HispanicVista Columnists

The U.S. Senate Nukes Immigration Critics
Part One of two
By Raoul Lowery Contreras

Finally, after months of negotiations among Republican and Democratic Senators and constant attempts to sabotage them by talking heads in the media and a small gaggle of congressmen from fringe districts in Iowa and Colorado, we have a deal for Congress to vote on.

The issue is complex not only because millions of people are involved but because trillions of dollars are also involved. What is interesting is that the reaction to the Senate’s compromise isn’t complex. That is to say-- the anti-compromise reaction is not complex; it is nothing more than a furious bigoted response filled with outrage, insults and pure unadulterated stupidity.

Let’s examine both sides of this black and white issue.

The little-watched Lou Dobbs (2.6 percent viewership out of 300-million people) of the little-watched CNN network exemplifies the over-all ignorant reaction by a minority of Americans to the Senate compromise.

The New York Times reports that: "Mr. Dobbs opened (his) program by calling the deal an apparent victory for "the pro-illegal-alien lobby." The administration was "hellbent on creating a North American union without the consent of the American people," he said, and the plan could "threaten national sovereignty and security as well."

Dobb’s polite, though ignorant, Harvard-educated spiel pales when one reads comments in daily newspaper reader blogs such as: reptile09 wrote on May 18, 2007 3:24 AM (in San Diego’s North County Times):

"If Bush and these Senators had gone to the border and signed a surrender treaty with Mexico, I can't think how this so-called compromise could be any worse. If this is ever allowed to be signed into law, America as a sovereign nation is over. My only question to Jorge Dabaju Booch is this: Why do you hate Americans so much? Every thing you say and do is an insult to the citizens of this country and amounts to treason against the Constitution. What have we done to you, that you would force this travesty of government down our throats? You let thousands of innocent American die at the hands of criminal illegal aliens. You let them destroy our schools, hospitals and neighborhoods. You let them drive our wages down to third world levels and all the while smile and give that smirking chimp grin. Why do you hate us so much? "

Speaking for the American "working man," we find John Sweeney, President of the AFL/CIO. He "denounced the bill from a different angle, saying it would create "a massive guest worker program. All workers will suffer because employers will have available a ready pool of labor they can exploit to drive down wages, benefits, health and safety protections and other workplace standards," Mr. Sweeney told the New York Times.

Speaking for rump Senators, Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, told the Times "he would offer an amendment to eliminate the guest worker program from the bill."

In brief, we find some media talking heads like Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Laura Ingraham, Mike Gallagher and LA’s John and Ken reflecting those who think: (a) The President of the United States is a traitor--(b) that the Senate compromise destroys the United States and the Constitution--(c) that the entire deal is a sellout to Mexico, the most powerful country in the world--(d) is nothing more than an amnesty for millions of law-breakers and, (e) the American lowest level high school dropout needs to be protected from people who work hard for their money without whining.

All this pain and suffering by millionaires of the media and in public life proves beyond doubt that the main complaints are not economic. Rather, the complaints are political and based on factors other than the desperate need for more workers throughout civilized America in important economic fields like construction, agriculture and the hospitality industry of hotels and restaurants. These labor areas are growing even as the available labor pool is shrinking.

One must recall the arguments by the exact same people in 1993 during the hard-fought NAFTA debate (North American Free Trade Agreement). Time Magazine called the Halloween Coalition of Jesse Jackson, Congressman Duncan Hunter, Ross Perot, the AFL/CIO’s John Sweeney and a gaggle of union-bought congress people like San Diego’s Bob Filner and Lynn Schenck who represented the entire California border with Mexico, as the opposition to NAFTA. They vehemently opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The economic arguments these people brought up were phony and were used only to mask a profound hatred of Mexicans. Democrat or Republican, NAFTA opponents had one thing in common, a hatred of Mexico and Mexicans. Nothing has changed, except, of course, the huge benefits of NAFTA and the 25-million jobs that have been added to the U.S. work rolls.

A post-script: Ross Perot’s company recently announced that it is opening a 1500-employee facility in Guadalajara, Mexico, because it makes better economic sense than doing the work in Texas.

We now find these same people objecting to a bipartisan deal to fix the immigration mess we are in. Is there a common factor in the attacks on the current immigration reform proposed by the Senate and the anti-NAFTA Halloween Coalition of 1993? Yes, Mexicans.

Intelligent Americans need to carefully evaluate the compromise and weigh it against the problems caused by the huge labor shortage in the United States. Ethnicity should have nothing to do with solving the problem. If the illegals were predominately Canadian or Norwegian, would the critics care?

Does the compromise solve any immigration problems? Does it bring into sunshine the millions of illegals who wake up every day, send their children to school, go to work, pay their taxes and manage to stay under the law enforcement radar by being decent law abiding people who crossed the border without speaking to a U.S. officer? Does it permit us to know who is here and who will come to work? Does it eliminate many of the thousands of illegal border crossings that keep an incompetent Border Patrol in a constant state of turmoil and law breaking?

We shall see.

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Contreras’ books, THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA? and A HISPANIC VIEW OF AMERICAN POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION are available at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com

Contreras’ books, THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA?? and, A HISPANIC VIEW OF AMERICAN POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF IMMIGRATION are available at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com