The Rhetoric, Reality of Illegal Immigration

It took two passes to find the building. There once had been a medallion-shaped sign identifying the tiny cinder-block structure as an outpost of the United States Border Patrol. The sign, though, had been removed. This was in the northwest outskirts of town, on a weedy stretch of Golden State Boulevard that included an auto wrecking yard, a school for truck drivers and the future home of a Mexican frozen-food plant.

The Border Patrol field office--base of operations in the vast hothouse that is the central San Joaquin Valley, an agricultural colossus that has come to rely on illegal field hands as much as it does irrigation water--was painted beige, with a faded and cracked green trim.

Metallic windows reflected a freight train as it creaked slowly along the tracks on the other side of the two-lane street, which Fresnans know as “old 99,” the former highway. There was a flagpole out front, but no flag. Gerald Blanks, acting supervisor, led a visitor through a back door, moved to a small conference table and indicated a chair.

“You’ll have to drag it over,” he said.

The wheels had come off.

Perhaps it wasn’t exactly fair to Blanks, dropping in uninvited this way. He was an amiable man, valley-born and raised, dressed in sports shirt, jeans, cowboy belt, soft leather shoes. He did his best to hide a frown when a topic of interest was broached: What did he make of the latest proposal from Washington to consider granting amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants?

“I can’t talk policy,” Blanks said.

Washington, he indicated with a mumble and a shrug, will do what Washington will do. Fair enough. At the age of 55, with more than a quarter of a century with the Border Patrol, Blanks is closing in fast on retirement. What he could talk about, he said, was the role that the Border Patrol has come to play in the valley, a traditional entry point for undocumented Mexican workers in California.

There was a time when the Border Patrol routinely would sweep into the fields and orchards that surround Fresno, rounding up three busloads of undocumented workers every summer day. Those days, however, have gone the way of the short-handled hoe. It’s not for a lack of opportunity. Blanks estimated that 60% or more of the picking crews at work in the valley are undocumented, his former prey.

“But let me tell you something,” Blanks said. “We don’t do a lot of farm and ranch checks anymore. In fact, we do none. More and more, we have gotten away from apprehending the average alien who is up here for work.”

Instead, he and his charges respond mainly to calls from local law enforcement officers who have arrested undocumented immigrants engaged in criminal acts. The Border Patrol agents arrange for deportation at the appropriate time.

“There’s plenty of work,” Blanks said, “to keep us busy.”

Now by “us” Blanks meant only himself and three other agents. The number of Border Patrol agents working the California interior has been reduced significantly; forces have been redeployed to beef up the border. This was another bit of “policy” Blanks was not going to touch.

Fortunately, much of what Blanks might have said in fact did not need to be said. It all seemed so obvious, sitting in that tiny outpost, contemplating the vast gulf of folly that separates immigration rhetoric and immigration reality. Blanks did not need to say that as long as people south of the border can earn here in a day what might take a week or more in Mexico, they will keep coming.

He did not need to run through all those who benefit from this “system.” He did not need to mention the growers, who complain habitually about labor shortages. He did not need to mention the smugglers and forgers and labor contractors, all of whom do quite well servicing--”exploiting” is perhaps a more apt term--the undocumented workers. He did not need to talk about consumers, who surely don’t complain about produce prices that never seem to rise.

Nor did he need to spell out how “policy” has changed the game, made it rougher. Throw up a big fence at the border, funnel undocumented immigrants into desert badlands and mountain passes, and it’s possible to keep some of the weaker ones out--but not so many that the peaches won’t get picked. He did not need to explain how amnesty programs--the one in 1986 that brought 3 million people out of the shadows and the proposal floated as a trial balloon by the Bush administration this week--send a clear message south. Make it north, and there will be work; do the work, tolerate the exploitation, and there will be no trouble. Best of all, keep your pay stubs as proof of residence, for someday there might be another round of amnesty and you will be made legal.

During the dreary debate over Proposition 187, a measure designed to turn schoolteachers and doctors into immigration police, proponents unceasingly offered up a simplistic yet powerful line of attack: What is it about “illegal,” they would ask critics, you don’t understand? Well, maybe the answer is this: What is illegal today might well be legal tomorrow.

Immigration programs and tactics shift, and so do the rules. What does not change is the fact that there is work to be done in the fields, and that the only people who seem to want to do it come from the south, driven from their homes by poverty and also by dreams common to us all. They are not invaders, as the anti-immigrant rhetoric would have it. They are, in effect, invited. It’s almost as if it was, in a word, policy.