Because You Never Asked

     (Author's note: This essay was written in the mid 90's. I put it up on this web site in January of 2004, a few days after President W. Bush has offered a new plan to legalize temporary immigrant workers in the Disney States of America. It is a plan meant more to benefit the businesses that habitually use illegal labor, thus further driving down the labor market, rather than trying to address the broader reasons for this problem as expressed in this essay.)

     In making my almost daily reconnaissance of the "enemy's" media output (see essay "Pornography" and its reference to the "pandit"), it is now evident that immigration policy has become one of the foremost emotional issues in the developed world. How many should we let in? How many should we round up and send back to Frijoliland? Should we educate their young, put splints on their broken legs and let them speak in the Pig Latin-Creole they jabber away in? Is it OK for them to bus tables and mow our lawns? How many oranges do they have to pick, how good a fastball do they have to have, before we legally allow them to become K-Mart shoppers?

     These issues have become the tennis ball in a long rally of contentious political debate, a debate that has degenerated into a for or against simplification of a difficult problem whose subtleties and nuances nobody is effectively dealing with. On the one hand, we have the Pat Buchanan national interest freaks, who believe fanatically in a sovereign nation's right to protect its borders from the incessant onslaught of bastardized races, foreign tongues, and people who play soccer. Their opponents cling with Velcro-like insistence to the idea that almost all of us were once immigrants in this "Nikeland" of hope and opportunity, that this is what our country was built upon, so "come on down".

     Both sides fail to see the big picture and offer no solutions.

     The first thing we have to recognize is that almost none of this migratory activity has anything to do with ideology. On occasion, some disgruntled Cuban poet deemed too bourgeois for the memory of Che Guevara, or some near sighted Chinese dissident who'd have probably been Abbie Hoffman if he were born in America, is dug up by the Murdochland media, but this has virtually nothing to do with what we are talking about in this essay.

     What we are talking about are rich people and poor people.

     These immigrants, so eager to cross their mythical river Jordan in search of that longed for land of milk and honey (what a simpler world it was in Biblical times), have much less noble ambitions than the poet-dissident. They longingly envision a used car to drive and a color TV to watch. They see a future filled with all the Big Macs their circulatory system can endure, and all the polyester their humble incomes can buy. They are not "yearning to be free". These are poor people in search of video games. Their philosophy is premised upon the almost mystical opportunity to shop at an honest to God mall. For them, being badgered by commercials and buying clothes covered in Nike logos is the new frontier. "We're tired of rice paddies and teams of oxen. Let us in!"

     Roughly speaking, it is estimated that 1/3 of the world's people live in a delirious frenzy of waste and consumption, in turbo-charged pursuit of fashionable labels, prestigious cars and air conditioned comfort, while the other 2/3 grovels along in a subsistence mode that harkens back to the days of the great religious prophets. Perhaps the sharpest, most fine tuned picture of this situation can be garnered from the following statistical tidbit: it is said that the daily energy consumed by "Santa Monica Man" is 200 times that of the average person in rural India. This means that Santa Monica Man chugs more energy in one day than the Indian peasant does in half a year. This extremely exaggerated polarization of wealth and poverty in the New World Order Global Economy creates a magnetic effect that pulls the 2/3 towards the 1/3 in an almost Newtonian application of scientific principle.

     Is there a solution?

     Although I applaud the humane feelings embodied in the policy, I find very little use for the liberality expressed in the "come on down" attitude of immigration openness. When my grandparents entered New York harbor in the fledgling years of the 20^th century, their likes were actively being pursued by the adolescent muscle of American industry. They did not have to dodge the Border Patrol or be delivered from the cargo hulls of rusting freighters, like so many kilos of contraband material. They came ashore in the light of day and had a productive job to sit down to almost immediately, with a wage that allowed them to live with a reasonable amount of dignity. They were not just an excuse to pay workers less so that the rest of America could live as they do. In today's New World Order Global Economy, the "we were all once immigrants" argument is not only not relevant, but not a solution. Simply allowing the 2/3 part poverty to gravitate towards the 1/3 part wealth in search of their own chance to go to Disneyland, will not provide for any evolutionary advancement for the human race.

     But the hard line "Buchananites" don't have it right either. In fact, with regard to the Buchananites, talking about what's "right" or "wrong" is a superficial exercise. The only thing pertinent here is their own self-interest. Their "Utopia" is a world dominated by them at the expense of others, usually justified by some Providential social order that "Divinely" favors Anglo surnames and people with deeds and portfolios (see primarily the essay "Science and Religion"). But that's another story.

     Even if we accept the fact that "Santa Monica Man", due to some cultural-technical aggregate, has earned its dominant position in the world and can defend or open its borders as it sees fit, this does not provide the moral justification to exploit, for its own purposes, those excluded from such bounty.

     And now we get to the part that will cause the most bitching and squawking amongst the 1/3.

     One must remember (or admit for the first time) that the wealth of the 1/3 is predicated in great part on the poverty of the 2/3. The exploitation of the resources needed to fuel the Industrial Revolution, along with the commercial augment of such products as tea, sugar, coffee, bananas, etc., which became very rentable products amongst the 1/3, were benefits that traveled down a one way street. The 1/3 took whatever they needed and, with the collusion of their native "foremen" in the third world (that is, the usual oligarchic ruling classes that ally themselves with the foreign exploiters), gave back almost nothing in return. The current 1/3-2/3 schism in the world is no accident. It was (is?) a conscious policy of selfish material monopolization that benefited the minority at the expense of the majority. The developed world, if it continues to deny its responsibility for this state of affairs, will be fighting off "barbarians at the gate" in ever increasing numbers. It's a problem that literally will not go away.

     What to do?

     As this essay has already alluded to, it's not just a question of letting them in or keeping them out. Any immigration policy not premised upon upgrading conditions in the "immigrant donor" nations, or, in other words, not premised upon a more equal distribution of wealth on the planet, is no policy at all. Whether the "established order's" economic scheme can accomplish this, has yet to be shown.

Relevant Material:  "When, in 1993, the philosopher Enzensberger relieves the rich countries of their responsibility and blames, in good part, the governments of the poor countries, he conveniently avoids the fact that these governments have either been installed by, or have agreed to be agents of these rich countries." From the philosophical work, "Panfleto Desde el Planeta de los Simios" (Pamphlet From the Planet of the Apes), by one of my intellectual-literary heroes, the man from Barcelona, Manuel Vazquez Montalban.