My goodness, I thought POST readers were too sophisticated to fall for--let alone employ--the old "it's just illegal immigration we're against" dodge. So I'm postponing this week's blog to provide a little historical context.
"It's only because they're illegal that we're against them" would be more convincing if those who employ this evasion weren't making the very same complaints about illegal immigrants that were directed against the legal immigrants of yesteryear: "they're taking our jobs", "they're a drain on the state", "they're monopolizing our resources", "they're undermining our values", "they're uncivilized", "crime rates will rise". These anti-immigration arguments led to the very same exclusionary laws behind which today's ethnocentrists are hiding. "Illegal" is Washington shorthand for "poor and Mexican". People sneak across the Canadian border every day, but no one ever talks about these "illegals".
In the late19th century, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, the Chinese were considered an "inferior type" of humanity that would bring paganism, incest, and sodomy to America. California law forbade public bodies from employing them, and an anti-Chinese referendum there received 99.4% of the votes. Chinese were not allowed to testify against whites in court, and as a result were not only mercilessly exploited, but murdered by the thousands. Hence the expresssion, "he didn't have a Chinaman's chance". But illegal Chinese immigration continued unabated. And as to the terrible damage this wave of 'inferior types' was supposed to create, it's interesting that Asian freshmen today outnumber whites in the 10 campuses of the University of California.
In the first two decades of the 20th century the same negative feelings were expressed toward Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, Poles, and other immigrants. In large cities like New York and Chicago as many as two-thirds of the children couldn't speak English. "English only" was a big issue then, as now. Children caught speaking Italian, or Polish, or Yiddish, or German--even among themselves--had their mouths washed out with soap.
These familiar anti-immigration sentiments led to the enactment of the exclusionary laws of the early 1920s--laws that did not initially apply to Latin America, but were later supplemented to do so, based on the same prejudices and fears. In 1900 the nation was in a tizzy about being outnumbered by fast-breeding Irish and Italian families. Today the same fears are voiced about 'illegal' Mexicans.
Before JFK could be elected President he had to reassure the nation that he wouldn't be taking orders from the Pope.
The economics of immigration--legal or illegal--are complex, and no one has conclusively demonstrated that any of the many 'solutions' proposed would make us measurably better off than doing nothing.
It relieves hostile feelings to take punitive actions, but that doesn't mean they achieve anything. You can pass exclusionary laws to try to keep poor people out of the States. You can put up a fence on the Mexican border to try to keep poor people out of the States. You can even send vigilantes to shoot poor people if they cross the border. But still they will come. It's not too surprising--we've been advertising the place for three centuries.
William Knoke points out that it's "the entrepreneurial, hard-working, forward-looking, even courageous person who seeks to immigrate; the others stay home."
Some Americans have stayed home too long.