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Jewish World Review March 25, 2005 / 14 Adar II, 5765 Who's Responsible? By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Priming the pump for his meeting with President Bush at the "Western White House," Mexican President Vicente Fox stirred things up again when he told reporters in Mexico City last week that walls along the U.S.-Mexican border were "discriminatory" and "against freedom."
Asked about a fence that U.S. officials are building along the border south of San Diego — a barrier referred to, by people on both sides, as the "Tortilla Curtain" — Fox said the structure "must be demolished."
"No country that is proud of itself should build walls ... it doesn't make any sense," Fox said.
As a Mexican-American born on this side of the Rio Grande, it makes sense to me. A country has the right to protect its borders.
I'll tell you what doesn't make any sense — that the Mexican president would jeopardize the possibility of achieving even a sliver of immigration reform by spouting off rhetoric that is so irresponsible and so unrealistic.
It's not like chances for reform are all that great. The president's reform plan appears stalled in Congress over objections by fellow Republicans that the plan "rewards lawbreakers" with amnesty.
Congressional Republicans are right about one thing: amnesty is not the way to go. Forget the business about rewarding lawbreakers. The only reward that illegal immigrants care about is a job, and they have plenty of those. The real problem with amnesty is that is absolves the individual of his responsibility to take the necessary steps to live in the United States legally.
My beef with right-wing elements in Congress is that they tend to be hard on illegal immigrants but soft on those who hire them. They're never honest about the fact that those pushing for a more lenient hand toward illegal immigration include the usual assortment of corporate interests without whom they could hardly scrape together two nickels for their campaign coffers at election time.
Be that as it may, Fox's comments are not helpful. Nor are they consistent with what has been for hundreds of years a proud tradition of Mexico not interfering in the domestic affairs of other nations. Ironically, it's Mexicans who usually see Americans as metiches (meddlers). After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, members of the Mexican elite said that the United States provoked the attack because it is always sticking its nose into the business of other countries. Now look at which country is sticking its nose into the business of the United States.
Fox's comments don't add much to the debate. In fact, they're no more helpful than the reactionary, all-or-nothing anti-immigration proposals coming from the other side — including some congressional Republicans and other elements of the cultural right — that tend to portray Americans as innocent bystanders who, through no fault of their own, are being overrun by an invasion.
The problem with this argument is that it paints Americans as passive victims, when in reality they helped lure illegal immigrants here with millions of "Help Wanted" signs.
Yet the invasion rhetoric sells. A thousand or more Arizona "minutemen" — some of them with rifles, all of them with too much time on their hands — plan, on April 1, to make fools of themselves by hunting illegal immigrants along the U.S.-Mexican border.
I assume the reason they're called minutemen is because it takes about 60 seconds to see that this idea is dumb and dangerous.
For Fox, these half-cocked vigilantes are the equivalent of terrorists in the same way that thugs in white hoods once terrorized African-Americans in the South.
Personally, I think they're lost souls — literally, lost. I mean, if they're looking for illegal immigrants, why prowl around the desert? They could just drive to the nearest suburban shopping mall.
Retail giant Wal-Mart recently agreed to fork over $11 million to settle accusations by federal authorities that it used hundreds of illegal immigrants as janitors to clean its stores. Authorities say they didn't bring charges against the company because it cooperated with the investigation and promised to try to prevent the future hiring of illegal immigrants by any of its stores. As part of the settlement, Wal-Mart didn't admit any wrongdoing.
That's perfect. And it's consistent with the views of many Americans. They don't see themselves as responsible for this problem, and so they can't see how they are responsible for the solution.
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Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
