GET WITH IT, GRINGO!

The number of La Raza Nonregistrada (Beg pardon.) in the US is, by the figures I’ve heard, somewhere between 11 and 14 million.  That is some gap, but the gap may be even wider because we simply do not have the means to measure this population.  That is a problem.  However, the problem is more one of security, not, I would argue, of economics.   It just makes sense that we need to know with some accuracy who is here and roughly what they are doing.  The other arguments for why we need to deputize every able-bodied American to drive the INS dodgers back south are off the mark.

Were we to magically purge these millions– and it would truly take a bureaucratic David Copperfield to make even a dent–  it would be a rupture to our economy more far-reaching than the attacks of 9/11 (I love making bold statements pulled from my wanton ignorance of the issues I write about.  That’s why my views go unnoticed into the ether, not onto the op-ed page of the Washington Post.).   How much of our economy is predicated on cheap manual labor?  How much would the price of grapes rise if there were no migrant workers to pick them?

In my own state of Kentucky, I can bear witness (from a safe distance, of course) to the dependence tobacco and dairy farmers have on the this reliable and effective source of help.   This has an effect on every part of the continnum, from production to processing, to distribution, to consumption. 

This is one area in which I agree with our benighted president.  And, New York governor Elliot Spitzer has joined us.  Both the President and the Empire State Governor realize that these human beings are not our enemy.  And, there is not a decent American who would not cross a war-won border to improve the lives of his or her family.  At least I’d like to think so.  If we would not tacitly welcome these folks into our economy with jobs, I assume they would not come.  If we did not need them so much, they would not risk their lives for the economic rewards we dangle. 

What Governor Spitzer has proposed, and today abandoned in the face of rabid unpopularity, was a program to license Mexican-Unamericans to drive.  The licenses would not back-door the aliens into Americanhood, but would represent a sane and practical attempt to get a handle on a nebulous situation. 

The flavor that the opposition Governor Spitzer and others of similar inclination face is bitter.  The face is ugly.  It reminds me of “Irish Need Not Apply!” signs.  I believe we should accept the situation as it is and deal with it in a real way.  We can’t find one Osama Bin Laden and we can’t find and drive out 11 to 14 million Mexicans.  We simply do not have the people or the plan to make such a thing happen. 

And, why should we?  I am not in favor of a system that may take advantage of desperate workers to drive down labor costs just so producers can put their products on Wal Mart’s shelves.  But, I do not have a taste for punishing those who have only responded to the need we have while making their own lives better.  The only thing different about today’s Mexican immigrants from the Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine is that the Irish had no means to enter the country through the backdoor.  There was the matter of an ocean to negotiate.  However, I have no doubt that they would have done whatever was necessary to get into this country which has always sent out a clarion call to the unhappy and the unfulfilled. 

Recognition of this segment of our population and moves toward certifying it in some way, would lead to eradicating the payroll inequity which surely exists wherever an illegal job applicant has no means to fight wages which are illegal if offered to American citizens.  This would be good news for those shut out of back-breaking fruit harvesting jobs by wage bottom-feeders, wouldn’t it?  You know who you are.  You are there, right?

THE PLEASURE OF A KIND OF READING

 

My friend, Lynn (not in photo), recently gave me an old paperback called The Secular Journal of Thomas Merton.  I espied it in his house and expressed interest.  He gave it to me which means eBay betrayed no great covetousness for it.  I am thankful, nonetheless.  Like many of my favorite books, it is a great one for just picking up when I have a few minutes to kill.  The other day, I had a spare moment waiting to let in the woman who cleans the restaurant.  I keep such books in my car for those occasions. 

It occurred to me when I put it down that reading these varied essays is like reading a blog.  Then, I thought, no; reading a blog is like reading these essays.  It should properly be recognized which came first and begat the other.  There is really nothing new about blogging except the mode of transmission.  This observation is not a revelation, but I still think it is worth noting that there is a tendency with the new technology for its exponents to hail it as something new under the sun.  It isn’t, and we need to go back at least to Montaigne to properly place our gratitude.  Essay, of course, [Is any phrase more arrogant, than "of course"?] comes from the French word which means “to try” or “to attempt”.  Essays are attempts at explaining or ruminating on a subject.

I make this observation, hopefully, without making the egregiously risible connection between what you are ill-fatedly reading now and the essays of Montaigne or, more lately, Wendell Berry, Joan Didion, or Meghan Daum.  But, I think I do share with them the delight of working out something on paper in order to work it out in my head.  It seems axiomatic to me that the best way to figure out what I really think about a thing is to put out as much as I can on paper, read it, reread it, go away from it and reread it later, and then bring it to a final form.  It is delightful, but often hard.  That’s why some of my posts molder for a time in the “drafts” file of WordPress’ server. 

Too, it’s interesting to pursue this as a conversation with one or a few people you have in mind who may read your writing.  If you’re lucky enough to get feedback, the process I’ve described above is all the more enhanced by this voluntary editing of your ideas.