The actions of Minutemen should ‘concern us all’
By Avila Lowrance
» More from Avila Lowrance
12:01 a.m. PT May 9, 2008
The front page headlines of the Union announced Wednesday, April 30, that the co-founder of the Minutemen, Chris Simcox, will soon address Nevada County on illegal immigration. We will be informed that illegal immigration is “crippling the economic future of California” and that we must “turn off the immigrant magnet.”
The Minutemen, a Right-wing reactionary group, has long been associated with racism and extremism. We should all take a close look at this organization that will be “touring” our county and promoting fear of immigrants.
Millions of people have come to his country to work, not to break the law or to do harm. Yet the federal government is attempting to make it a criminal act to hold a job if you are an undocumented immigrant. Criminalizing immigrants rather than understanding the causes of immigration is a simplistic approach that won’t work. However, what it will do is further encourage paramilitary groups like the Minutemen to operate of their own accord, without oversight. That should concern us all.
There are 12 million people living in the U.S. without legal immigration status. If employers are required to fire workers who can’t produce a valid social security card, many industries and businesses will be brought to a standstill. Because of all of the inaccuracies in the Social Security database, citizens and legal visa holders can easily be swept up and become “criminals.”
Workers who use another number do no harm, and never collect the contributions they pay into the social security system. Yet when they are arrested and deported in workplace raids, they are often charged with the additional crime of identity theft for using a number not their own.
Those who favor criminalizing immigrants argue that if people cannot legally work, they will leave. But undocumented people are part of the communities they live in.
They seek the same goals of equality and opportunity that everyone else in our country believes in - goals that draw immigrants from all over the world and make it the famous historical melting pot.
Trying to push people out who have come here for survival will not work and never has worked. But it most certainly makes undocumented workers more vulnerable, and unscrupulous employers wait to use that vulernability to deny basic workers’ rights.
For most immigrants, there are no jobs to return to in the countries from which they come. American corporations are swallowing up locally owned businesses in Mexico. Costco has cornered the market on tortillas. Wages paid to workers stay in Mexico, true, but corporate profits return to corporations in the U.S.
When Congress passed NAFTA, six million displaced people came to the United States from Mexico because NAFTA made the price of corn so low that Mexican farmers could no longer economically plant corn crops.
Most Mexicans come to this country to work because there is no alternative.
In the book “Illegal People - How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants,” to be published in September, author David Bacon says, “If Congress stops passing new free trade agreements, and instead faces the damage NAFTA and other pro-corporate measures are doing in Mexico, the poverty and desperation that fuel migration can eventually be reversed.”
There are 2,000 Mexicans living in Nevada County according to a recent church survey. Mexican people in this county work mostly in the service industries, landscaping, construction, vineyards, nursing homes. Most of them hold two jobs to support their families. A large number study English in their almost non-existent spare time, and almost all are hard-working, contributing members of society. Very few are ever implicated in criminal activity.
I am proud that such kind, honest and industrious people are finding a home here and are contributing to the rich fabric of our county.
The next time I find myself waiting in line in the supermarket beside a person from Mexico, I hope I will have a chance to tell him that many of us welcome him and his family to Nevada County. And I will say it in English. I’m pretty sure he’ll understand.
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Avila Lowrance lives and works in Nevada County
