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Published: July 15th 2006
This blog entry is not about traveling to fancy cities or resorts in planes and trains. It's about another kind of travel: immigration. My husband and I are immigrants here in Germany, and we are here legally. When my husband was an immigrant to the United States, he was there legally. A little paper stuck into our passports gives us the right to live here, and in my husband's case, to work here. But not everyone here, and not everyone in the US, has that little paper in their passport - in fact, they don't even all have passports. Given that "Illegal immigration" is a topic frequently discussed in the media, and thus in society, these days, I thought I'd write about my personal view. Yes, it's political, but this is my blog and my place to say whatever I want. I am not going to bash any political figures or talk about political parties - this is more of food for thought for those of you willing to read it.
Everyone has a view on illegal immigration, and those views are often passionate ones because everyone thinks illegal immigration affects them. It does. If all of the nearly 20 thousand illegal immigrants left the US, the economy would crash. It is illegal immigrants who are picking the tomatoes that end up in your salad, plucking the chicken you buy from Safeway, and washing the dishes you use at Red Lobster. The grapes used to make the wine on your dinner table have likely been touched by hands belonging to a person in the US without papers. Your office is probably cleaned by hands in a similar situation.
So many people have an idea of what should happen to illegal immigrants - send them back, make them apply for legal status, create a "guest worker" program. But how many of you who have these opinions personally knows one illegal immigrant? What about two? What about fifteen? Or a few hundred?
I do.
I used to be an ESL teacher of adult immigrants, and an interpreter for Mexican immigrants. I did not know the legal status of every one of my students and clients, but I did know the legal status of most of them, and many of them were in the States illegally. My students worked in factories, bakeries, farms, and restaurants. They worked without health insurance or the hope of retirement cushioned by Social Security. They worked full-time, overtime, and sometimes had multiple jobs. They had spouses, children, and sometimes grandchildren. They somehow found the time and energy to come to class to learn English. Only now, an immigrant myself, do I understand the urgency they must have felt to understand English in order to read their bills, fill out employment applications, and a myriad of other written tasks that even "illegal" immigrants have to do. You have surely never met a harder working group of people.
Let me tell you about one in particular. I won't give you any identifying personal details about her, to protect her. Yes, I am trying to protect an illegal immigrant because I think she deserves a chance as much as anyone. She crossed the Mexican border as a young woman into Arizona with a "coyote" (human smuggler). She had borrowed money to pay him. She walked an entire night through the Arizona desert. She was five months pregnant and then rode in a car for three days to get to her final destination, where she moved in with family friends (also illegal immigrants), into a stuffy single trailer with one bedroom and bathroom, inhabited by 4 adults and three children. Her baby was born in the US and is therefore now a US citizen. She lived on the goodwill of the others until her baby was one month old, at which time she got a job in a factory.
I asked her if it was worth it - and she said it was. Things were bad where she came from.
Apparently, the factory used to openly employ immigrants without papers, but enforcement had become more strict in recent years, and so came into existence a black market of social security numbers. This is not identity theft: this is intentional "loaning" of social security numbers. The person "borrowing" the number and the name contribues to Social Security through paycheck deductions. The worker gets none of the benefits, but the lender gets a higher payout down the line.
She worked her fourty hours a week and then accepted any overtime they would offer her. She became a consumer in the community, purchasing clothes, diapers, food, and eventually a car and gasoline. I helped her out by organizing a goods drive to collect clothing and supplies for her baby. Countless friends, family, and acquaintances contributed generously. I drove her places that she needed to go when public transportation wasn't available, and I tried to provide emotional support to her when she needed. Now that I'm living thousands of miles away, she has not forgotten me. She takes her hard-earned dollars and buys phone cards to call me here in Germany. She hopes to work hard so she can learn English and save enough money so that she can go back to school one day and get a degree in tourism and help support her aging parents, who are in poor health.
I am telling you all of this to put a face to the generalized term "illegal immigrant". Sure, some are "taking advantage of the system". But the vast majority are hard-working people trying to eke out a living for themselves and their families. Many end up staying in the US. Their children and grandchildren are US citizens. Their children usually end up learning English in school and becoming a part of mainstream society, which is also made up of the children and grandchildren of immigrants. In some areas, where large groups of immigrants are concentrated into ethnic "ghettoes", the second generation is less likely to learn English, but like the ethnic ghettoes of the 19th and 20th centuries, those groups will eventually integrate, too. The first-generation, illegal immigrants do not all pay taxes, but they don't get many benefits, either. Their children will pay taxes and social security whether they want to or not.
There is endless talk about potentially creating "guest worker" programs to allow immigrants temporary legal status. The buzz assumes this means that they'll pay taxes and then eventually "go back". There are at least two reasons why this will not work:
- 1. Legal status will mean that the US government will have to provide certain rights and protections to these "temporary immigrants" that are not necessarily provided to the illegal immigrants of today. This will cost money and so much of the criticism of illegal immigration stems from the belief that they are costing Americans money and jobs. In reality, even if none of the illegal immigrants received public education, social services, or medical care, individual Americans would be none the richer.
- 2. Unless some kind of ridiculous (and impossible to enforce) law were created that "guest workers" could not bear children while in the US, these "temporary immigrants" will bear children in the US, and those children will be American citizens under the 14th Amendment. Sending the immigrant parents of American citizens back to their home countries would require either a separation of parents and children, or the deportation of Americans to a foreign country. Changing the right of jus solis in the US (the right to US citizenship to those born in the US) would require a constitutional amedment. It seems to me that a guest worker program under the current constitution would lead to a high birth rate among new "guest workers"!
I am very grateful that I do not have to resort to becoming an illegal immigrant somewhere to improve my life. I am sad that others feel that they have to resort to illegal immigration to achieve a better lifestyle. But I fully believe that the illegal immigrants of the United States deserve some recognition and respect for the important work that they do. Next time you consider this issue, please keep in mind the real people behind the headlines. Remember that the vast majority of the "illegal immigrants" criminalized and criticized, are hard-working people just trying to get by.
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Melanie
non-member comment
Awesome!!
Very well written and I agree 100%. I hope many have the chance to read your blog entry. Why do so many simple not get it? Great job bringing a real issue with emotions to the surface.