Losing Our Minds over Immigration

On the issue of immigration, politicians and much of the mainstream media are playing with our minds. By repeating the phrase "illegal immigrants," they're creating a misleading stereotype. It's inaccurate. And, it's distracting us from the real issue -- economic exploitation of all low-wage workers in the U.S.

The Republicans did it in their YouTube debate on CNN. In the first 30 minutes, the Republicans repeatedly used the term "illegal immigrant" and spent the time sparring over which of them could treat them more harshly. Were the painters who worked on Romney's house and the low-wage workers in Giuliani's New York City really such a grave threat to America?

CNN's John King used the term, too. And so did CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Campbell Brown in the most recent Democratic debate in Las Vegas. And, some of the Democratic candidates used it also, though Kucinich specifically refused ("There are no illegal human beings"). But he's in the minority. The term is everywhere in the press. You can find it in the Washington Post here and in the New York Times here, as well as the doubly derogatory term "illegal alien" in the Washington Times here. They've all got "illegal" on the brain.

The repeated use of the term "illegal immigrants" is leading to all sorts of policies created to stop them. Many of them were repeated in the debates. More border fences. Prohibiting driver's licenses. Some want to stop their kids from attending neighborhood elementary schools .

But the phrase "illegal immigrant" is misleading. There's a grain of truth, but the emphasis is only select applied -- it's misapplied -- we don't call speeders "illegal drivers" or people who jaywalk "illegals." And that selective application to immigrants is harmful. As Lawrence Downes wrote in a New York Times op-ed:

"There is no way out of that trap. It's the crime you can't make amends for. Nothing short of deportation will free you from it, such is the mood of the country today. And that is a problem."

There sure is a problem. So much so that the National Association of Hispanic Journalists won't use it. They recommend using "undocumented" instead. That's a start.

Branding people with the Scarlet "I" creates a fearful stigma. The vast majority of immigrants, whatever their legal status, are law-abiding members of society. Yet, the "illegal" description is so pervasive that it has us thinking about punishment and revenge, instead of solutions to the real problem -- the economic exploitation of people, both immigrants and native born.

How did that happen?

In part, it's all in our heads; it's how our minds work. To understand the world, we unconsciously create categories of things. We understand these categories by, again unconsciously, creating central examples that represent how we envision the basic properties of the group.

Think of a bird, for example. What first pops into your mind? Most likely something akin to a sparrow, maybe a robin. It's unlikely that your unconscious, initial image will be an ostrich or a penguin. Or even a duck or an eagle. These are all birds, but they are not what we instinctively envision as the typical bird. In fact, our unconscious category example need not be the most common bird or even an actual bird at all. Nevertheless, the typical example you have in your mind allows you to organize, understand, and apply what you experience about birds.

Our categorizations serve a useful purpose. They allow us to process lots of information very quickly. Much faster than if we were to try and consciously think through a list of characteristics about everything we encounter all day long in the world. We'd be paralyzed, like the computer icon spinning on your screen while the web page loads. So, in many situations, we're very fortunate that our brains work in this manner. Otherwise, we'd never get through the characteristics of the mental category "animals with big teeth." We'd have been eaten.

But it's not so straightforward when our brains create central examples for groups of people. We call them stereotypes. Like the bird category, our minds do this unconsciously, and the people stereotypes don't have to be real or accurate. Nevertheless, they exist in our minds, and they shape how we react and interact with people from these groups, both individually and as a whole. This includes the policies we make.

Since we have been repeatedly bombarded with the term "illegal immigrants," most of us have at least some negative characteristics associated with our unconscious stereotype of low-wage foreign workers. As a result, the policies that many people support are punitive -- more deportations, more border security, and fines for employers who knowingly hire them.

This makes a certain logical sense. What policy would go best with these stereotypes of immigrant workers? If they are "illegal immigrants," we think of crime and danger and that leads first to police actions, border walls, and round ups. That was certainly the thrust of the Republican YouTube debate on CNN. But it was also the same argument that came from many Democratic candidates when they would not support drivers licenses for the people they also called "illegal immigrants." And if most immigrants were murderers or armed robbers -- if the stereotype currently repeated by candidates and the mainstream media were accurate -- this way of thinking might make some sense and these policies might be warranted. But they aren't.

In fact, it's just the opposite. According to the American Immigration Law Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing public understanding of immigration law and advancing fundamental fairness and due process for immigrants, the vast majority of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, are law-abiding people: "a century of research finds that crime rates for immigrants are lower than for the native-born." These conclusions are bolstered by their latest report, published in Spring 2007.

And the American Immigration Law Foundation tells us the likely reason why:

"The problem of crime in the United States is not 'caused' or even aggravated by immigrants, regardless of their legal status. This is hardly surprising since immigrants come to the United States to pursue economic and educational opportunities not available in their home countries and to build better lives for themselves and their families. As a result, they have little to gain and much to lose by breaking the law. Undocumented immigrants in particular have even more reason to not run afoul of the law given the risk of deportation that their lack of legal status entails."

Sounds more like a good neighbor than a criminal.

Some of these foreign workers are even heroes. The AP just reported on one. On Thanksgiving, Jesus Manuel Cordova Soberanes, a 26-year-old bricklayer from northern Mexico, rescued a nine-year-old boy who had been in a car wreck. Mr. Soberanes had snuck across the border to find work to feed his family. While he was walking through the Arizona desert, he came across the boy. The boy's mother had swerved off a cliff and crashed. The mother was severely injured and the boy had gone in search of help. Mr. Soberanes returned with the boy to the car, but he could not save the mother. As night came and temperatures dropped, he gave the boy his sweater and built a fire. Mr. Soberanes stayed with the boy through the night, until he was rescued the next morning. The boy was flown to a hospital in Tucson and Mr. Soberanes was turned over to Border Patrol agents, who deported him back to Mexico. According to the local sheriff, Mr. Soberanes is "'very, very special and compassionate' and may have saved the boy's life."

Mr. Soberanes explained his sacrifice this way:

"I am a father of four children. For that, I stayed," Manuel Jesus Cordova Soberanes said in Spanish from his home in the Mexican state of Sonora. "I never could have left him. Never."

Mr. Soberanes made America a better place during his brief stay.

So, the statistics and Mr. Soberanes beg the question, what kind of policies might we envision if our stereotype were more accurate? What if we understood Mr. Soberanes and others like him as "economic refugees"? Maybe, we might begin to understand their actions as moral, and them as good people, maybe even noble ones.

Like Jean Valjean of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. He stole bread when he was desperate to feed himself and his sister's family. He didn't even work for it. Yet he has become an international symbol of conscience, one that's celebrated today in the long-running Broadway play. The bad guy was the relentlessly unjust, even cruel, economic and legal systems of 18th century France -- embodied in police inspector Javert.

What policies might we construct if the issue were economic exploitation? Would we not think first about protecting the human dignity of all who work in the U.S.? We might then begin to create policies that address the underlying problems that face all workers in America -- the need for jobs that are safe, secure, and pay a living wage, combined with health care for everyone. We might begin to understand that Americans, too, can be "economic refugees" inside the U.S. -- our fellow citizens forced to abandon their hometowns due to factory closings, for example, in search of a job wherever they can find it.

At the Rockridge Institute, we have been examining these ideas in The Framing of Immigration and a recent response to a reader's inquiry. Many others are thinking and writing about this too, including bloggers at ImmigrationProf and Immigration, Education, and Globalization. But it's time to push this thinking mainstream, so that we hear the truth over and over. If we are going to have effective policies that deal with reality, we can start with changing our language and updating what's in our heads. Let's start being mindful of how we think and talk.

Comments

[cynara]

"Like Jean Valjean of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. He stole bread when he was desperate to feed himself and his sister's family. He didn't even work for it. Yet he has become an international symbol of conscience, one that's celebrated today in the long-running Broadway play. The bad guy was the relentlessly unjust, even cruel, economic and legal systems of 18th century France -- embodied in police inspector Javert."

I have often though that beating a starving child for stealing a loaf of bread was a good metaphor for a our immigration/trade policy. But I didn't know the source of this metaphor; now I do.

[cynara]

We shove free-trade agreements down the throats of other nations. Free trade agreements that encourage employers in Mexico to compete on a cost only basis. Since NAFTA has no provisions regarding labor conditions or wages, the easiest way to keep costs low is to lower wages to untenable levels (1/3 of all Mexicans, and virtually all blue collar workers, earn between 4.50 - 8.00 per DAY, not enough to buy food on the Mexican market) and to have abusive labor conditions (unpaid overtime, no sick leave etc...).

Our multinational corporations further lobby/bribe the Mexican government to maintain the status quo, and look the other way as they violate every labor law and pollution law on the books. Then we flooded the Mexican market with our subsidized corn (completely outlawed by NAFTA, BTW, but whose enforcing?), this caused MExican farmers to go out of business and tortilla prices to go through the roof, while Mexican real wages are now lower than they were before NAFTA.

Then we punish, demagogue, and demonize the Mexicans that flood our borders trying to escape their horrific conditions, that we were not just complacent too, but completly involved in the creation of.

Where is the righteous anger at the Mexican government (14th highest GDP in the world) for letting its citzens starve?

Where is the anger at the US corporations that actively lobby the Mexican government to keep wages low and ignore labor laws, all the while moving our factories south to take advantage of the abuse?

Where is the lobbying to revise the free trade agreements so that they benefit blue collar workers in all trading nations?

No, we as a nation, prefer to attack the immigrant, as if he (the most powerless player in this mess) was responsible for the economic conditions that drove him north.

[Anirban]

i think u should also try to remove the VISA and other ardous technicalities that my friends have to face migrating from India.open border open sea open air so much of openness.Gotta be a good thing , and don't come for us if we overstay. Don't you think America is already responsible for the calamities world wide. Yay! Gotta pay for it.

[typedesk]

Undocumented my ass. Eric, thet are "illegals" because thet came here illegaly. They are "aliens" because they are not Americans. They are in fact "illegal aliens" that should be immediately deported. besides that we just don't like them, call it what you want.

[clr2]

They aren't illegal immigrants they are ILLEGAL ALIENS and they are sucking our systems dry. We spend BILLIONS to educate and provide health care for ILLEGAL ALIENS. We need to use these BILLIONS on our own CITIZENS. We need to deport all ILLEGAL ALIENS, heavily fine those who hire ILLEGALS, and return to the original intent of the 14th amendment and do away with anchor babies. We need to stop the invasion of ILLEGAL ALIENS!

[Countess]

This is so ridiculous. People who enter a country illegaly are illegal except for minute brains that cannot understand the obvious. Try defending legal hard working people for a change. You insult all those who do not break the law.

[sparkandy]

If you live in a place where there's a large influx of immigrants, sometimes it is hard to tell the legal from the illegal. However, there's plenty of anecdotal evidence showing that illegals cause more problems than legal immigrants. For instance, recently there was a two car collision near here. Eleven people were injured when a van carrying illegal immigrants hit a car head on. The driver of the van fled the scene, because he was illegal. The four people in the car will not be able to have their expenses paid by the party at fault's insurance company, because the party at fault was here illegally. Last year a man was shot because the police were looking for a burglar. The man was here illegally and ran when the police showed up, even though he had nothing to do with the crime they were investigating. When he ran and refused to stop when ordered to, he was shot and killed. The officer who fired the shot cannot be blamed for that - as far as he knew he was firing at a burglar. So, even though we sometimes get upset with ALL immigrants because we may not like the way they live or the fact that they're too lazy to learn English, we'll have to learn to deal with that. Illegals DO cause problems that legal immigrants don't.

[MARTYB]

What is the problem? They were not invited, they did not go through the proper channels, they are alien (to this country), therefore they are ILLEGAL ALIENS. It was VERY good of Senor Soberanes to help the child, but you also failed to mention that in addition to his four children by his wife he also had three with a girl friend, same article, very selective, and that fact opens up another can of worms. How about OUR enviroment? We have 12-20 million people who should not be here and because of signicant cultural differences have more children than native born, except Mormons. Some parts of Los Angeles have become mirrors of Tiajuana and Mexico City in all the very worst ways. Nope, will not change the terminology because that is what they are, illegal aliens.

[guajiro]

You make a good point about how our logical mind categorizes things. I just now finished seeing 'a beautiful mind', about the Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Nash of Princeton, and how his theories in mathematics are now applied to economics. "Economic Refugees" is a genius move to recategorize those whom american people have learned to despise; themselves. It is the american people themselves that are losing out to corporate america and shifting the blame to another particular group of people; those with similar problems of lowered economic status. This shifting of blame only reduces them to squabbling over leftovers like dogs fighting over a bone thrown from the table(the trickle down theory).

[Lon]

This analysis could be right, but I have my doubts. Part of the reason is that the anger of immigration is greater than the anger of illegal behavior in general.

In discussions of immigration, you can usually count on someone complaining that the word "illegal" hasn't been used whether it is relevant or not. Certainly for those people, it is not really the word that is driving the issue.

But the most remarkable thing about the anger of illegal immigrants, or undocumented workers if one prefers, is how similar it is to the anger against immigrants before there was a distinction between legal and illegal.

The real problem is that having immigrants who can be labelled as "illegals" gives cover to a fear of immigrants which has always been a feature of this country. And sometimes it seems it is the descendants of the early hating newcomers who wouldn't assimilate who prove that wrong by adopting the anti-immigrant attitudes that were formerly used against their parents and grandparents.

[Oscarface]

How would you reconcile a list like the one below this sentence with the claim that crime is not "even aggravated by immigrants" - particularly those that are in the country against our immigration laws?

http://www.lapdonline.org/all_most_wanted

[bethinCary]

I agree-the terminology needs to be changed.
It's a very unfair sterotype.

[wadenelson1]

bravo!