I’m flattered that you used my previous letter as a foil for your July 6 editorial but I demur regarding your conclusion.
Obviously, we have a strong difference of opinion as to what US policy on illegal immigration should be, but it’s a difference of opinion. As such, your jibes such as, “the Tea Party crowd … hiding behind the mask of patriotism,” “vile and mean spirited,” and “un-American” etc. are, to say the least, patronizing and unbecoming.
However for sake of argument, let’s assume that the home economic condition of these illegals is our problem. Why stop there? What about the the treatment of women in the Arab world? Or the chronic problems of disease and famine in Central Africa? How about the issue of discrimination and worse, against cultural and religious minorities in Burma, China and Malaysia? Man’s inhumanity to man is boundless and fertile ground for those whose calling is saving souls but shallow political hustlers are the last people in the world we need meddling in affairs like these.
So I repeat, these matters are neither our problem nor concern, despite the well meaning sentimentality of Emma Lazarus. To assert otherwise, is an absurd piety predictable of the mentality of those whose lives are compulsively driven by the need to forever mind other people’s business.
The core problem for these impoverished immigrants is simple. Rather that being seduced to come here by their oligarchs, they should be raising bloody hell in the countries of their birth. A case in point is Mexico which had the first great Marxist upheaval in 1910-16, not Russia, and at the end of the day, nothing changed fundamentally. They simply replaced Madero, Huerta and Carranza with Calderon, Fox and Zedillo.
Finally, the canard that w/o these immigrants, our fruit and vegetables would rot on the vine is embarrassing economic illiteracy. Our pre-Civil War cotton industry was land, water and labor intensive to the detriment of the entire South.That war forced mechanization which saved the industry, allowing it to compete with far cheaper cotton from East Bengal, which then supplied Britain’s textile mills. So too with fruits and vegetables.
Hordes of manual labor simply delay the inevitable mechanization of this industry and keep prices higher than they would otherwise be. As a factor of production, capital is virtually always more efficient than labor.
Peace.
Tom Coffey
Herricks
