Immigration...

Representative Steve King is WRONG on immigration!

Recently, Steve King has made the dubious claim that illegal immigrants "kill 25 Americans every single day." Where did he get the statistics that prove his claim? He made it up.

Representative Steve King might not be a racist at heart, but he is certainly a demagogue, and on the issue of immigration Steve King is WRONG for Iowa!

So, despite what Representative Steve King’s own actions might suggest…

Iowans are not stupid. Iowa has one of the best school systems in the nation, and being well educated Iowans can handle complex issues when they’re presented logically and fairly. So why do demagogues like Steve King persist in reducing a complex issue like immigration down to a simplistic caricature? You may recall King’s principal statement on the topic of illegal immigration in May (a statement of which he seems inordinately proud) entitled: “Biting the Hand that Feeds You!” In it, Steve King painted an unrealistic and negatively stereotyped portrait of illegal immigrants as being a group of drug smuggling, drunk driving, disease bringing, line jumping, sexual predators. Steve King even supplied purported “statistics” to support his claims. The problem, however, is that nowhere does he provide any sources for his “statistics.” Moreover, if you contact his Washington office (as I did), the only answer you’ll get is that his evidence purportedly came from “private conversations” with unidentified “persons” at the FBI, the DEA, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving. How convenient! Self-serving “statistics” that exist nowhere in published form, and so can neither be double-checked nor corroborated. Such is the stuff of which irresponsible demagogues like Steve King are made!

Iowans are not bigots. We are a welcoming people who would rather judge a person by their actions than the mere color of their skin. Let’s face facts. Simple common sense should tell us that, with an estimated 20 million illegal immigrants in the United States, the vast majority are peaceful and (with the important exception of having snuck into the country in the first place) law-abiding persons. They want only what our own ancestors before them wanted: the opportunity to provide a better life for themselves and their families! And they are willing to work extremely hard under trying conditions to do so. They willingly harvest the crops in our fields, they stand in blood and muck in our meat processing plants, they wash our dirty dishes in restaurants, and they labor under the hot sun cutting our grass, roofing our homes and constructing our houses and roads. Yes, “real Americans” could do this work as well, but how many of us would willingly accept the same long hours and low wages? The illegal immigrants among us, however, rarely complain. Compared to what they could make doing similar work back home, the rewards for working in the U.S. are so great that few illegal immigrants would risk their good fortune committing the sort of heinous crimes Steve King ascribes to them.

Iowans are not racist. We are not so gullible as to fall for Steve King’s exclusive focus on the U.S./Mexican border and ‘darker-skinned’ Hispanics. We know we share an even longer and much more porous border with Canada, which should also figure into the discussion if, as Steve King asserts, America’s security is our primary goal vis-à-vis immigration. Steve King, if he were fair about this issue, would also mention that Hispanics are not alone among the 20 million illegal immigrants estimated to be in this country. Rather than scare us with images of a dark horde overrunning our southern border, Steve King could just as easily note the thousands of economic migrants from European countries such as Ireland or Eastern Europe who came to the U.S. and have since illegally overstayed their visas. Or Steve King could tackle the “problem” of young Israeli citizens, for whom coming on tourist visas and staying to work in retail sales in countries like the U.S. or Japan is practically a right of passage. Unfortunately, intellectual consistency has never been Steve King’s hallmark.

No, Steve King, ever the well-practiced demagogue, would rather stoke our basest fears with his monochromatic biases, and amuse us building toy border fences on the floor of the House of Representatives (as he did May 22, 2006). Sadly, with such uninformed pronouncements as “Biting the Hand that Feeds You,” Steve King hews closely to a racist trend targeting select out-groups that has marked much of America’s immigration history. Despite what many might think, America’s immigration system has never been truly “fair,” and especially not to people of color.

Sectarian warning Had Steve King done his homework, he would know that entire races were once totally prohibited from entering the United States. Asians, to take but one example, were long targeted for exclusion. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, for instance, was passed in large part to appease whites on the West Coast who feared an influx of Chinese as cheap laborers. Nearly sixty years passed before Congress allowed any Chinese to emigrate to the U.S. again, and then only a handful in 1943 in recognition of China’s status as a valued World War Two ally. Japanese immigration to the U.S. was severely curtailed with the so-called “Gentleman’s Agreement of 1908,” before being totally cut off as a consequence of the blandly named but blatantly racist Immigration Act of 1924, which established immigration quotas based on the recorded populations of various nationalities in America as listed in the 1890 census. 1890 was a date purposely chosen to limit immigration to the so-called “desirable” (read White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) peoples who arrived earliest in our nation’s history, and largely exclude the rest… including, one should note, most Hispanics.

This racist and discriminatory immigration policy remained the law of the land until 1965, when national origin-related quotas were replaced with quotas based on hemispheric caps. Even then, the system was still generally stacked against certain peoples. For example, Western Europe in the late 1960s and 1970s was doing rather well economically; would-be immigrants from Europe were fewer, and applications rarely exceeded the quotas set in 1965. The situation south of our own border, however, was very different. Political turmoil and repression combined with stagnant economies to produce a large pool of potential immigrants to the U.S. that vastly exceeded Latin America’s set quota year after year.

In truth, one might suggest that the situation we face today in regards to illegal immigration can best be explained as pent up demand resulting from the long-standing, racist immigration policies of the past!

Iowans are a hardy, “can-do” people. This is hardly surprising as we can trace Iowa’s origins as a state to the intrepid immigrant farmers who first settled here and literally built the state from the ground up. It takes a very special sort of person to pick up and leave home for a new and uncertain life in a foreign country. Immigrants are the ultimate entrepreneurs, and they possess many of the most desirable qualities associated with entrepreneurship: they are eminently resourceful, bold, brave, hard-working, driven to succeed, and naturally intelligent, to name just a few. Moreover, as a group they generally share personal qualities that Iowans value highly. For instance, they tend to be both family-centered and church-going. This was true of the European immigrants who first homesteaded Iowa in the 19th Century, and it is still true of those immigrants, illegal or not, who’ve made their homes here in more recent decades. Do we really want to risk losing such exceptional talent. Steve King would run that risk gladly, but he would still be wrong.

Moreover, as the Sioux City Journal itself noted on March 20, Iowa by 2012 could have 200,000 more jobs than available workers. That is not a scenario that bodes well for Iowa’s economic health and long-term growth. New workers will need to come from somewhere, and our neighbors to the South seem a likely source. Why, then, would Steve King risk alienating a potential workforce by creating an image of Iowa as hostile to Mexicans and their culture?

Iowans are not a people who casually forget their cultural roots. Entire communities in Iowa trace back to a certain people or nation, and today those roots are still celebrated with pride! Orange City, to take but one example, celebrates its Dutch roots with an annual Tulip Festival. Dutch flags fly over the town, Dutch music is played by local musicians, Dutch cooking is available in the local restaurants, and Dutch dances are performed by Orange City residents dressed in Dutch costume. Yet no one suggests that the people of Orange City are being insufficiently American, or that they are trying to force their Dutch cultural roots down the throats of their fellow citizens. And that is how it should be. A shared connection through being Dutch brought the people of Orange City together and gave them spiritual comfort long ago, and while that bond no longer performs quite the same supportive function today, Orange City’s residents nevertheless honor their common heritage today with their annual festival.

By the same token, we should not fear, or even criticize, occasional displays of Hispanic culture by our newest immigrants. For them, their home culture mediates their entry into American life. As with earlier immigrant groups like the Dutch or Germans (very, very few of whom first arrived in this country speaking decent English), our newer Hispanic immigrants, too, will soon grow confident enough of their place in American society to learn English and slowly dispense with the more obvious, outward trappings of their prior customs and culture. The history of immigration in the United States has demonstrated the same process time and time again: the first generation arrives and, struggling with the new language and culture, clings to the more familiar aspects of their former lives (just note the hundreds of foreign language newspapers published in the U.S. around country at the beginning of the 20th Century, for instance!). The second generation, however, because it is raised in the United States and attends American schools (and is far less set in its ways), quickly embraces everything American, including the language! The members of the second generation desire assimilation, as it helps them bond more closely with their non-immigrant peers. If we should fear anything, then, history teaches us we should fear how quickly our homogenous, corporation-created mass culture overpowers the more unique (and some might say better) characteristics of immigrant cultures!

Iowans give credit where credit is due! In addition to working hard at essential jobs, illegal immigrants contribute to the economic betterment of their communities in other, equally important ways. Millions of undocumented workers pay income taxes, for example, and the social security taxes they also pay (and may ever collect on themselves) are helping keep today’s Social Security system solvent for us all. More importantly, as consumers they pay local sales tax on everything they purchase, which is normally quite a lot as they come here with very little in the first place! Finally, even the large sums of money they remit home every year serve U.S. interests well. Such remittances contribute to social and economic stability back home, and help insure that Mexico and the rest of Latin America not descend into chaos and anarchy. America’s own national security is effectively strengthened when we have peaceful, economically viable neighbors.

We are Iowans. We are an open-hearted, generous people. We want to help those in need. We don’t prejudge others. We don’t build ourselves up by gratuitously putting others down. We do not indulge in ugly stereotypes. We are much better than that.

So, why can’t Representative Steve King better represent Iowa values?