I totally agree that there needs to be reform and progress in the immigration issue.

I completely disagree that a majority of certain types of work are driven by immigrants. On the coasts this is very true, I live in California and the presence of immigrants is widely felt.

But I grew up in the middle of the country. There you will be shocked to find yard work, fast food jobs, maids, and farms not being tended by immigrants. The adage that immigrants do jobs Americans won’t is false.

The unfortunate cycle is that immigrants are being taken advantage on many sides. That instead of people looking for opportunity they have been characterized as toilet cleaners – instead of people with as much potential as anyone else.

tony. i’m not sure i disagree with you, but i do have an observation based on personal experience.

i’m not going to pretend that my experience translates into any sort of generalization; for example, i have no experience living on the coasts (as you apparently do), i’ve lived in the lower midwest, the south, whatever you want to call it, all my life.

but i can say this. my experience is similar to what josh described. in fact, while i was in high school (in rural oklahoma) to earn some extra money i worked at a farm not at all unlike the photo above. i was the only upper middle class, affluent, well-fed, english speaking caucasian working there (at least in the “labor” department). indeed, in every rural town that i have lived in this was the case.

again, this is just an observation based on my experience. i don’t know the statistics and i’m not saying this is a good generalization or a good stereotype. you’re right, it dehumanizes people just as much as labeling them “illegal,” reducing and minimizing their perceived potential resulting in their collective marginalization and oppression. all i’m saying is that there may be some truth to that observation.

the question is, what are we willing to do about it? how far are we willing to go? it seems to me, until we seriously wrestle with those questions, any judgment calls on our part are ill-perceived and only amount to mere speculation with no real action.

But I grew up in the middle of the country. There you will be shocked to find yard work, fast food jobs, maids, and farms not being tended by immigrants.

Hmm… I currently live in the middle of the country, and I see something very different than you.

Now… to be fair, growing up here (Illinois) I would have agree with you. But things have drastically changed in the last ten years. And from what I can observe the majority of yard work, fast food jobs, maids, and farms ARE being tended by immigrants.

There’s a huge difference between immigration and illegal immigration.

Huge.

And while I know many people are racist and blur the lines there, the problem of illegal immigration simply feed the fuel of people’s perception of immigrants overall. Legal immigrants, for the most part, support enforcing immigration laws because 1) they came here legally and don’t think that others should be rewarded for abusing the process and 2) because of the negative perception they deal with because of other immigrants who are breaking the law.

Finally, I know of no politician running on an “anti-immigration” platform. I know of many who want to take steps to reduce illegal immigration.

All of you are making some excellent points that contribute to my continuing to wrestle with the issue.

I was surprised last night at a prayer group from our church how intense and emotional I got when praying for the immigration situation. There needs to be accountability in this situation, but the ones to be held most accountable, in my view, are not illegals but the multinationals (esp. fruit and coffee growers) who force them to work virtually as slaves. In order to support their families, they have to go north, and can’t afford to wait years to do it “legally.” At the same time (and I’m going to sound so middle-class-white-casting-judgment-from-afar here), there are persons I consider heroes who have chosen to stay and struggle through death and hardship against these multinational corporations; they’ve stuck together in co-op farms and are changing the way things are done in Mexico and other Central American countries. I buy coffee from these heroes through Equal Exchange.

And while Tony has a point, my experience (in Virginia) lines up with Blake’s and Dave’s; so their experience isn’t just limited in scope to their situation. The illegals in our area prop up the farming, fast food, and poultry processing industries. The local law enforcement knows it too; every year they round up illegals that Cargill (turkey processing) has hired and deport them, but they don’t make Cargill pay any significant fines or face business demerits. So in this case too, the illegals are the ones who suffer while the business built on their backs gets off virtually scot-free.

derek. i agree with your distinctions. at least enough not to argue over it here. but my point is that those who are so vocal about reform are simultaneously able to reap the benefits of illegal immigration. my point is that i think there needs to be some distance between the place of critique and reform and then the place of their lifestyle.

tony. thanks for sharing. i’ve never lived in the midwest so i’ll let those who have lived there provide that context. but i live in the suburbs of atlanta. and i lived 20 years in alabama. one of the most rural farming communities that still exists . . . my experience in the urban center and the rural community are almost identical.

nate. nice points as always. the issues are way more systemic than we care to believe. while our responsibility as americans may be to close our borders to illegal immigrants, our responsibility as compassionate, concerned members of the kingdom of god we are to wrestle with for the kind of broad reform that makes immigrating to another country moot. as members of the kingdom of god we are not defined by borders and flags but by a cross. that messes a whole lot of things up.

blake & dave. thanks for sharing your context.

I certainly think about how many of us will have to make sacrifices if we begin enforcing immigration laws, for instance if we heavily penalize businesses that hire illegal immigrants (Georgia is heading down that path right now, btw – I think in another year?). I’m not sure how many people put 2 and 2 together, but it’s probably more common than you think. This is one of the reasons why there’s all this talk about “guest worker programs” and such as part of the deal. Which is fine by me, really, as long as guest worker applications are only accepted from those outside the country. I’m pretty much against anything that gives illegal immigrants first (or equal) access to legal pathways, even if with a “fine.”

I need to find that quote about NAFTA being a serious problem in all of this. I think it was Ron Paul talking about it. It was interesting. So much to do, so little time, though…

BTW, Josh, I love new stylesheet with respect to the comments. Much easier to read. The only thing I’d criticize is the use of full justification. Usually it’s not a big deal, but every now and then it just looks awful (Nate’s 2nd paragraph, 4th line above looks very spaced out to me). Of course, if it really starts to bug me I can just use Firefox’s local CSS capability to overwrite it.

“intelligence vacuum”, brilliant! i can relate.

[...] I had a couple of follow-up thoughts to my earlier post, Immigration: The Hidden Underbelly. [...]