Mexico-Bashing: A Case Where Words Can Hurt : Immigration: Take care, Gov. Wilson, that your rhetoric doesn’t inspire hate crimes.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s call for harsh measures against Mexican immigrants stops short of asking for ethnic cleansing. It is very unfortunate for two nations that have to live together to see a politician appealing to the xenophobic sentiments that cyclically emerge during economic crises.

As a sociologist trained in the United States, I am afraid of the repetition of a pattern: The anti-Mexican rhetoric is raised by a public figure of authority, and soon somebody finds justification in this for taking matters in his own hands and punishing the “enemy.” To cite just one recent case: In 1988, Kenneth Alexander Kovezelove, then 19, killed two Mexican migrant workers, Hilario Salgado Castaneda, 22, and Matilde de la Sancha, 18, in San Diego’s North County. At the sentencing (50 years in prison), Judge William D. Mudd said to Kovezelove: “You are a cold-blooded murderer. There is no other way to put it. . . . These were not crimes of passion but crimes of racial hatred.” If such a terrible crime happens again, Wilson will have it on his conscience.

Wilson knows very well the positive contributions of immigrants to his state’s economy. Why is he now demonizing this group? One might say that for some political objectives, reality does not count; what counts are perceptions. For growing numbers of people in California, the pressures of a complex economic situation make them ready to believe that foreigners are to blame--particularly if a legitimate authority figure tells them so. It is part of human nature to find it easier to place blame than to look for a solution that requires an honest search for the truth.

The truth of Mexican undocumented immigration is that it is the result of old processes of economic interaction. There is a demand in the United States for cheap labor, and there is a supply of such labor in Mexico. To Mexican immigrant workers, their earnings are as legitimate as the profits made by their employers, who hire them to survive in business.

Wilson knows this. He also knows that the presidential administration of his own party refused to include labor migration as something to be negotiated in the North American Free Trade Agreement. Indeed, a separate, bilateral treaty is the only way to manage this century-old problem. One would expect the California governor to press for this rational solution. Instead, he is demanding that his President, of the opposition party, treat Mexican citizens as enemies of the United States. This is not only morally wrong; it is politically stupid. The real problem for Wilson, if he sees his reelection in danger because of the worst budget crisis in his state’s history, is that the President refuses (as his predecessor also did) to share some of the costs that California incurred from immigration that was covered by a federal amnesty. Wilson’s argument is with Washington, not Mexico.

We are not your enemy, Mr. Governor. We represent something as difficult to change as geography: We are your neighbors.