Reforms should toss bad apples, keep the good

Published 12:01 am Sunday, February 13, 2011

OXFORD — “The Real McCoys” had Pepino as their farmhand. Adam, Hoss and Little Joe ate grub prepared in the Ponderosa kitchen by Hop Sing.

Immigration is not a new topic or phenomenon in America. Capitalism rests on the market principle of getting the best value for the lowest cost. It’s why a little old lady in Lucedale hires Felipe to prune her roses instead of hiring Phillip. Felipe will do the job well and charge less.

Academics refer to this as exploitation and to some degree it is. But it’s also at the root of what has driven the American experience, creating the most vibrant and innovative culture in the history of the world.

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Two more notes. (1) Remember that it’s flattering to live in a place where people from other places want to live and work. Even in 2011, billions of people live in economies and under governments they’d like to escape. (2) Race is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Immigrants from European areas and even from Africa can’t be distinguished by the majority of American citizens until they speak with an accent. Not so with immigrants who are Hispanic or Asian.

There are forces in the Mississippi Legislature who want to follow the lead of Arizona and take a meat ax approach to immigration.

This is reactionary and wrong — but understandable and popular for many reasons.

One is that federal lawmakers have failed to do their duty. To use a worn-out phrase, Congress has kicked the can of immigration reform down the road so many times that it doesn’t even look like a can anymore. The miasma of immigration law on the books might as well be in hieroglyphics. Even if people knew what it said, it wouldn’t matter because enforcement is so sporadic that it’s meaningless.

National security is another basis for the move to have local law enforcement officers become involved with citizenship checks. In the age of terrorism, porous borders ratchet up the fear factor in our daily lives. We’d just feel better if we thought it was more challenging for jihadists to set up camp here.

But the most compelling argument for state action is the economic injustice growing day by day.

Pepino and Hop Sing were TV characters. They were, however, among millions upon millions of racially identifiable “others” who didn’t come here on the Mayflower, but on a bold quest to achieve the American dream of self-determination through hard work. These people merely want to be in a place where individual initiative matters.

The real economic injustice occurs when opportunists come with them. Along with those who want to earn are those who want to take.

A three-year-old study indicates global grifters are not really a financial burden in Mississippi. That may be because Mississippi’s entitlements are the nation’s least generous.

Compare that to a venue such as California with liberal medical, food, housing, unemployment and myriad other programs — and annual deficits and a long-term debt load of $85 billion. For local governments to take money from the private economy and turn it over to nonproductive noncitizens might be OK as long as the burden was small. Numbers, however, indicate this is no longer the situation.

Immigration really isn’t something the Mississippi Legislature would be tempted to consider if Congress did what it’s supposed to do. And Congress would serve the nation best if it devised a way to rein in the freeloading. It wouldn’t be easy, but the logic is sound. Workers come where there is opportunity to work. Freeloaders go where the pickings are easy. Congress needs to recognize that, deal with it — and Americans will go along.

We need thoughtful solutions, not immigrant bashing or the endless parsing over “legal immigrants” vs. “illegal immigrants” when existing law is in such utter disarray.

Think about Dr. Peter Rhee, the retired Navy captain whose trauma skills were instrumental in keeping U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords alive after the Arizona Democrat was shot through the head. He was born in Seoul, South Korea.

Suppose he ran a stop sign that day on the way to the hospital. And suppose Arizona authorities pulled him over and followed their state mandate to make him prove his citizenship.

Immigration reform? Yes.

But spare us the rhetoric. And the meat ax.

Charlie Mitchell is a Mississippi journalist. Write to him at Box 1, University, MS 38677, or e-mail cmitchell43@yahoo.com.