Sympathy in Short Supply for Border-Crossers

Two weeks ago, I wrote about a case of extreme cruelty at the border: the coldblooded killing of an undocumented Mexican who asked an elderly couple for water and took a bullet instead.

The story out of Texas was shocking. So was the response from many readers. I expect occasional hate mail. This time, I hit a fault line of bad feelings, and got a seismic jolt of contempt for Mexico and its people.

“Darwin’s theory of natural selection is the force behind the illegal aliens dying on their trek to the streets paved with gold,” one woman wrote. “The dumbest of the dumb decide to cross scorching deserts and endure freezing cold because they don’t have enough intelligence to find a job in Mexico. They do the world a favor when they take themselves out of the gene pool. They deserve a thank you . . . [for] dying without reproducing a dozen kids as dumb as they are.”

This modern-day Dr. Mengele went on to recommend my repatriation, echoing a chorus from the go-back-to-Mexico crowd.

Even more liberal readers balked at liberalizing border policies that force immigrants to make ever more risky crossings. Compassion has its limits, they argued.

Nobody can condone shooting migrants. Sure, everybody has the right to work. But not everyone can come here. We’ve got our own troubles and mouths to feed.

Besides, critics said, America isn’t to blame for conditions south of the border. The faults are corruption and injustice in Mexico itself, and Mexicans’ perceived failure to change their own conditions.

“These people are cowards!” declared a Mission Viejo man. “Why don’t they risk their lives trying to build Mexico . . . and create the life they want in Mexico? I’ll tell you why: because they see the ‘easy life’ in the U.S. It’s easier to run away from their problems than it is to stay put and solve them.”

Easy? Only those unfamiliar with migrant travails could say that. Only someone unaware of history and current events could claim Mexicans haven’t confronted their own problems and tried to change their political system.

This year’s election of President Vicente Fox is the culmination of popular opposition in Mexico that goes as far back as the 1968 massacre at Tlatelolco, when soldiers opened fire on protesters on the eve of the Mexico City Olympics. The massacre at Tiananmen Square is better known because it has that anti-Communist patina that dazzles the U.S. press.

Several readers misunderstood when I warned that poverty makes “paupers storm the turrets.” They took it as a threat against U.S. sovereignty. What I fear most are the consequences of worsening poverty in poor countries like Mexico.

Call it the greed gap. Pope John Paul II has been so concerned about growing global inequalities, and their potential for creating worldwide social unrest, that in 1998 he assigned a permanent liaison to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But you don’t need to be Catholic to understand what the Vatican is trying to tell us.

Upheavals between haves and have-nots produce tsunamis of immigration, as we saw after the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Los Angeles and Miami are teeming with children of those rebellions.

Some say we should encourage revolt in Mexico by sealing the border, thus depriving our neighbor of its so-called economic safety valve. As one put it: “What would happen if all the immigrants coming North were forced to stay in Mexico? Revolution, change, rebirth!!!”

And even more refugees.

Such militancy blinds critics to the web of relationships that keeps our two countries connected in healthy ways. We should think of the border as a fulcrum rather than a barrier, a line where forces are seeking balance in a new world economy. Instead, critics say it’s fine for U.S. companies to move to Mexico for cheap labor. Just don’t let in those laborers where we can see them.

We like profits crossing the border, not people.

Readers expressed outrage that undocumented Mexicans don’t respect U.S. laws. But how could they? We make it a cat-and-mouse game, albeit a deadly one. We make it hard for people to get across, we act as if we don’t want them, we call them criminals. Then we reward them with work if they make it!

To Mexicans, the game is all too familiar. They come from a country where rules are one thing, reality another. So they feel right at home in an economic scheme that rewards their efforts to get around the law.

Tear down this wall of hypocrisy that makes only aliens illegal, not their employers. That’s what I meant. Don’t abolish the border. Abolish the border mentality.

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com