“When an alien resides with you in your land, do not molest him. You shall treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; have the same love for him as for yourself; for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 19:33-34)
What is it about the word “amnesty” that has turned it from an act of mercy and charity into an obscenity, spewed by the most mean-spirited among us? Where is the hatred coming from?
Every day, we read and we hear media pundits railing against “illegal immigrants;” spewing forth lies and weaving myths to stir our fears just as in early times, the poor and powerless among us were branded witches. These “illegals,” they say, bring with them deadly diseases (although we’re not hearing any warnings from the Center for Disease Control or any other reputable medical professionals that this is the case.) The “illegals” are supposedly rapists, robbers, murderers and miscreants of the most evil kind, yet when pushed to prove it, they can point to no actual statistics of significance to back up their claims. Certainly, many immigrants are jailed, but primarily it is for things like using false papers. There is no evidence that their propensity for violent crime exceeds that of other ethnic categories. The anti-amnesty folks have presented no poster child for the loss of a specific job, given instead to an illegal. Yet, despite clear Biblical admonition and absent compelling facts, they mount their high horses to incite the mob against “amnesty” as if it were a dirty word. They would do the same against motherhood or apple pie if it suited their xenophobic agenda.
The plain and simple fact is that we have no problem with amnesty — provided it is we who receive it. And make no mistake about it; we Americans are happily giving ourselves amnesty every day and in almost every way when it comes to immigrants.
No one, not even the most virulent anti-immigrant voices among us, can dispute that the vast majority of immigrants (illegal, undocumented, or whatever pejorative you want to call them) enter the United States to work. A study of the Pew Hispanic Center, reported by the Washington Post, in December, 2005 states: “the decision to migrate involves a variety of reasons, such ‘improvement of earnings’ in Mexico, even though immigrants earn very low wages in the United States….Undocumented Mexican immigrants earn about twice as much in construction, manufacturing and hospitality jobs as they did working south of the border.”
On July 14, 2007, North Carolina’s News and Observer reported on a June 2007 study published by researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill stating that “Hispanic residents contributed about $9 billion to the state economy through purchases and taxes. Their spending has led to creation of 89,600 jobs.” According to the findings, these immigrants cost state taxpayers $817 million in 2004, primarily for education and health care. (Unfortunately, these statistics, relating as they do in great part to services provided to children, do not tell us which of those children are actually U.S. citizens regardless of their parents’ legal status.) but generated $756 million in tax revenue. What this means is that most of the adult undocumented immigrants are working folks who are paid so little by us in the private sector that the state must bear a loss — albeit a small one.
What really counts though is the NINE BILLION, most of which went into the private sector; that is to say to us, the hypocrites that hired them and each of us as who consumers, have enjoyed cheaper meals at restaurants, cheap landscaping, babysitting, elder care and construction costs at their expense.
This low-paid pool of workers, living in constant fear of arrest, some of whom “time-share” their rented rooms by the hour, creates the Twenty-first Century’s equivalent of a slave economy and almost all U.S. citizens are its beneficiaries. Who among the anti-immigrant ranters can say that they ask the restaurant owner, before dining out, whether the dishes and utensils were washed by a bona fide American? How many Americans have turned down employing minimum wage day care-givers for their ninety-nine year old granny with Alzheimer’s, opting instead for an LVN at five times the price? How many of us ask our lowest bidding contractor whether his price is dependant on the cash payments he makes under the table to his electricians, plumbers and tile men, just over from the Olde Sod and needing to pick up a few quid to stay longer? The answer has to be “few indeed.” We happily accept the lower prices.
The market place is literally screaming this truth. As Andrew Sum the director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University has told the Detroit Business News: “more American businesses are opting to expand profits and remain competitive by hiring low-cost undocumented workers instead of paying taxes, workers’ compensation and even rudimentary health benefits for legal workers.” The Detroit Business News went on to add that in New York… between the first quarter of 2001… and the first quarter of 2005 there was a gap of 336,000 jobs between the government’s household employment survey and the number of employees that businesses reported hiring. This 336,000 represents jobs “off the books.” The figures, said Sum, are more pronounced in Texas and California.
According to the News and Observer the number of illegal Hispanic residents in the state of North Carolina is about 316,000. They “mow our lawns, paint our homes, watch our children and cook our food for bottom wages. Doing so, they provide consumers with affordable services that people in most other industrialized countries can only dream of.” Their lower wages (often illegal in itself) lower costs (that) are passed on to consumers as lower prices.”
These are lower prices that the anti-immigrant crowd gladly accepts. I don’t hear them saying that we should all be punished for our part in this whole affair. No way. Only those among us who provide sanctuary to the downtrodden are reviled and threatened with prosecution. But if we exploit them, pay them starvation wages or sometimes not pay them at all, we give ourselves amnesty. We may be hiring these poor folks illegally. We may be paying them below minimum wage and under the table in violation of our labor and tax laws but whoa Nellie, when it comes to us, us good, “honest” “law abiding” Americans, we happily rake in the benefits while conveniently overlooking our complicity in this vast economic and human rights conspiracy; all the while self-righteously venting against the lowest folks on the totem pole.
We’re bullies, bigots and hypocrites. (I was going to write “We’ve become bullies, etc. but then I remembered my history.) Americans actually have a long tradition of this type of behavior; this type of hypocrisy. We’ve similarly exploited and slandered every immigrant group that has reached our shores. We’ve had “Irish Need Not Apply”, The Chinese Exclusion Act, Palmer Raids and the like throughout our history. Unfortunately, bullying, bigotry and hypocrisy are as American as the apple pie that Lou Dobbs eats from a bakery whose cook is here on an “extended” tourist visa from France.
