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Getting fat and happy, eating the country's border

In south India we have a common saying in my native Tamil language, which roughly translates to "He's the kind of brahmannan (brahmin) who even as he's saying, "no, no" is busily eating the savories he is served."

A fixture at weddings, such brahmins serve the role of holy men. They often hail from poor families and gorge themselves on free meals. This contrary behavior is often acted out with one hand covering the food (to express satiation) and the other hand waving in the offering onto the banana leaf, used instead of a plate.

In the US, we're all wedding-brahmins, and we're being served by workers who are here illegally. While we proclaim our righteousness in being law-abiding citizens, we're asking to be served. We lust after low prices whether in grocery stores, restaurants or when hiring a crew to remodel our homes. At the same time we turn a blind eye to all the illegal workers working behind the scenes.

In towns across the U.S., these workers are lending a hand keeping the national economic engine humming. They make up as much as 1 in every 20 workers. Because the market for these workers is unregulated, they work cheap and hard. Naturally, this does not sit well with those of us who do manual labor. Our livelihoods are at stake, undercut in wages and by the work ethic of illegal workers desperate for work.

You could say, that as a people, we're divided like the wedding-brahmin's hand, one hand covering up the US-Mexico border, the other waving the illegal workers in. This conflict is not new -- two decades back, President Reagan signed a law which granted amnesty. And yet, we pretend it is, and fret that something must be done.

If 1 of every 20 workers in this country is here illegally, there are only 2 possible conclusions one can draw. One, that this is a terribly hard law to enforce, or two, that this is "soft" law, a law that is deliberately lightly enforced, like the law on highway speed limits.

Considering that less than 10 employers were sanctioned last year for hiring illegal workers, it is hard to make the case that this is a tough law to enforce. Workers are here illegally primarily to find work. If that work is denied them, they will not come. Considering that we regulate all kinds of workplace laws, it is hard to believe that we can't regulate the hiring of illegal workers.

So, the only conclusion we're left with is that we've treated illegal immigration as a soft law. Catch an occasional law-breaker and let the others go. Like catching the more egregious speeder on a highway and ignoring the others.

Now, Congress is considering laws to penalize those workers who are here illegally. Close up the border, catch and ship those that are here back to their native countries. It is an election year, votes are at stake, and posturing for constituents is what passes off for an honest day's work in Washington.

As for the rest of us, in our partisan winner-take-all mentality, we've never had an honest discussion on illegal immigration. In a society which views tension and conflict as the natural way to solve problems, arguments are dominated by those on opposite and unrealistic ends of this issue (distinct from Left vs Right or Democrat vs Republican).

On one side, we have the "enforcers" the modern-day Minutemen and the anti-amnesty groups, claiming that any allowance would only create incentives for more illegal immigrants (let's take this argument at face-value and ignore racists fronting this). On the other side, we have "sympathizers," citing the harsh conditions in the homelands of the illegal workers as if this is the best argument we have to oppose the enforcers' viewpoint.

To the enforcers, I would ask, "what if one day without notice, the police in every state, actually decided to enforce the speed limit and hand out tickets to every speeder whether they were driving at 66 mph or 80 mph in a 65 mph zone?" Having let in illegal workers with a wink and a nod, and having depended on their travails for all these years, is it fair to suddenly make them criminals? Also, the reality is that enforcement without some kind of an allowance for businesses won't get through our Abramoff-greased Congress. Not to mention that no one wants an economic collapse.

To the sympathizers, I would ask, "if harsh conditions in their home countries are what should motivate an invitation to people to work here, should we not invite the poorest citizens in the world?" I would suggest that there are better, more formal ways of helping poorer countries than encouraging their citizens and their U.S. employers to break laws.

When I visit Chennai in India, I am always asked by the three-wheeled auto-rickshaw drivers for more money than the meter shows. I can invoke class differences (the comparatively wealthy non-resident Indian vs the poor Indian auto-richshaw driver) to justify paying him what he's asking for, or I can show my compassion in other ways by contributing to local charities and simply discouraging such gouging. In the past, I would choose the former approach to avoid confrontation, but now, I think that I was only being selfish. I've decided it is better to be straight and refuse to submit to such unlawful gouging even if it is a more difficult approach to take. It is really not a monetary issue, but a moral one.

Breaking laws creates ethical tensions in us. Ultimately, it hurts the law-breakers the most. And so, claiming to help those illegal workers by allowing them to cross borders illegally is really asking them to risk their lives and rationalize their moralities.

Ultimately, illegal immigration, I would pose, is an easy problem to solve. Decide on 3 dates, an amnesty-date in the past, and an enforcement-date and a review-date in the future.

Provide amnesty and work permits to all workers (and their families) who had entered prior to the amnesty-date and can show proof that they had worked. Penalize every employer who hires illegal workers after the enforcement-date. Lastly, examine the effects of this law on review-date. If at that time, it is deemed that more workers are needed, channels already exist for granting temporary worker visas or permanent visas. Use those channels to increase or decrease the number of visas.

What stands in the way of imposing a solution is the wedding-brahmin in us, being righteous about the law at the same time as being seduced by low, low prices.

Sri Subramanian
March 29, 2006