that country affecting us

refining yesterday's points

I received an incredibly thoughtful response last night from an ACC subscriber about yesterday’s column on Mexico. It was precisely, just exactly, the reason I started writing fifteen months ago this weekend: to expand conversation on issues affecting us daily.

I don’t have all the answers nor pretend I have them. The reason our society struggles on so many fronts is that all have our own experiences and histories as well as triggers and incentives. The value I personally bring is a couple of decades of trying to stimulate discussion among 13 member groups of people around a seminar table. My experience is that takes some prodding if the conversation is going to be accessible to as many thoughts as possible. But, I don’t have all the answers by any means and I don’t even know all the problems by any stretch.

I also try, though far from universally successfully, to present the views of others. I don’t always remember to explain that but I am not always presenting you with my views but what seems to be the perspectives, based on as many sources as I can find, of the communities we are discussing. I am keenly aware that much of the world sees things differently than Americans: this is the very reason I got into the work I did. Seeing things differently does not, repeat not mean another view is correct and ours wrong but people see things differently.

The reader’s assessment last night pinpointed my points about illegal immigrants being desperate as they seek a better life in the United States. I stand by that statement as the conditions from which most of the people trying to get across the southern border are pretty appalling in Central America and Venezuela, if not portions of Mexico itself.

Her reaction was that these people are jumping the queue by illegally entering the United States rather than following the long history of immigrants from various portions of Europe who came for decades. This is absolutely true. I thought I had mentioned this in the column but let me stress this point: these are individuals who are putting themselves above the process we use to determine their eligibility. No question whatsoever.

The perspective of many Americans and theirs do not mesh. I obviously did not make that adequately clear nor do I see that as solving the clash of outlooks. Therein lies the root of the problem, one that seems growing rather than resolving.

Americans are, by and large, uncomfortable with people who violate processes to get an unfair advantage. We bridle at those who ignore what we or our families or anyone else has been through. It’s why so much of the conversation these days is about the legitimacy of news because otherwise some pretty public behaviours appear ‘jumping the queue’ in some brash ways in our society. We dispise that sort of hubris.

But the immigrants aren’t focusing on the illegitimacy of their actions. They are concerned about getting their kids an education or getting enough money to pay the rent. The immigrant experience most often recounted is of coming to the United States, working hard, then being successful and being part of the the culture going forward. Immigrants have seen generation after generation who did that, becoming safe, wealthy and American. They don’t focus on our bristling at the illegal part because that is a lower priority for them.

U.S. public discomfort with immigrants who are different—whether by skin colour, path of arrival, or religion—has been around as long as the country. The Anglicans/Episcopalians did not always want the Presbyterians or the Quakers because they were different in the Seventeenth Century, even though Rhode Island welcomed pretty much everybody. The Protestants were anxious about the Catholics pouring into fill jobs in the early Nineteenth Century, even in the face of a well known famine in Ireland in the 1830s and 40s. Irish were not ecstatic about Italians. No one ever welcomed Jews. Chinese came to work on the railroad but were barred legally sixty years later when we passed quotas for immigrants. Puerto Ricans, part of this country since the Spanish-American War of 1898, are citizens but, like the nation’s capital, they do not have statehood. We have, in short, closed the door once we have passed through for more immigrant groups than we want to discuss.

But it is the idea today that immigrants crossing that southern border are deliberately engaging in an illegal behaviour that most galls people, I think; this mirrors what our ACC reader pointed out yet again. I suspect her comments replicate the views of most Americans, although I don’t know for sure. The problem is that these immigrants believe it’s worth the risk to access the country and that better future so they continue to come.

Reconciling the American reactions with the immigrants aspirations is not occurring. The two objectives compete. And therein lies the growing tension.

In the past, we tried to help aspiring governments raise the standard of living in their countries at least in part to incentivise people staying home (or not choose governments we found threatening). Foreign assistance long ago fell prey to budget axes and domestic scepticism but additionally we found not all of the world seeks to replicate like our governance (read: Iran, China, or Russia). It’s certainly true many anti-participatory systems are imposed on their people but I think we underestimate how unique our fundamental belief in the centrality of individual freedom (another column one of these days).

But we have also built in another unintended cconsequence of our policies. Our Cold War willingness to admit people, regardless of an immigration queue, based on their status as political refugees under regimes we found ideologically dangerous became muddled over the decades. Cubans came, seemingly automatically (hard data on required status is not relevant to today’s populations in Guatemala or Haiti), and then stayed because we opposed the regime in Havana (still do best I can tell). The frustration of land seizures or possible prosecution that anti-Castro Cubans felt became harder to explain to someone fearful of her son being killed by gangs in San Salvador. Why aren’t the same threats receiving the same responses at the borders, they might wonder.

To us, these distinctions are clear, valid, and appropriate. To others hoping to migrate, we remain a beacon of the future if they can just get here in some way, shape or form.

We have also always believed in the power of the marketplace. That is Adam Smith 101, the deity for the free market. The competition of free markets incentivises people to want to be part of that process, drawing people to us by all means they can use. That doesn’t mean we agree with them but it means we should not be surprised that millions seek to participate in a better economy than the one from which they originate. Americans have more recently been less committed to the free market as we increasingly doubt the value of globalised trade in favour of protectionist steps but we still think we are Smithians.

None, repeat none of that is justification for someone ignoring U.S. law but it is a fact that our views priorities differ from those seeking to come. There is nothing new about this nor does it appear our arguments about rule of law are deterring others from making the trek.

I thank our reader for voicing her specific discomfort with my column yesterday. She wins the prize for pushing me to clarify my thoughts further. I don’t have an answer on how to resolve this. I am dubious that a number of the proposed solutions will cut muster with the whole of our country but I could be dead wrong. What do you think? What is your proposed solution? Or is this all a bunch of words about something much further down the priority queue?

Thank you for reading ACC today. Thanks especially to the paid subscribers who put their resources forward but I appreciate each and every one of you.

It is a crystal clear morning on the Creek. The light is beginning to shift, foretelling more effectively than Puxutawney Pete that spring is out there on some horizon.

Be well and be safe. FIN