Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Hey, You, Get Offa My Cloud

Wednesday, July 18, 2001

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Here's everything I know about immigration policy, and immigration law:

That's it.

But, I know a little about people who have, like the boxer in the Paul Simon song, "Asking only workman's wages [they] come looking for a job," doing anything that will pay better than having no job in Mexico. Or in Russia. Or in Ireland. Or in Italy. Or in China. Or in Viet Nam. Or in any other starting point of a migration to the U.S.

How many times has yesterday's discussion been heard before: "WE don't need more immigrants. THEY use up welfare services that OUR people need; THEIR children cause OUR children's classrooms to be overcrowded; THEY cause all the crime in OUR neighborhoods.

It was not so very long ago that THEY were the Irish escaping the famine; THEY were the Italians escaping the poverty; THEY were the Jews escaping the pogroms. THEY were the Chinese, the Cubans, or the Vietnamese.

"WE" has always meant everyone up to, but not including, the current immigrants. WE have established ourselves in our neighborhoods. WE have found the jobs, opened the shops, and sent OUR kids to college.

WE have always been the establishment; the status quo. THEY have always being trying to break in, take over, and muscle us out.

Throughout the history of the human race - throughout the history of EVERY species - groups have moved from poverty to wealth. Poverty might have been a lack of appropriate plant life for ruminants. So they moved to better feeding grounds. Their migration might have caused a shortage of food for the carnivores who preyed upon them. So the meat eaters migrated to better hunting grounds.

Poverty might have been an advancing ice sheet causing tribes and clans to move, as an example, across a land bridge from the Northeast Asian continent to the Northwest American continent then spread south to warmer weather.

I suspect that in every case, there was a dinosaur, an alligator, a bird, or a mammal which said to its pals at the waterhole: What are THEY doing here? There's barely enough water and ferns for OUR families.

For the most part, the new arrivals settled into their niche and life went on.

Except, of course, for humans who have had the unfortunate habit of killing every other living thing they found as soon as they arrived somewhere, except for other humans with whom they have tended to mate.

So, there is group of people - Mexicans - moving from poverty to wealth exactly as it has been for tens of millions of years.

The notion of "granting legal status to illegal aliens" was the headline the other day when the policy was announced, but that is only a part of a wider - much wider - goal.

The far end of the policy is to improve the economy of Mexico (and the rest of Latin America) to the point where the poverty-to-wealth capillary action no longer draws people from Mexico to the U.S.

If there are good jobs in Mexico, there will be no need to migrate to, say, Colorado.

Part of the proposed program is to reinstate "guest worker" visas. Illegal aliens working in the U.S. tend to stay in the U.S. (even if they want to go back) simply to avoid the hassle of sneaking back across the border to work during the following season.

If we allow guest workers to come into the U.S. for a specified period of time - the harvesting season for agricultural workers; the tourist season for resort workers, and so on - then they would go home in the off-season, taking their earnings with them.

These earnings would be spent in Mexico on housing, food, clothing, etc., which would be a huge boost the Mexican economy.

Fathers and mothers would be reunited with their children and would not have to act like criminals sneaking across the border and hiding from Immigration officials which would be a huge boost to the Mexican culture.

If all this works, then in a couple of decades we will be hearing reports of Mexicans complaining about all the Guatemalans crowding into the Yucatan Peninsula.

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