Take your share of responsibility for illegal immigration

[Mr_Perceptive]

Commentary: Take your share of responsibility for illegal immigration

Story Highlights
Columnist says hiring illegal immigrants is the root of the problem
Americans prefer to blame Mexico for illegal immigration, Navarrette says
Mexicans come to United States for one reason: jobs, columnist says

By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Special to CNN

SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- A reader wrote in to complain about illegal immigration, not exactly a rare occurrence. He was concerned about his tax dollars paying for services for illegal immigrants.

Never mind that he is probably being subsidized by the very phenomenon that he refuses to subsidize. And I'm not talking about the price of tomatoes. If his town is home to a hotel, restaurant or other business that relies on illegal immigrants and then pays taxes and pumps money into the local economy - money that goes to pay for police, fire, sewage etc. -- it will wind up benefiting Mr. Don't Use My Tax Dollars.

The reader offered a scenario -- "Where you hire people to clean your toilets, they decide to stay in your house and they bring friends. You end up paying for their schooling and other privileges."

You see the problem: "Where you hire people to clean your toilets." Hmm. These people are here illegally, and yet you hire them to clean your toilets, reserving the right to bellyache about them and what they're costing you. It's the first act -- hiring illegal immigrants -- that sets the rest of the story in motion. I have a solution: Clean your own toilets, or at least make sure that those who clean them for you are in the country legally. Or, shut up already.

Sometimes you need to give it to people straight. I wish that former Mexican President Vicente Fox would have dished up some straight talk to CNN's Wolf Blitzer during an appearance last week in "The Situation Room." There to promote his new memoir, "Revolution of Hope," Fox fielded a question from CNN's Lou Dobbs delivered via videotape. Dobbs wanted to know why the Mexican government can't come up with policies that reduce poverty in Mexico so it doesn't have to continue to export its poorest people into the United States. Watch former Mexican President Vicente Fox talk about immigration with Wolf Blitzer ?

It's not that simple. Mexico has now had just seven years of democracy under the rule of Fox's National Action Party -- following on the heels of more than 70 years of corrupt governance at the hands of the Institutional Revolution Party. The United States has had more than 200 years to get democracy right, and it still has to work out the kinks now and then.

Blitzer asked Fox to respond to Dobbs and asked why so many Mexicans want to come to the United States. The host suggested that it's because this is a country of immigrants.

Again, not that simple. Oh, it's true that the United States is a country of immigrants. But in this case, what matters is that this also happens to be a country full of people who hire illegal immigrants. There is only one reason why so many Mexicans want to come to the United States: because there are so many jobs waiting for them here.

Some Americans still prefer to blame Mexico for illegal immigration. Of course, why wouldn't they? That sure beats taking their share of responsibility for it.

Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a member of the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune and a nationally syndicated columnist. You can read his column here.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/15/navarrette/index.html 

[Plane]

Sometimes you need to give it to people straight. I wish that former Mexican President Vicente Fox would have dished up some straight talk to CNN's Wolf Blitzer during an appearance last week in "The Situation Room." There to promote his new memoir, "Revolution of Hope," Fox fielded a question from CNN's Lou Dobbs delivered via videotape. Dobbs wanted to know why the Mexican government can't come up with policies that reduce poverty in Mexico so it doesn't have to continue to export its poorest people into the United States. Watch former Mexican President Vicente Fox talk about immigration with Wolf Blitzer ?
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Working n the us is a policy for reducing poverty in Mexico.

Most of these people are not immigrants , they come and work and return to the home that they have in Mexico, they are more like miners than immigrants.

[Universe Prince]

The reader offered a scenario -- "Where you hire people to clean your toilets, they decide to stay in your house and they bring friends. You end up paying for their schooling and other privileges."

You see the problem: "Where you hire people to clean your toilets." Hmm. These people are here illegally, and yet you hire them to clean your toilets, reserving the right to bellyache about them and what they're costing you. It's the first act -- hiring illegal immigrants -- that sets the rest of the story in motion. I have a solution: Clean your own toilets, or at least make sure that those who clean them for you are in the country legally. Or, shut up already.

He is almost correct, but not quite. The problem does not start with hiring illegals. The problem starts with the law interfering in the trade of labor between private entities, creating a situation where people can choose to wait a decade or more for legal entry or they can do something now about needing to provide food, shelter and clothing for themselves and their families by coming here anyway to find work. Now there is a black market in labor and people forging identification and all sorts of unnecessary lawbreaking. Get rid of the unneeded laws interfering with the trade of labor, and then the workers are not here illegally, and whole host of other illegal problem go away, and the workers pay their payroll taxes at the very least, contributing to the "social safety net" and all that jazz. Why in the world anyone wants to keep out several thousand contributors to "Social Security" and local economies, I have no idea. It makes no sense at all.

And that scenario the guy offered, it is not correct. There is no hiring someone to fix your toilet and then he moves into your house. It's more like, person A makes a private agreement with person B that benefits person B enough that he can move into your neighborhood. But then you decide person B and all people like person B should be kept out of your neighborhood, so you start passing laws against hiring people like person B and laws against allowing people like person B to even travel to your neighborhood. Why? They're different. They're not assimilating. They're a threat to the culture. They don't speak the right language. Whatever excuse suffices to justify the abridgment of other people's rights, but basically, it's fear.