| Everyone
benefits from undocumented immigrants
Nothing
has been done to solve the huge contradictions in the immigration laws.
Everyone, absolutely everyone, benefits from the work of
undocumented immigrants in the United States. However, there's a great deal of hypocrisy
in this country about the millions of immigrants who work here without papers. People
criticize them but use them, denounce them publicly but exploit them in private, shout
that they shouldn't be here but are unable to function without them.
The topic resurfaces every time there is a political
scandal. The most recent one involved Linda Chávez, George W. Bush's first nominee for
Secretary of Labor. As we all know, Chávez's nomination skidded off the rails when it was
learned that she helped -- and paid -- an undocumented Guatemalan woman in the early '90s.
A similar incident cost Zoe Baird the post of U.S. Attorney General in the Clinton
administration.
What's most frustrating about all this is that after the
scandals exploded nothing was done to solve once and for all the huge contradictions in
immigration laws. In the United States, it is illegal to hire an undocumented worker.
However, the reality is that all 281 million Americans hire these immigrants, directly or
indirectly.
Some hire them even though they suspect or know that
their documents aren't in order. Such is the case of gardeners, baby-sitters, factory
workers and field workers. Others simply benefit from their work unknowingly. Who in the
United States can raise a hand and say that he or she hasn't benefited from the work of an
undocumented worker? Nobody.
Every time we eat fruit or vegetables picked by
undocumented laborers, we benefit. Every time we stop at a hotel where some of the
employees are undocumented, we benefit. Every time we go to a restaurant whose waiters or
cooks are undocumented, we benefit. Every time we buy or rent a house built by
undocumented bricklayers, we benefit. Every time we travel down a street or road laid by
undocumented workers, we benefit. Every time.
The United States is home to about six million
undocumented immigrants -- the new census will give us a more accurate count -- and thanks
to them the nation's economy is one of the most productive in the world. Immigrants --
legal and undocumented -- have contributed enormously to America's economic prosperity.
They take the jobs nobody else wants, they're truly indispensable in the farms and the
service industries, they keep inflation low, pay taxes, create new jobs and contribute $10
billion a year to the U.S. economy, according to the Academy of Science.
So, if undocumented workers are so useful and necessary
in this country, why are they attacked so? Why aren't they protected and granted amnesty?
Well, to put it plainly, because of racial prejudice, ethnocentrism and ignorance. People
aren't fully aware of the problems of undocumented immigrants. Few know how valuable they
are. Conversely, immigrants often are used as scapegoats.
What's needed is a general amnesty for these six million
immigrants, so they'll stop hiding, so they won't live as hunted people. What's needed is
an amnesty like the one that normalized the immigration status of three million people in
1986. If the Bush administration wants to be ``compassionate'' with the homeless, the poor
and the unprotected -- as Bush said in his campaign for president -- it would have to
introduce and pass a new amnesty bill.
I admit, however, that that wouldn't solve the long-range
problem. Every year about 300,000 immigrants enter the United States illegally and stay
here. That northward flow is unstoppable, so long as jobs here go begging while jobs in
Latin America remain scarce. More than a legal problem, undocumented immigration is an
economic problem.
Therefore, it would be necessary to work out a migration
agreement between the main expellers of migrants in Latin America and the United States.
Mexico is the main expeller of people to the north: one of every six Mexicans lives in the
United States, that is, 20 million Mexicans.
And the closest thing to a migration agreement is the
proposal for a guest-worker program recently discussed between Republican senators Phil
Gramm and Pete Domenici and Mexican President Vicente Fox and several members of his
Cabinet. Let's hope that Bush and Fox can nail something down.
The present immigration laws promote hypocrisy, generate
violence along the border, encourage abuse, unfairly shift the responsibilities of the
Immigration and Naturalization Service to the citizens, fail to stop the northward flow of
migration and do not help to determine a definitive, long-range solution. It is urgent
that they be modified and modernized for the new millennium.
Jorge Ramos is news anchor for Univision and columnist
for El Nuevo Herald, where this column first appeared. |
