Human Resources: Rethinking the Immigration Debate
by Alejandra Campoverdi on December 5, 2007 in Opinion
When I was a young girl growing up in Southern California, my grandmother and I drove past them every morning on the way to elementary school. They lined both sides of 4th Street, huddling for warmth in the early morning mist, eyes scanning the oncoming traffic. I watched them countless times, but it never occurred to me to ask what they were doing. One day, I finally did, and my grandmother told me that the men were trying to find work.
From that day forward, I started paying more attention. I watched pickup trucks pull over and the men pile into the back without so much as asking a question. I grew up witnessing a simple supply and demand model flourish before my eyes, and I became increasingly more invested.
Maybe it was those eager laborers, or my best friend’s mother who cleaned houses for a living, or my stepfather who went from a childhood picking grapes in California fields to a degree from Stanford Law School, but I learned to pay a lot of attention to the people working the invisible jobs in our society – jobs we take for granted but rely upon as we go about our day. In California, undocumented workers fill many of these jobs.
A few years ago, I took a job with The California Endowment, the state’s largest private healthcare foundation, and joined their Agricultural Worker Health Initiative. Agriculture, a $28 billion-a-year industry, is one of the most vital contributors to California’s economy. But more than two-thirds of the estimated 340,000 agriculture workers in California are undocumented, and they lack adequate housing conditions and have little or no access to critical health care services, leaving them at serious risk for life-threatening chronic diseases.
And so, during the recent Democratic Presidential Debate in Las Vegas, I found myself stunned watching national leaders miss the point on immigration once again. Instead of considering a realistic plan to deal with and care for a population upon which we rely and exploit for economic growth, they sparred over the newest ugly incarnation of the immigration debate: driver’s licenses for undocumented workers.
What will it take to get America past the bickering over wedge issues that obscure the core dilemmas at hand? These immigrants are already here. Some have been here for many years and have American-born children. They are an integral part of the economic infrastructure of many states – and not just border states like California and Arizona, but North Carolina and Ohio. Yet opportunistic politicians play on Americans’ anxieties by scapegoating undocumented workers as worthless, leeching criminals. This characterization, as well as any solution that does not lead to a path for citizenship, is unjust and increasingly unrealistic.
Harvard’s Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies recently screened the film, A Day Without a Mexican. It is a lighthearted mockumentary that seeks to illustrate California’s reliance on undocumented workers by asking: what would happen if all the Mexicans in California suddenly disappeared one morning? In the film, valet parking goes unmanned, tractors sit empty in unplowed fields and the border patrol begs the Mexicans to come back.
The film pokes fun at the immigration debate, but there is also a serious undertone. In order to debate the true issues involved in comprehensive immigration reform and to craft a realistic policy that includes a path to citizenship, the invisible people must become visible. Immigration reform doesn’t seem so black and white when you recognize that we are already linked inextricably to the undocumented immigrants in our midst, whether we like it or not.
When I was home over Thanksgiving, I drove down the same street I used to take to school, and even after all these years, I found a familiar scene. The men and the trucks were both there, still playing their respective parts. But watching, I felt a certain sadness that I didn’t feel when I was too young and naïve to realize that the workers were undocumented.
I didn’t comprehend back then that they are angrily honked at on a daily basis. I hadn’t yet heard about the policies aimed at punishing them and stripping away any rights they or their children could have to health care or education. All I saw was that they would stand by the side of the road every day hoping for the possibility of work – work that nobody else wanted to do.
It is always hard to admit when you need someone. But I have a feeling that if you ask the men standing along 4th Street in Santa Monica, they’ve known that we need them for some time.
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4 Responses to “Human Resources: Rethinking the Immigration Debate”
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Senorita Compoverdi:
Thank you for lending your personal insight to the immigration issue that routinely gets ignored by the press, politicans, and U.S. citizens. That is, these undocumented individuals come from humble stock, unassuming and determined to work so their family here (and many times-abroad) can have food on the table and hope for a better future. These hard working people are NOT aliens but immigrants who make our California economy and way of life better. For those who believe they take jobs…I invite any Califorian to pick bent over 10 hours our grapes, citrus, and strawberries for a day or go to a construction site and do evrything from hailing rebar to sweeping up the dust from dry wall waste at the end of the day. You are correct that these undocumented workers perform jobs with such efficiency and excellance doing jobs citizens could not or would not embrace is the dirty little secret billion dollar industries in Agricaulture and Construction leaders do not want Joe Citizen to realize. Forget about building a fence south of the border when all 13 of the Septeber 11th pilots entered through Canada! National Security my ass! Give these undocumented individuals a path to citizenship for all the sales taxes they paid when they buy food our stores or clothes at our malls. Numerous studies, including the Pew Institute have published that the overwhelming majority of undocumented workers are not a public charge and as you know, lack basic rights to employment benefits or health services due to their immigrant status. Keep up the good work bonita!
I think you’re both missing the point. These people want to work, true, but they are in the US illegally. Not undocumented…illegal. The fact that they’ve even had the opportunity to pay sales tax is ridiculous.
This is equivalent to someone under 21 sneaking into a bar, and then suing the bartender/bar because they weren’t served drinks or treated kindly once they were in.
If the US keeps letting illegals in this country, pretty soon we’re not going to have the infrastructure of money to support the population, making this country no better then a third world country- the very lives they are trying to escape.
Once a country loses its borders- that’s the end…no more US to run to.
The illegal aliens are aliens. they must be sent back to The Philippines!!!
Although I understand the issue at hand here, the fact is that they still arrived in the US illegally. The question is, why should immigrants be allowed to illegally enter the United States, illegally stay in the United States and then just because someone decides they are useful to the United States, allow them to remain indefinitely?
That’s the sound of selfishness, not compassion. We need to ensure our immigrant residents, our future citizens, who may hail from anywhere worldwide originally, have gone through the correct immigration system to ensure they are background checked and are here with a legitimate reason.
I myself am a 1st generation immigrant and I arrived here after going through a very painful 2-year period, during which I had to be apart from my wife as you cannot enter the US while the immigration process is underway and without a decent job as I was in limbo between two countries, not knowing when the process would be finished.
Now, because of the way the immigration system was changed by the previous Administration, a lot of people are currently undergoing similar treatment. But as they and I do/did it the “right” way, we’re out of pocket by thousands and thousands of dollars on travel expenses and extra living costs having to pay two sets of living costs. We have no healthcare to fall back on if we lose our US job, we have no entitlement to any benefit whatsoever if we lose our job (as we are required to have a US Citizen as our sponsor for up to 10 years after arrival in the US who will ensure we do not touch Social Security) and frankly, the main issue you should be thinking of, is why did the poor Mexican guy on 4th St cross the border illegally. Maybe, just maybe, it’s the actual immigration system that forced their hand into doing it this way and therefore having a self-critical look at the system may help the future of the 4th St. daily population be a little brighter and may encourage potential immigrants to do it the right way, like I did and so many others have done.
Sorry for digging up an old article, but this one is close to my heart!