In kindergarten, I had my first political argument.
My mother packed my lunch every day. These lunches
were legendary. Perfect sandwiches, homemade cookies,
chips, carrot sticks and a drink (on the bottom of the bag,
of course, so the sandwich would remain in its pristine
perfectness.....not squished into a gelatinous goo.)
Had I grown up anywhere but California, I might not have
had this argument, but here I was in the heart of Los
Angeles, and apparently at the mercy of young liberals
in training.
This young classmate approached me, outraged, because
I had the audacity to be eating and enjoying the fresh
green seedless grapes that my mother had packed in my
lunch. She took the great grape boycott of the early 1970s
to heart.
Seething and close to tears, my classmate told me through
clenched teeth that I needed to throw away my grapes and
never eat them again because I was "Desploiting" the workers.
I wouldn't have known what "exploiting" the workers had
meant either, but I do recall her delightful interpretation
.... "desploiting."
This was the time of the guest worker program in California
that had Cesar Chavez up at arms. He would tell any media
outlet that would listen (and they did with great relish) of the
evils of the Bracero program.
I told her with absolute certainty that if my mother packed
the grapes in my lunch that I would eat them and she couldn't
stop me. She called me a few choice names that made less
sense than her "desploited worker" comment and ran away
in tears. That has been the liberal response to many of my
conservative stands over the years.
I didn't listen to the liberals then, and I sure don't now that
they are screeching their support of the President's new
guest worker program from the rooftops.
It is not surprising to me that they have changed positions,
it is that they refuse to acknowledge this drastic change.
Interestingly enough, my mother was not necessarily
against the Bracero program. Lots of migrant workers had
come over the border to find work and an opportunity to
support their families, which is understandable, and the
Bracero program protected those workers from crime,
provided health care as needed, etc.
Even Cesar Chavez credits the Bracero program with
starting the United Farm Workers Union. So it couldn't be
all bad, even from the liberal point of view.
So suppose that the left gets their collectivist way and
decides that the guest worker program is the greatest
thing since sliced bread. And suppose it passes.
What happens then?
First, this would be a disaster for the Republican party. As
Paul Weyrich writes in his recent column, "And there is the
matter of immigration. Conservatives are deeply split on the
issue. Heck, the new Majority Leader, Representative John
A. Boehner (R-OH), has a radically different approach from
Majority Whip, Roy Blunt (R-MO). One view as to which
conservatives absolutely are united is the securing of our
borders. Representative J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) says we don’t
have any real clue who is coming across our Southern border
night after night. The President is insisting upon a link between
securing the borders and having some sort of guest-worker
program. In theory he may be correct. But conservatives want
none of it until we have a handle on illegal immigration. Bush ought
just to drop until after the mid-term elections any demand for
his guest-worker deal. He says it is not amnesty. In politics
perception is reality. That part of his program is perceived by the
voting public as amnesty. If you don’t want to see a Democratic
Congress, Mr. President, put it aside for now."
Weyrich is exactly correct, which brings me to the second point.
Should another terrorist attack occur and the terrorists are found
to have crossed our porous Southern border in the dead of night,
guess who will take the blame? Not the liberals who pushed the
guest worker program but the Bush Administration who
conceived of it.
It is hard for the good folks inside the bubble of the
White House to really conceive of just how much of a
deal-breaker issue this is. The anger associated with this
issue is palpable, even with people who are completely
apolitical.
I understand how some think in purely economic terms
here -- these so called migrant workers are, strictly in the
asset column as workers who cost us less money per unit
produced and have little overhead whether on a farm,
in a household or in the factories. By and large, they
are completely "under the radar" workers and due to an
overwhelming desire to keep their jobs, they are hard
workers who are reliable and get the job done well. They
also don't have the overhead of the union workers.
No doubt there is a tremendous value attached to their
services, but at what cost?
Somehow, turning one's head when the Mexican
military tromps over the border for a cerveza is not
my idea of a great national policy. Where I come
from, that is nothing less than an invasion and
someone had better pick up the caliente lineto the
Mexican Presidente pronto to explain the concept of
national sovereignty.
When a man of Islamic faith is caught taking pictures
of the buildings in downtown Charlotte, NC, after crossing
illegally across the border in Juarez, I'm not going
to buy the story that he is sightseeing or an architecture
student. He's not here to participate in democracy's
greatest experiment, he's here to kill my family
and I'm not really terribly interested in the excuses.
I was here in Washington DC, that horrible day in
September, 2001 and I buried a dear friend who was
on the plane that struck the Pentagon. Many Americans died that
day and their surviving friends and family members have no
desire to repeat the experience.
Whatever economic benefit is realized by having undocumented
workers running around will come crashing down around us,
perhaps literally, if we don't start taking the invasion across
our borders seriously. Why this is not obvious is beyond me.
