Supervisors Should Value Immigrants
The support of three out of the five county supervisors for a congressional proposal to deny citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants raises disturbing questions about the definition of citizenship today.
In their July 1 vote, supervisors justified their actions pointing to the “undeserved” benefits and services provided to these citizens. Their rationale furthers a notion that underlies the abiding anti-immigrant polemic.
Citizenship as it is talked about now has less to do with responsibility and civil conduct based upon mutual respect and personal sacrifices. It is increasingly being defined as a set of benefits to which a citizen is entitled.
This ominous trend has little in common with the reality of immigrants. It seems to have more to do with what is on the minds of those who want them out: “I want what’s mine.”
Immigrants, even undocumented immigrants, continue to demonstrate an instinctive sense of citizenship based on hard work as well as a loyalty to family and community. Those institutions, public, business and voluntary, that have learned to tap this tremendous resource have benefited from all the industry and spirit that the immigrants can produce.
The ongoing research on the Latino immigrant community by David Hayes Bautista from UCLA continues to demonstrate their strong work ethic and the stubborn reluctance of Latinos, young and old, to make use of public benefits. The same can be said for other immigrant communities as well. There exists a preponderance of studies to demonstrate the long-term contributions of immigrants to America’s wealth of resources and imagination.
There are acknowledged imbalances in the national distribution of the fiscal resources generated by immigrants. This should be addressed at the federal level. It is to be hoped that the findings related to this imbalance published in the recent study for the Federal Commission on Immigration will further that discussion. It is also true that young immigrant families are poorer. Raising their children is a costly proposition primarily for the parents, and for society as well. The blind logic that blames young immigrant families, seeing them as a cost rather than as partners in a long-term investment, is brutishly self-destructive.
Assuming that immigrants will go home when the going gets tough is a wrong-headed proposition. Such policies inevitably will inflict more human suffering upon the immigrant families and the communities where they reside. This persistent effort to divide America between “us” and “them” will only contribute to the continual erosion of a sense of community and civic duty in American life.
While many Californians in recent years have gone elsewhere, immigrants continued to invest their labor, imaginations and resources into the local economy. The Wall Street Journal in 1994 informed us that Asian and Latin families topped the list among home buyers in Orange County.
The Latino business community and the Latino consumer market have also grown tremendously despite recessionary times. Latinos continue to have higher than average work force participation in the state. Should these trends continue, the immigrant work force inevitably will support the burgeoning demands of Social Security and medical care as a generation of baby boomers moves into retirement age.
While Latinos have contributed greatly to the industry and power of the California economy, many Latino workers do not receive their fair share. Their sacrifices, in terms of lower compensation, lack of health benefits and unsafe work conditions, count as an unacknowledged subsidy to the recovery.
The current efforts by the United Farm Workers union to organize strawberry workers have brought to the conscience of California this reality. It begs that each citizen be reminded of our civic and moral obligations to one another. We all gain when immigrant families find their way to full participation as citizens. We will weaken our communities and together suffer the consequences if we continue to engineer a shadow society that is denied the fruits of their own desperate labors.
The immigrants and their children will not go back. They will continue to cultivate, manufacture, build, invest and provide the goods and services of California life. Trying to eliminate immigrants, young or old, from a fuller participation in American life will only mean that someone else will profit unfairly from their enduring sacrifices. That will be the consequence, intended or not, of the vote by the three county supervisors.
Citizenship should be more than a bill of goods. It is a social and moral covenant between neighbors. The preoccupation of public officials with the benefits and entitlements of citizenship does not bode well for California. It reduces citizenship from an essential civic virtue to a commodity.
