by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cS<\/span>hameful,” screams Mexico’s President Vicente Fox, about the proposed extension of a security fence along the southern border of the U.S. “Stupid! Underhanded! Xenophobic!” bellowed his Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez, warning: “Mexico is not going to bear, it is not going to permit, and it will not allow a stupid thing like this wall.”<\/p>\n The allusions to the Berlin Wall made by aggrieved Mexican politicians miss the irony: The communists tried to keep their own people in, not illegal aliens out. More embarrassing still, the comparison boomerangs on Mexico, since it, and not the U.S., most resembles East Germany in alienating its own citizens to the point that they flee at any cost. If anything might be termed stupid, underhanded or xenophobic in the illegal immigration debacle, it is the conduct of the Mexican government:<\/p>\n “Stupid” characterizes a government that sits atop vast mineral and petroleum reserves, enjoys a long coastline, temperate climate, rich agricultural plains \u2014 and either cannot or will not make the necessary political and economic reforms to feed and house its own people. The election of Vicente Fox, NAFTA and cosmetic changes in banking and jurisprudence have not stopped the corruption or stemmed the exodus of millions of Mexicans.<\/p>\n “Underhanded” also sums up the stance of Mexico, masquerading in humanitarian terms the abjectly immoral export of its own dispossessed.<\/p>\n I<\/span>ndeed, such cynicism directly protects the status quo in three critical ways. The flight of the poor is Mexico’s aberrant version of Fredrick Jackson Turner’s safety-valve theory of the frontier: But instead of homesteaders heading west, the impoverished go northward, preferring simply to leave rather than change their government.<\/p>\n Mexico receives between $10 and $15 billion in annual remittances from illegal aliens in the U.S., a subsidy that not only masks political failure at home, but comes at great cost to its expatriates abroad. After all, such massive transfers of capital must be made up from somewhere. Poor workers who send half their wages to kin are forced to make do in a high-priced U.S. through two exigencies \u2014 they lower their standard of living here while often depending on state and local governments for supplemental housing, education, medical and food aid.<\/p>\n Rarely in the great debate over illegal immigration do we frame the issue in such moral terms: If life back home is improving thanks to money wired back, first-generation Mexican enclaves in the U.S. remain chronically poor, not investing where they live and work.<\/p>\n Mexico senses that the longer its poor are away from Mexico, the more likely they are to grow sentimental about a homeland that they can visit but need not return to. In short, the growing Mexican expatriate community offers valuable political leverage with the U.S. As the politics demand, the community can be characterized either as poor and exploited to shame the U.S., or as successful and industrious to claim credit for the economic boom up north. In our Orwellian world, the welfare of the neglected of Mexico warrants more concern from their government when they are no longer in Mexico.<\/p>\n H<\/span>ow did we get to this impasse \u2014 where Americans would embrace such a retrograde solution as building a fence, or Mexico would routinely slander its northern neighbor? The answer is the vast size of the illegal population \u2014 now over 10 million \u2014 and the inability or unwillingness of the U.S. government to sanction employers or deploy sufficient resources to enforce the border. Sheer numbers has evolved the debate far beyond the old, “We need labor” and “They have workers,” to something like, “Can the U.S. remain a sovereign nation with borders at all?”<\/p>\n With a few thousand crossing illegally each year we could all look the other way. Free-market libertarians could lecture that illegal immigrants toned up the labor market and helped us avoid the demographic stasis that Europe now suffers. Critics of illegal immigration \u2014 who complained that their property on the border was vandalized, or that their relatives from India and the Philippines waited patiently while others cut in front of the immigration line \u2014 were written off as racists and worse.<\/p>\n Americans liked their food cooked, yards kept and dishes washed cheaply \u2014 as long as the invisible workers with little education, less English and no legal status stayed invisible, and as long as illegal immigration could not directly be linked to plummeting public school test scores in the Southwest or 15,000 prison inmates in the California penal system. But somewhere around the year 2000 a tipping point was reached: the dialogue changed when the number of illegals outnumbered the population of entire states. There also began a moral transformation in the controversy, with the ethical tables turned on the proponents of de facto open borders.<\/p>\n Employers were no longer seen as helping either the U.S. economy or poor immigrants, but rather as being party to exploitation that made a mockery of the law, ossified the real minimum wage, undermined unions and hurt poorer American citizens. The American consumer discovered that illegal immigration was a fool’s bargain \u2014 reaping the benefits of cheap labor upfront, but paying far more later on through increased subsidies for often ill-housed and poorly-educated laborers who had no benefits.<\/p>\n Nor is the evolving debate framed so much any more as left-versus-right, but as the more privileged at odds with the middle and lower classes. On one side are the elite print media, the courts and a few politicians fronting for employer and ethnic interests; on the other are the far more numerous, and raucous, talk-radio listeners, bloggers and cable news watchers, the ballot propositions, and populist state legislators who better reflect the angry pulse of the country.<\/p>\n Those who own farms and run hotels, who hire nannies and housecleaners, who head Washington lobbying organizations, and who staff the Mexican ministries, really do need the millions of illegals that in so many different ways serve their needs. But the American poor who wish to organize for better wages; the reformers in Mexico who need pressure on the Mexican government; and the middle class, which pay the taxes and tries to obey the letter of the law, are increasingly against illegal immigration. And they no longer much worry over being slurred, by their illiberal critics, as nativist.<\/p>\n So the world is upside down. The once liberal notion of ignoring illegal immigration is now seen as cynically illiberal. And taking drastic steps to enforce the law \u2014 including something seemingly as absurd as a vast fence \u2014 is now seen as more ethical than the current subterfuge that undermines the legal system of the nation.<\/p>\n \u00a92005 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Wall Street Journal \u201cShameful,” screams Mexico’s President Vicente Fox, about the proposed extension of a security fence along the southern border of the U.S. “Stupid! Underhanded! Xenophobic!” bellowed his Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez, warning: “Mexico is not going to bear, it is not going to permit, and it will not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[782],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-15h","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10887,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-the-dreamer-fight-is-really-about\/","url_meta":{"origin":4171,"position":0},"title":"What the ‘Dreamer’ fight is really about","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 16, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Op-Ed By Victor Davis Hanson Los Angeles Times \u00a0 The loud fight over what will happen to America\u2019s \u201cDreamers\u201d isn\u2019t what it seems. For both sides, it\u2019s a fig leaf used to mask their true intentions. In his first term, Barack Obama admitted that he had no constitutional authority (\"I'm\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Republicans"","block_context":{"text":"Republicans","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/republicans\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7233,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-true-opponents-of-immigration-reform\/","url_meta":{"origin":4171,"position":1},"title":"The True Opponents of Immigration Reform","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Too many special interests profit from the present mess. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Solving the illegal-immigration problem should not be hard. No one knows how many foreign nationals are residing illegally in the United States \u2014 estimates range from 11 million to 20 million. But everyone understands\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3702,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-will-illegal-immigration-end\/","url_meta":{"origin":4171,"position":2},"title":"How Will Illegal Immigration End?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services We hear all sorts of solutions for ending illegal immigration. Build a wall! Beef up border security! Fine employers, and create a massive guest-worker program. Or America could insist on tamper-proof identification cards, or detention, deportation or even amnesty for some\u00a0illegal aliens \u2014\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Janurary 2007"","block_context":{"text":"Janurary 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/janurary-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8615,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/absurd-and-not-so-absurd-immigration\/","url_meta":{"origin":4171,"position":3},"title":"Absurd\u2014and Not-so-Absurd\u2014Immigration","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 24, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Trump\u2019s plan of mass deportations en masse is unworkable, but that\u2019s not an argument against weeding out criminals and those without work histories in the U.S. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJ Media In the discussion of Donald Trump\u2019s agenda for dealing with illegal immigration, lots of his proposals are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mainstream Media"","block_context":{"text":"Mainstream Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/mainstream-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via NRO","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/donald-trump-cathartic-candidacy-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2178,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/voting-present-on-illegal-immigration\/","url_meta":{"origin":4171,"position":4},"title":"Voting Present on Illegal Immigration","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 3, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Immigration activists and Hispanic groups are demanding that President Obama deliver on his promised comprehensive package of immigration reform. Already, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has derided federal sweeps of illegal aliens as \"un-American.\" And recently the Obama administration stripped the federal authority\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2009"","block_context":{"text":"November 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/november-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9897,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-labyrinth-of-illegal-immigration\/","url_meta":{"origin":4171,"position":5},"title":"The Labyrinth of Illegal Immigration","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Navigating self-interest, ideals, and public opinion in the debate about illegal immigration. Activists portray illegal immigration solely as a human story of the desperately poor from south of the border fleeing misery to start new, productive lives in the U.S. \u2014 despite exploitation and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4172,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4171\/revisions\/4172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}