...Or at least, an effort to foster understanding.
I want to expound a bit on my comments on Benson's "
Los Border Patrol" post. (See comments before Adam picked a fight with Mere. Just kidding, Adam.) I served my two-year Mormon mission in Mexico, in and around Mexico City. In an unrelated story, I still get chronic bloody noses from the smog equivalent of a pack of cigarettes a day at 7200 feet of elevation.
Anyway, apart from being an ambassador for my church, I was invariably one for our country in the eyes of those I met. Invariably, one of the questions I frequently got from folks of all ways of life down there was, "Why does your country hate Mexicans?" After asking them to expound a bit, their reasoning was that since our country makes it harder for Mexicans to come and go as they please, it necessarily follows that we dislike Mexicans, their culture, their very "-ness" as a people to borrow a phrase from Dupree.
It took me quite a while to figure out how they were making that leap. After all, one must jump through at least as many hoops to visit or work other countries from the United States for any number of reasons. When the wife and I lived in London for a few months, I assumed that it would be as simple to get a job there as it would be for an immigrant wanting to work here. Au contraire. I was told that I would have to somehow prove that I was doing work that was highly specialized--that required my expertise in such a way that an employer was justified in hiring me over a comparably qualified Londoner. Needless to say, I quickly lay that idea aside. Also, speaking of missions, most Mormons probably at least know of a missionary who ultimately couldn't go to his assigned country (at least right away) due to visa difficulties, even when he and the church had months to apply.
Even with that experience, my conclusion generally is not that such difficulty comes from the kind of animosity my Mexican friends were attributing the USA, but rather the bureaucratic realities of one of the most fundamental rights and responsibilities of any sovereign--protecting its borders and the rights of its lawful citizens and guests, however they interpret that.
In conversing with Mexicans on the subject, I've developed a theory as to why the vitriol exists on the Mexican side of the border and among hispanics on this side, legal or otherwise. I think we underestimate how fundamental respect for the rule of law is ingrained in our democracy and how important that is for developing nations. It's a fundamental assumption to everything we discuss politically and socially and is part of what makes "bad" laws so offensive. I submit that it's a defining quality of a developed nation to have a mature respect for the rule of law and that animosity towards immigration laws generally is rooted in incongruence between our concept of rule of law and our neighbors to the south.
Premise one: your political culture is one of oppression and rule either by foreign governments or by a ruling class tremendously different than your own. What's more, it's a ruling class or a foreign government with no connection to your own distinct culture in any way. Nonetheless, that government insists on either openly oppressing you or ignoring you. It may periodically ask you to vote, but you learn quickly that government and law is a question of the lesser of two evils. How might that affect your concept of the legitimacy of law? Of government? Clearly law and government is wrapped up in open scorn of your needs.
Premise two: given premise one, law and government don't mean that much to you as long as they let you be more often than not, and fortunately they do. You live in a small-ish town with little national significance. What significance it has pales in comparison with your very real need to work, make what money you can, and coexist peacefully with your neighbors while enjoying the good things in life: family, friends, recreation, etc. Government's greatest sin would be interrupting or discouraging those priorities. There can be no legitimate reason for doing so.
Those are the premises that I observed exist for much of Mexico. There's no understanding, as perhaps the immigrants from Europe had, that America's government and society were better and provided better opportunity than their homelands. They are tremendously proud of their culture and have no desire to modify it or change it. The answer to them is not to petition to change their government. That's futile and will do no good. Let the government do what it wants. In the meantime, if there's more work up North that pays better, let me see what I can do up there to send home.
Why would any government see a need to interrupt that effort? What's all the fuss? I just want to work and quietly live my life.
* * *
Let me be clear: I make no justification for that attitude. We on the right who are a bit more apt to be frustrated about the problems of illegal immigration such that we are willing to support more aggressive efforts to control our border simply cannot frame the question as one of "illegal = wrong and that's that" and expect not to be frustrated by the brick wall we hit. It may very well be that cut and dry in fact, but as I often trumpet, we need to be aware of our message and the ineffectiveness of beating it against that wall without concern for how it's received.
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