Editor,
Hopefully, columnist Steve Painter was making a joke with his proposals in Tuesday's Daily Lobo. To enforce illegal immigration laws on the Mexican border with bullets, as he suggested, brings to mind the razor wire and guard towers that once surrounded East Berlin. As a child of the Cold War, I pray that our country will never resemble that which so many fought so long to overcome.
And criminals as forced labor to replace low-income immigrants? Do you really want criminals preparing your or your children's meals? Do you want forced labor to build your office or your car? You may argue that illegal immigrants are technically criminals, but anyone who equates an illegal immigrant with a thief, sexual predator or murderer has problems much deeper than the immigration situation.
The problem with immigration is not the border. The problem is the modern American lifestyle. People stream across the border because there are jobs available, jobs which U.S.-born Americans are unwilling to do at the wages offered. Immigrants are willing to accept the standard of living that accompanies minimum wage jobs and worse, and the strain of having to hold down multiple jobs to support their families, both here and in their countries of origin. They don't complain of being nickel-and-dimed by corporations, instead sacrificing their personal desires to meet the needs of their families. Although they do not have the time or money for the same leisure activities and lifestyle that U.S.-born Americans refuse to give up, they replace it with hope for the future.
This is not a new situation. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, immigrants flooded this country, primarily from Europe and Asia. So many Irish came here during the famines in Ireland that the U.S. now boasts more people of Irish descent than there are citizens in Ireland. The debate over immigration is as old as this country, and the complicated immigration process we have today is a result of protectionist legislation from early in the last century.
By eliminating the open door of such places as Ellis Island, it was hoped that immigration would be stemmed, and the pollution of American culture and population would be stopped. But where was the threat? Immigrants who were accused of not assimilating had children that grew up to be what has been called the greatest generation, which fought World War II.
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When my great-grandmother got off the boat from Russia in 1917, she had nothing. Her flight from the horrors of the revolution took her to the farms of the Midwest, where she performed many of the same labors that illegal immigrants perform today. Her many years of toil and sacrifice gave my family the opportunities that allowed it to prosper. Her efforts gave me the ability today to go to college and play Nintendo. All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.
Jonathan Strawn
UNM student
