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 resident George
W. Bush, speaking on August 24th:
There are
people in Mexico who have got children who are worried about where
they are going to get their next meal from. And they are going
to come to the United States, if they think they can make money
here. That's a simple fact. And they're willing to walk across
miles of desert to do work that some Americans won't do. And we've
got to respect that, it seems like to me, and treat those people
with respect.
This little
nugget of Compassionate Conservatism calls for some close textual
analysis. Calls for it? It fairly shrieks for it. Where's my scalpel?
There are
people in Mexico... For "Mexico" you could equally
well substitute any one of a hundred or so other countries in that
sentence: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua, Argentina,
..., all the way down to Zambia and Zimbabwe. What's so special
about Mexico? That the U.S.A. has a border with them, so we need
to take special care to maintain mutual respect? And showing Mexicans
how easy it is to break U.S. laws and get away with it is a good
approach to doing this?
...who have
got children... Ah, the kiddies! There was a time, in what now
seems like the remote, fabled past, when the Democrats were the
only party that hauled in images of distressed infants for
moral-blackmail leverage to promote their policies. Yo, Mr. President,
I have kids, too. Where do I go to get my Get Out Of Jail
Free card?
...who are
worried about where they are going to get their next meal from.
Children (from the syntax, so far as it is possible to parse it,
"children" seems to be the antecedent of that second "who")
all over the world worry about this, mainly because they live in
countries that have seriously messed-up systems of government. Again:
Why is Mexico so special? As a Christian, I can certainly see a
case here for private charity. That aside, why is it the business
of Mr. Bush, in his capacity as president of the United States,
to concern himself with the nutritional requirements of Mexican
children? Don't Mexicans have a government of their own to worry
about such matters?
And they
are going to come to the United States... It's like a natural
law, see? The tides ebb and flow; thunder follows lightning; caterpillars
turn into butterflies; a K+ meson decays into a pi+ meson, a neutrino
and an antineutrino; ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny; one generation
cometh up and another generation passeth away; the sun also rises,
and Mexicans will come to the United States. There isn't anything
you can do about it.
...if they
think they can make money here... AND if they also think they
face only a minimal risk of being (a) intercepted at the border,
(b) arrested for working illegally, (c) denied welfare benefits
if they fall into destitution, (d) deported for any reason whatsoever
short of multiple homicide...
That's a
simple fact. More fatalism. Bank robbers will rob banks, that's
a simple fact. Wife beaters will beat their wives, that's a simple
fact. Embezzlers will embezzle, forgers will forge, rapists will
rape. Nothing you can do about it. Best to just lie back and pretend
to enjoy it.
And they're
willing to walk across miles of desert... Plenty of people in
poor parts of the world are willing to do much, much more than that,
if they think the country of their dreams is a soft touch. Australia
is having a spot of bother right now with a boatload of "asylum
seekers" from Afghanistan who paid Indonesian people-smugglers
$5,000 a head to get them to the antipodes. Australia, you see,
is a smuggler's dream: 20,000 miles of coastline, long stretches
of which are uninhabited. She also has a high standard of living,
a demand for cheap labor, and a welfare state. Afghanistan to Australia
is one heck of a trip — check it out on an atlas. One heck
of a trip. You think you have problems with Mexicans? Stick around.
...to do
work that some Americans won't do... I have done my best with
this clause, but can make no sense of it. What is this "work
that some Americans won't do"? Straining a bit, one can think
of scattered instances. I imagine Orthodox-Jewish Americans would
not work in a pork-processing plant, for example. A dedicated member
of the Black Panther Party would probably be unwilling to do PR
work for the Ku Klux Klan. Yes, I guess there is some work
that some Americans will not do. But is there really more
than a microscopic quantity of such work, refused by a tiny number
of Americans? I suspect that what President Bush wanted to say at
this point was: "work that Americans won't do." This is
a thing you actually do hear a lot from apologists for illegal immigrants.
"Look, these Mexicans pick fruit, mow lawns, clean pools, work
in slaughterhouses. You can't get Americans to do this." I
myself once, in a moment of carelessness, said something along those
lines in this very space. Several readers wrote in to point out,
correctly of course, that it is economically illiterate to talk
about "work that Americans won't do." With trivial exceptions
like my examples above, any American pulled in off the street would
be willing to pick fruit or gut hogs ... if the pay was right.
For 40 bucks an hour, I would pick fruit. For a million bucks
an hour, Warren Buffett would gut hogs. I suspect the president
started off to say "work that Americans won't do," then
thought better of it, either because it sounds as if he's calling
his fellow-countrymen a nation of spoiled brats or because an economist
got to him in between speechwriter and speech. He thereupon threw
in the word "some" to make the statement meaningless,
with that infallible instinct for "compassionate"-sounding
vapidity that politicians have.
And we've
got to respect that... So if a boatload of Afghanis comes ashore
at Malibu, having failed to get into Australia, do we have to show
the same "respect" to them, too? If the entire population
of Haiti (around 7.8 million) decamps across the Caribbean to Florida
because they are starving at home, have we "got to respect
that", too? If not, why not?
...and treat
those people with respect. Let me introduce President Bush to
some people the feddle gummint, of which he is the chief executive,
really should treat with respect: L-E-G-A-L immigrants. Americans
are hardly aware of this, and there is no reason why they should
be, but it is a fact — "a simple fact," Mr. President
— that the cowardice, dishonesty, and sentimentality that surround
the whole issue of illegal immigration are infuriating beyond all
measure to people who have spent years jumping obediently through
the INS hoops.
Consider Rosie
Derbyshire, for example. She arrived on these shores in November
1986 on an H-4 visa. (An H-4 is the spouse of an H-1, which is what
I was at the time. An H-1 is admitted to do a specific job for a
specific firm.) In February 1987 she applied for permanent residence
status — the fabulous "green card" (it is actually
pink). This was granted in November 1993. The rule is that after
five years in "green card" status you can apply for naturalization,
so in November 1998 she applied. Rosie has her oath ceremony this
coming Friday, September 7th — nearly a three-year wait from
application, and that was with the help of a U.S. congressman. (The
INS does not read mail or take phone calls. E-mail? You're kidding.
The only way to query the status of your case is through a member
of Congress. I am not making this up.)
From lawful
entry to citizenship: 15 years, less a few weeks. Look, Rosie's
not complaining. A country has every right to scrutinize applicants
for citizenship, to test their patience as well as their form-filling
skills, and anything else it feels like testing. It's worth all
that, and a lot more, to become an American. But if it's 15 years
from lawful entry to citizenship — filling in all the forms,
paying all the fees, photocopying all the certificates, going to
all the interviews, sitting for hours in crowded, overheated halls
listening to the birdsong of the bureaucrat ("Next!" ...
"Window four, can't you read?" ... "Next!"
... "You'll have to get this notarized and come back,"
... "Next!" ...) — how long does it take from unlawful
entry? More than 15 years, or less? If, as I suspect, the answer
is "less," what is it that the United States wants so
desperately, that illiterate law-breaking Mexicans have but Rosie
Derbyshire doesn't have? Just curious.
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