Within 48 hours after the U.S. Senate voted to resume debate on the immigration bill, they let it die because paralyzing fear rather than visionary reason ruled. The impasse was much like the walls the lawmakers fund along the U.S.-Mexico border.
While presidential candidates including Joe Biden., (D-Del.), Sam Brownback, (R-Kan.), Hillary Clinton, (D-N.Y.), Chris Dodd, (D-Conn.), John McCain, (R-Ariz.), and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) voted to resume debate on the bill on June 26, by June 28, lawmakers could not even agree to disagree and a slew of amendments were tossed about like wild pitches.
Obama’s amendment would have exempted employers from having to verify the legal status of employees. Cha-ching. His business backers must have been very pleased.
Meanwhile, an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants continue their grunge work in corporate America as under-paid office cleaners, kitchen help and farm hands, among other sought-after careers. And each week more immigrants, mostly dark-skinned Latinos, scorch the soles of their feet by day and freeze to the bone at night by crossing the Sonora Desert in under 72 hours to get to this country before they die of dehydration or murder.
To those who want to build walls along the border, here’s an idea: why not take those jobs immigrants are so desperate to have that they will battle snakes and fend off rapists and death to get here?
The migration of Mexicans and Central Americans here is a route marked with irony and blood.
Seven of the 50 states once belonged to Mexico. And the U.S. has had an armed hand in Latin American dictatorships and civil wars that have left thousands trying to flee their own countries. Certainly, homegrown corruption in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Chile, to name three, did not arise out of U.S. influence alone, but much of it flourished with U.S. backing or indifference.
The immigration debate rarely referenced how much of the country’s economic wellbeing rests on the back of cheap immigrant laborers. It was akin to watching a Hollywood version of uptight New Englanders having an all-out fight; they talk about everything except the real thing that is dividing the house. It’s The Age of Innocence characters discussing the help.
Sooner or later most of the immigrants here today will have to be taken into account. Many have jobs and are paying taxes—the IRS makes no distinction on where it gets the money—and have children who are full-fledged American citizens.
Here in the Pioneer Valley, thousands of Hispanic immigrants are establishing homes and businesses. Many arrive thinking about returning home, but get no closer than the memories they hold or the dollars they send to their desperate families.
The immigration bill included some needed reforms, such as collecting statistics on deaths and their causes at the U.S.-Mexico border; a national strategy to address terrorism threats within one year of the bill’s enactment; and recognizing that immigration from Mexico isn’t something that can be easily resolved by building walls (although San Diego would see a 14-mile wall go up; a monumental homage to idiocy and political expediency).
The bill acknowledged that many Mexicans here work to help their families back home and even noted that in 2004, $17 billion was wired to Mexico by paisanos here. But it would have made it impossible for many immigrants who wish to be here legally to stay by imposing heavy fines and forcing them to return home.
The other day I showed a friend a satellite’s-eye view of Guatemala through Google Earth. She has never seen her country from above. She was enthralled by the mountains and volcanoes. One day she hopes to return, but on her own terms. She hopes that Congress can understand this simple desire to own one’s footsteps.
She is among those who scorched their feet crossing the desert to the promised land. Her education doesn’t extend beyond grammar school, but she possesses a knowledge foreign to many Washington lawmakers: she knows how to survive without selling herself.•
Natalia Muñoz is the editor of La Prensa of Western Massachusetts (www.LaPrensaMa.com).
