America is simply addicted - Morality aside, immigration policy has practical consequences

America is simply addicted - Morality aside, immigration policy has practical consequences
By Ron Grossman
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
August 15, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-oped-0815-immigration-20100815,0,2670789.story


Seldom have two little words so distorted a red-hot political issue as during the current debate over immigration reform.

Each side hears something totally different in the phrase. Those who support the undocumented (their lingo), define reform as granting citizenship to illegals (their opponents' preferred term). This side uses the word reform as a synonym for a pardon — a collective reprieve for those who slipped across a border or overstayed a tourist visa.

The other side thinks of reform as the imperative form of a verb — as in: Kick them out! Partisans of that viewpoint want illegal immigrants rounded up and shipped back to where they came from. Their anger was fueled when the federal government recently went into court to oppose Arizona's new law requiring law enforcement officials to check out anyone they think is not here legally. Federal attorneys feared the Department of Homeland Security would be swamped with calls from the Arizona cops. Enforcing the law costs too much paperwork, the feds argued.

Both the tender-hearted and tough-minded positions are moral arguments: The tender-hearted ask how can we be so cold-hearted to deport families who've lived here for years? The tough-minded wonder aren't citizens owed a government that holds everybody to the same rules?

Yet our immigration problem isn't a matter of morality but practicality. Essentially, it's not about them but us.

We're addicted to immigrants.

Next time you're out to dinner, look at who picks the dirty dishes off your table. Listen to a cab driver as the guttural sounds of Chicago street names — like Kostner or Komensky — are vocally massaged by the musical tones of Arabic or the languages of South and East Asia.

We depend upon immigrants to cut our lawns, tend our children, harvest our crops, work in our factories, clean our offices. When the economy was booming we hardly gave a thought to their immigration status. We scarcely noticed that immigrants staff our hospitals and the research labs that dream up our newest cell phones.

When it comes to versatility, a lot of celebrity chefs couldn't hold a toque to the Mexican cooks in restaurants serving Polish and French fare, indeed the whole rainbow of ethnic foods that makes Chicago a wonderful place to dine. Perhaps never before in culinary history has one group mastered so many other peoples' cuisines.

If America is a melting pot, immigrants stir it. I regularly get wonton soup and pot stickers from a Chinese restaurant run by an Iranian immigrant.

That entrepreneurial spirit is apparent n newcomers' neighborhoods. Some older business streets now look shopworn, their customers lost to franchises and shopping malls. But there is scarcely an empty storefront on 26th Street, where the merchants are largely Mexican, and Devon and Lawrence avenues are mélanges of Middle Eastern and Asian businesses. The famed Protestant work ethic might well be renamed the immigrant work ethic.

Our dependence upon immigrants began long before the tide of new arrivals from south of the Rio Grande that inflamed current political debate. America is a huge country and began as a thinly populated one. Once its economy took off, the U.S. perennially had more jobs than workers. So Europeans — Irish, Poles, Germans, Italians, Greeks, Slavs and Jews — were induced to come here by tales of a country where anyone willing to work could.

Many of those earlier arrivals sent their offspring to college, or saw them established in higher-paying trades. As each immigrant group moved up the social ladder, we've needed another one to start the cycle anew.

Our immigration dilemma doesn't ultimately stem from some newcomers' lack of papers. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many immigrants didn't have them. Visas weren't required until the 1920s — when, just as now, some Americans loudly worried that the country was being overrun by immigrants. Quotas were set on how many we would accept from various countries. Interestingly, Mexicans were exempt from those limits, given a free pass to come as they pleased.

But that was then and this is now — a time of seemingly intractable unemployment. Pollsters report that about 60 percent of Americans favor Arizona's Draconian law. That indicates those who are unemployed, or live in fear of layoffs, think jobs should be reserved for citizens.

The most vocally touted remedies for the problem rest upon unspoken assumptions no bookie would bet on. Liberals suggest that a blanket gift of citizenship to immigrants will close the flood gates. But is it reasonable to think that in an impoverished village in Latin America or Asia, people will say: "The Americans have been so generous to our countrymen, it would be wrong for us to violate their immigration regulations"?

Conservatives assume deporting illegal immigrants will provide citizens work — in jobs that native-born Americans long have disdained. But what if that premise is wrong? Consider this scenario: You're at a fancy restaurant and the waiter is reciting a list of mouthwatering specials. "And we offer a complimentary bottle of wine," he says, "for diners who volunteer to stay afterward and scrub the pots and pans."

Ron Grossman is a Tribune reporter and former history professor.
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