When I went down to the border for a meeting about building the wall between the US and Mexico — this was about five years ago — it became clear to most of us in the meeting, even many who had come to defend strong measures designed to keep immigrants out, that this wasn’t about immigration.
The proposed wall stretching from California to the Gulf Coast was about the wall in all its “glory.” Whether we’re talking about the high wall (a physical intrusion on the riverine landscape) or about the sections of “wall” which are electronic and virtually invisible, the “wall” had become another Bush administration money pit. It was essential to corporate interests; it represented a huge amount of construction money and electronic experimentation going into the pockets of national and international construction firms. This was during the greedy Bush years and a White House in in love with “private contractors.” It was fed by ALEC and ALEC’s kin.
So when you think about “the immigration problem” and “Mexico,” the first thing you have to get out of your head is that this is about immigration and Mexico. It’s about construction money for sections of wall and, of course (as we’ve learned from Arizona), it’s about tax money to build for-profit, private prisons to hold “illegals.”
The profit motive is even more visible than the wall itself. But let’s not overlook the invisible: the idea of America-the-fortress, proudly cruel and repressive. Here’s Supreme Court watcher, Linda Greenhouse, looking at the presentation of the Arizona case in the Court.
I found last week’s Supreme Court argument in the Arizona immigration case utterly depressing, and I’ve spent the intervening week puzzling over my reaction. It’s not simply that the federal government seems poised to lose: unlike the appeals court, the justices appear likely to find the heart of Arizona’s mean-spirited “attrition through enforcement” statute, S.B. 1070, permissible under federal law.
Poring over the argument transcript and the briefs, what finally came through as most deeply troubling was this: the failure of any participant in the argument, justice or advocate for either side, to affirm the simple humanity of Arizona’s several hundred thousand undocumented residents.
Both facts and logic tell us that this is a varied population. Different reasons, different routes and different times brought these individuals to Arizona. Half the adults among them hold jobs. Many are parents of American-born citizens of the United States. An untold number, while not possessing the right papers, are also not now deportable under our byzantine immigration laws. But whoever they are and whatever their stories, all are now likely to become what Arizona intended them to be when it enacted the law two years ago: hunted. …NYT
Because, doncha know!, to be sensible, to be flexible, to be (above all) humane and thoughtful is to be liberal. And the US must never, ever, go back to being kind, open, and generous. We are only safe if we separate ourselves very clearly from the rest of the world. Our role in the world is that of boss, not co-worker — not collaborator.
In front of the Supreme Court, the representative of Arizona — Paul Clement– and the representative of the US — Donald Verrilli — fought to show that their respective clients had been more effective along the border. But what they did was to reveal how cruel both had been.
Mr. Clement, the Bush administration’s last solicitor general, was certainly on to something when he suggested that Arizona was simply following Washington’s lead. Indeed, he and his successor, Mr. Verrilli, seemed engaged in a verbal arms race. The federal government’s brief offered a startling description of what the government was doing on the Arizona-Mexico border in the spring of 2010, when the Arizona Legislature passed S.B. 1070: 4,000 Border Patrol agents stationed there, a 40 percent increase since 2005; 40 aircraft on patrol; 305.7 miles of border fence completed.The description was aimed at showing that the Feds were on the case and that Arizona’s law was simply superfluous. Perhaps so, but I read this account as the chilling self-description of a powerful nation obsessed with imaginary enemies. …NYT
That’s certainly the way it looks to those of us who live anywhere near the border and have retained our sense of proportion and our decency. One commenter on Greenhouse’s column, David Scott, points out what should have become the most obvious failing of America in this issue:
There is a principle of law, “adverse possession.” An owner who does not enforce his property rights against a trespasser for a period of time loses those rights and can no longer evict the trespasser. Under this principle, people who have lived here for a long time, worked, paid taxes, had children who are citizens, etc., deserve to stay here. We could have enforced our immigration laws years ago and knowingly chose not to do so; to choose to enforce them now is not just.
The actual laws (the ones that were enforced) basically allowed a yearly immigration lottery that most people won and a few lost and got deported. Immigrants were obliged to play the lottery but were otherwise safe. People built their lives on these rules, and now we are deciding to change them. Since the rules were built on our neglect of our own laws, it is legal to change them. But changing them is morally ugly, and it is intellectually dishonest not to see this ugliness. …NYT
Let’s not forget that all of this vicious Arizona business is also another symptom of what we have become, what we are becoming. I’m thinking of other countries we have known — like North Korea, like the Soviet Union — who maintained fortified borders through which it was forbidden to pass freely in either direction. And that’s what Linda Greenhouse seems to suggest.
“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know/ What I was walling in or walling out,” Robert Frost wrote. We have walled ourselves in, whether by Arizona’s hand or Washington’s or both. The Supreme Court will tell us if the difference matters. I had thought it did, but by the end of last week’s argument, I was no longer sure. …NYT