
French, Irish, Scandinavian, Hungarian, Slavic, Yiddish, Lebanese Arab, Chinese,
Japanese, Filipino, and other language speakers/culture bearers have come to the U.S.,
with no evident harm to great American traditions. In fact there has been a strengthening
of American democracy by insisting on justice and participation. The evidence is that
cultures are not “fundamental,” that people can and do change (and enrich) their cultures.
Recent Mexican and other Latin American immigrants are following the same path.
Adoption of English and other markers of culture change are occurring at the same rate
and following the same patterns as past immigrants.
(7) Fear of crime. We often fear the unknown and the outsider in ways that may not be
accurate, indeed, may be unfair. Immigrants are not especially dangerous or crimeridden; their violent crime rates are lower than comparable U.S.-born populations.
Criminals do cross the border, but the U.S. and Mexican governments have a good (if
not perfect) track record of cooperating, catching, and extraditing them.
(8) Terrorism (vulnerability, etc.). Terrorists/terrorist devices could come through the
U.S.-Mexico border, and we should be concerned about that border in the same way we
are concerned about airports, seaports, the Canadian land border, domestic transportation,
etc. However, none of the 9/11 hijackers came through the Mexican border and Mexican
and Central American unauthorized migrants have no likelihood of being terrorists. The
effort spent arresting non-terrorists, and the business of human smuggling sustained by
“illegalization” of Mexican migration, actually makes it harder to detect possible
terrorists coming through this border. A safe, legal system of labor migration would
enable a clearer focus on law enforcement against terrorism along the Mexican border.
(9) Scapegoating. There are many difficulties and forms of rapid change affecting the
contemporary U.S., and we are made aware of them (in a fearful, superficial way) by the
news media. These include the decline of the “suburban paradise” in California and other
parts of the post WWII United States; globalization of the economy and loss of steady
jobs; changes in standards of personal behavior; urban sprawl and pollution; terrorism;
bloody, frustrating counter-insurgency wars in distant lands; and a chaotic post-cold war
foreign policy world. If we take almost any of these changes, we quickly see that it is
unreasonable to scapegoat immigrants for them, or to exaggerate their role in them; we
also see that it avoids facing our own responsibility for these processes. Unfortunately,
powerless outsiders are easy to scapegoat, but this does not honestly and forthrightly
address our own issues.
(10) Racism. I find it almost impossible to understand the reasoning involved with open
or covert racism, and thus it is hard to get at the underlying emotions involved. One
hopes that we can all embrace our fellow humans in a spirit of love. At the rational level,
as an anthropologist familiar with the scientific literature, I can say that “race” is a
disproven and useless way of describing human biological variation. Hispanic/Latino is a
completely preposterous “race,” being made of a vast range of ancestral populations.
Even “Mexican” is not a consistent genetic pool and is not a race. “White” is certainly
not, being a highly varied assemblage of mobile peoples from the long history of Eurasia.
Race is a distorted, pseudo-scientific way of speaking about roles people have had over
long periods of history in the power system and the division of labor, especially in the
Americas.