welcome our Mexican neighbors to come and go with the ease of Canadian travelers to this country, and finally put an end to a sordid and shameful chapter in our national history. Not only is such a change in policy the proper moral and logical course of action for us to take, there will be no negative effects to the lives of most Americans.
The current border, from its Berlin Wall-like ghastliness against cities such as Tijuana, to the equally harsh deserts to the east, doesn’t keep Mexicans from coming north and working here illegally. The heavily armed Border Patrol, equipped with the latest hi-tech magic, can’t stop this surge of money-motivated migration. We all know that. Just look in the kitchen of your favorite restaurant, or along the roadside at one of the ad hoc hiring stations where desperate manual laborers congregate around all over the United States. Mexican workers are everywhere north of the border, especially in California. The only Mexicans who choose to come north illegally and don’t are the unlucky who get caught. And many of them just try again moments after they are deported.
Since the passage of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, the U.S. Border Patrol has grown into the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, with nearly ten thousand officers. Nonetheless, our southern border remains porous.
A friend of mine who works in gardens and construction in Marin County commutes—illegally—from his home in Sinaloa. He’s practiced at the journey, telling me jumping the border at Nogales, hitchhiking up to Tucson, and grabbing a Southwest flight to Oakland is just a necessary part of his work routine. Another friend simply walked into the United States past overworked border guards at a bridge between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso. Once on the U.S. side, she piled her hair up high on her head, made up her face, and with her short shorts and entitled attitude, she sashayed to the airport for a flight further north, sure no one would mistake her for a desperate Mexican peasant. She was right, and she’s lived in rural California ever since, raising a family of U.S.-born children.
I have traveled the artificial line between our two countries with Border Patrol officers, and many have acknowledged that they cannot keep determined Mexicans from crossing north.
It’s time to try a new approach.
Let’s begin by opening the border to all Mexicans who wish to travel north. Supporters of guns, guards and fences argue that if the border were open, the United States would be smothered by Mexicans escaping their poverty-stricken homeland. Yet there is no restriction on immigrants coming to California from Mississippi or West Virginia, and California is not inundated with a parade of workers from those poorer states. They cannot afford to live here without working and they apparently don’t want the jobs that are available. As long as those agriculture, construction, restaurant and other positions are vacant, workers will come north. But that’s good. We need the help. Our economy depends on its Mexican work force. Economically driven immigration ultimately is self-regulating. When and if enough migrants fill the jobs U.S. citizens refuse to take, there will be little motivation for Mexicans to leave home. There is no restriction on the movement of labor within the European Community. When the German economy was humming, the Portuguese, for example, moved north to better paying jobs from Stuttgart to Berlin. When stagnating growth then created high unemployment in Germany, the Portuguese went home or sought jobs elsewhere.
Critics argue that unrestricted traffic north from Mexico will result in increased demands on schools, health care and welfare. But that’s also a fatuous worry. Few workers from Mexico who do not qualify legally for such benefits attempt to secure the services. They are afraid of being caught. And if a worker earns a living up here and does qualify for benefits, it does our social services systems no harm for them to collect.
Historically there is no basis for keeping Mexicans south of the frontier. Aside from the fact that much of the West was once half of their country, there were no restrictions on the movement of Mexicans back and forth across the current border until relatively recently. Controls were first placed at the border in the late nineteenth century to keep out Europeans and Asians who were denied legal access to the United States. Well into the twentieth century Mexicans continued to enjoy free passage back and forth from their country to ours. U.S. authorities found that most of these border crossers traveled for work and they were treated as commuters.
Restrictions began to be enforced during the Mexican revolution when Mexicans were forced to pass a literacy test and pay a one-time eight-dollar fee to cross legally into the United States.
Today Mexicans are treated as a threat, and futile attempts continue to keep them on their side of the line. Some proponents of a closed border fear problems associated with over population. Others worry that an open border will encourage employers to pay even less for entry-level jobs because of a growing and anxious labor pool.
Perhaps these concerns could be rationalized if our border controls worked. But in addition to the fact that most any determined Mexican eventually can get north and find a job, the borderlands have become a tragic gauntlet for them to run. Violent robbers, cheating coyotes, murderous desert heat, and cruel vigilantes all compete to victimize those crossing the border illegally. For many, the border patrol is the least of their problems and its officers may end up providing life-saving rescue from the other threats.
Yet despite these miserable conditions, a Mexican who really want to come north, comes north. Most just want to come work, make some money, and go home. After the Berlin Wall fell back in 1989, there was an initial rush of East Germans west. Then they went home. They did not enjoy the West German culture, they missed their families and friends. They went home.
So let’s stop this deadly nonsense—at least as a test—and replace the failed barrier we’ve erected with a banner reading Bienvenidos. Let’s make it as easy for a Mexican to come north as it is for a Canadian to come south. (July 12, 2001: A22)
Timing is critical. Shortly after my call to open the border was published in the Chronicle, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked. Immediately following those tragedies there were few takers for the idea of opening the southern frontier to Mexicans. But as the years pass since the 9/11 events, the validity of eliminating the futile attempts at keeping Mexicans out of the United States only seems greater. Not only would such free passage for Mexicans end a deadly charade along the borderline, it would make it much easier for the United States to secure its southern border against aliens who are real threats to its security.
Consider these points. The current border policy is a fraud. Mexicans come north despite U.S. law restricting their migration, despite the stretches of ludicrously expensive, Trump-promoted wall built after he became president. The U.S. government spends further enormous amounts of money and human resources chasing millions of Mexicans already in the United States. If these migrants crossed into the United States in an orderly fashion, unafraid of deportation, the numbers of people trying to cross into the United States illegally would be dramatically reduced. The Border Patrol would be in a much better position to apprehend those undocumented OTMs (other than Mexicans, to use the Border Patrol’s parlance) who may pose a much greater potential threat to national security than do most Mexicans who eventually get across to the other side despite efforts to keep them out. Fringe benefits to such a policy would include a radical drop in the abuse of Mexican labor by U.S. employers. They could no longer easily take advantage of Mexican workers afraid to stand up for a fair wage and decent working conditions. Predatory coyotes would be out of business.
The best arguments for eliminating attempts to control Mexican migration are that such a policy is counterproductive to attempt and impossible to achieve. Instead, open the border to Mexicans. These neighbors are coming north despite U.S. laws. Open the border to Mexican workers so that the bad guys cannot hide in their shadows as they sneak across the border. Open the border to Mexicans the United States wants and needs, and then the Border Patrol can direct its vast resources against OTMs trying to break into the United States—the ones in the tunnels, those running across the
