2008 Woodie Awards
Another point of view on immigration
Issue date: 2/12/08 Section: Letters to the Editor
Dear Editor,
Katrina Cockerill's recent opinion piece, "The high cost of cheap labor" [Feb. 5], raised a number of issues that deserve further exploration. Immigration is a red-hot topic, fueled in part by a primary election that demands of its participants the adoption and espousal of highly polarized positions. I find it especially fascinating to watch the debate between the Republican contenders, who seem desperate to prove their conservative credentials by demanding a taller, longer fence and repudiating any notion of a reasonable path towards citizenship. It would appear that Cockerill has fallen prey to their demagoguery, forsaken fact, and embraced a fear-mongering approach with little more than anecdotal support.
I had a professor who would remind my class on a regular basis that there are no simple answers to complex situations. We live in a culture that celebrates bumper sticker sloganeering, but I would hope that a university environment might nurture a deeper and more honest examination of the most pressing issues of our day. For instance, the use of the term "illegal alien" is a terrific tool in the hands of propagandists intent on dehumanizing a convenient group of scapegoats, but its use manages to accomplish little else. I would ask those of you who use and defend this term to find and define the criminality in question. Good luck, because you will not find unauthorized border crossings in the criminal code.
I wonder if Cockerill has given any consideration to the reasons for the mass migration of people from Latin America. Mexico certainly has a long history of economic difficulties, but American policy has further worsened the crisis. NAFTA has resulted in well over a million farmers in Mexico being pushed off their land as we flooded their country with cheap (tax-payer subsidized) corn. I recently read an article about farm laborers who were employed by strawberry growers near Watsonville. To a person, they wanted to be back in Mexico, with their families and in their homes - but doing so would mean that they couldn't feed their children. They came to the United States for survival, not to raid our national treasury or steal our jobs.
Perhaps what I find most disturbing about Cockerill's piece is the suggestion that she will be competing against unauthorized migrants for work once she graduates. It harkens back to a darker time in our Nation's history, when spreading fear and hate about immigrants was socially acceptable. The migrant workforce that we are discussing is largely employed in the agricultural, building and hospitality sectors, in jobs that even Cockerill admits are low on the wage scale and can result in "mistreatment and abuse". I hardly think a graduating SSU student aspires to such deplorable conditions.
As Americans, we should be willing to fund real solutions such as sustainable economic development in Mexico. The Republican fence and Cockerill's stepped up border enforcement are stopgap measures which neither address the real problem, nor represent what is best and most honorable about our country.
~Patrick Eidman
Katrina Cockerill's recent opinion piece, "The high cost of cheap labor" [Feb. 5], raised a number of issues that deserve further exploration. Immigration is a red-hot topic, fueled in part by a primary election that demands of its participants the adoption and espousal of highly polarized positions. I find it especially fascinating to watch the debate between the Republican contenders, who seem desperate to prove their conservative credentials by demanding a taller, longer fence and repudiating any notion of a reasonable path towards citizenship. It would appear that Cockerill has fallen prey to their demagoguery, forsaken fact, and embraced a fear-mongering approach with little more than anecdotal support.
I had a professor who would remind my class on a regular basis that there are no simple answers to complex situations. We live in a culture that celebrates bumper sticker sloganeering, but I would hope that a university environment might nurture a deeper and more honest examination of the most pressing issues of our day. For instance, the use of the term "illegal alien" is a terrific tool in the hands of propagandists intent on dehumanizing a convenient group of scapegoats, but its use manages to accomplish little else. I would ask those of you who use and defend this term to find and define the criminality in question. Good luck, because you will not find unauthorized border crossings in the criminal code.
I wonder if Cockerill has given any consideration to the reasons for the mass migration of people from Latin America. Mexico certainly has a long history of economic difficulties, but American policy has further worsened the crisis. NAFTA has resulted in well over a million farmers in Mexico being pushed off their land as we flooded their country with cheap (tax-payer subsidized) corn. I recently read an article about farm laborers who were employed by strawberry growers near Watsonville. To a person, they wanted to be back in Mexico, with their families and in their homes - but doing so would mean that they couldn't feed their children. They came to the United States for survival, not to raid our national treasury or steal our jobs.
Perhaps what I find most disturbing about Cockerill's piece is the suggestion that she will be competing against unauthorized migrants for work once she graduates. It harkens back to a darker time in our Nation's history, when spreading fear and hate about immigrants was socially acceptable. The migrant workforce that we are discussing is largely employed in the agricultural, building and hospitality sectors, in jobs that even Cockerill admits are low on the wage scale and can result in "mistreatment and abuse". I hardly think a graduating SSU student aspires to such deplorable conditions.
As Americans, we should be willing to fund real solutions such as sustainable economic development in Mexico. The Republican fence and Cockerill's stepped up border enforcement are stopgap measures which neither address the real problem, nor represent what is best and most honorable about our country.
~Patrick Eidman