On May 1, huge rallies were held in major American cities coinciding with International Workers’ Day. Hundreds of thousands of people turned out in support of persons who have been labeled ’illegal immigrants.’
In Los Angeles, by some accounts, about half a million people turned out. Points of other large demonstrations included Atlanta, Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco and Seattle.
Meanwhile, the television medium, from which the vast majority of Americans get their information, broadcast sensationalized accounts and opinions about the events. Lou Dobbs of CNN and Bill O’Reilly of Fox News staked out very similar positions against the illegal immigrants. (As it happens, both Dobbs and O’Reilly are diametrically opposed to President Bush’s stance on immigration policy reform.)
The quality of the television discussion was utterly pedestrian, the commentators are clearly not trained economists and did not define their terms well.
Were the migrants from Europe to the land of the Red Indians a few centuries ago legal immigrants or illegal immigrants?
What about the involuntary migration of large numbers of human beings from West Africa to America. Were those Africans, upon arrival in America, illegal or legal immigrants?
Since when has a person’a human being’become legal or illegal? It would appear that Dobbs and O’Reilly do not have a grip on their own mother tongue. The last time I checked, an act, or an action, was, or was not in violation of a law, making an action, not a person, legal or illegal.
Just imagine, if a violation of drunk-driving law was to make a person illegal, President Bush and Vice President Cheney would be two illegal Americans leading our country. Such terminology as ’illegal immigrant’ has no epistemological value. But, what would Dobbs and O’Reilly know about epistemology? That requires education. All Dobbs is capable of doing is writing an analytically-feeble book titled Exporting America.
People may express whatever preference they wish about immigration, but if what they want lies outside the feasible range of options, they are dreaming. While I applaud their dreams, they have nothing to do with the reality of immigration. Just as the wave of migration from Europe to the New World was unstoppable due to powerful economic forces, it is na’ve to expect the migration of human beings from south of our border can be thwarted.
No wall can be built and no fence raised to stop the flow of human beings from one region of the world to another. Recall the Berlin Wall, of which Reagan said in 1987, ’Mr. Gorbachev, bring down this wall.’
Migration is driven by powerful labor market forces. Workers willing to work for lower wages come from a labor-abundant country (Mexico, in this case), and cost-conscious businesses eagerly hire them.
A Nobel Prize was awarded for the study of this economic phenomenon. If Dobbs had paid attention to this simple economic principal, he would not have written his book, Exporting America.
Some might try to keep Mexican persons out of the country by alluding to lack of security on our border with Mexico. This is completely misguided. Not one terrorist attack in America, or on Americans or American capital interests abroad, has ever involved a Mexican citizen. Not one! Further, every terrorist who has attempted to or has actually engaged in an attack on American soil flew in to our country by plane. Mexican workers looking to make a better life for themselves walk or make a run for the border. So, that ’security’ dog does not bark.
Economic forces do not recognize political or national boundaries. Borders are, from an economic standpoint, artificial lines drawn on the ground that make some persons feel good about themselves.
This brings me to the last issue. Racism arises from the collective debasement of one group of people based on another group’s arbitrary views. The collective sanctification of one group’s values and origins, and debasement of another’s, determines such perverse views that persons who have come to America from Mexico, without a valid visa, are less valuable persons, and thus deserving of less benefits than both ’legal’ and ’illegal’ Americans.
Such views, as also expressed by small vigilante groups such as the Minutemen, are out and out racist and despicable.
’ Nadeem Naqvi
naqvi@econoharmony.org
