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?