Injustice

I never thought much about illegal immigrants or the U.S.'s immigration laws until I lived in Mexico. There I shared an apartment with a woman who had made a documentary on the importance of illegal immigrants to the growth of Austin, Texas. I also had many conversations with Mexicans and other foreigners about immigration. Trouble is, I still don't know where I stand.

Part of me believes that we should allow more foreigners to come to our country legally. Many are working here already in bad situations and for ridiculously low pay. Sometimes these workers don't get paid at all, but they can't do anything about it because ratting out their employers would probably end in the workers' deportation. Making these foreigners legal would probably help the government to find and fix non-law-abiding businesses. Other benefits would come from the legalization of these people. They would, hopefully, earn better wages and work more humane hours. Their children would legally be allowed to go to public school. I believe these things make for less crime and better neighborhoods.

The other part of me believes that making U.S. immigration laws more lax could be detrimental. After all, who decides which immigrants are allowed in? There are people from all over the world who want to live in the U.S. Allowing everyone who wanted to come and work into the country would probably increase the demand for jobs and housing so much that wages would drop as low as possible while housing prices would soar. This could lead to unemployment and homelessness, not to mention even more overcrowding in public schools.

I know my above discussion is simplistic and not based on any real facts. Immigration is a serious problem and there is probably no good solution to it. I wrote this post because I just read an article in The New York Times entitled, Cleaner at Wal-Mart Tells of Few Breaks and Low Pay. The article comes two days after an enormous raid on Wal-Mart identified 250 janitors as illegal immigrants. Wal-Mart's corporate office claims it didn't know that many of its janitors, most of whom work for contractors and not Wal-Mart itself, were illegal. Yeah right. People at Wal-Mart must have known. As Mr. Zavala says, "Deep in their minds, of course the store managers knew it. The other guys from the crew didn't speak one word of English. Of course they knew it, but if you asked them, they'll say `we thought they were citizens or residents.' " The part of the article that really rattled me was this:

Mr. Zavala said the contractor that he and Eunice, his wife, worked for paid them $400 a week each for working 56 hours. That would come to $6.25 an hour if time and a half overtime is included for all hours worked in excess of 40.

"We don't know nothing about days off," said Mr. Zavala, whose hometown is Mexico City. "We don't know nothing about nights off, we don't know health insurance, we don't know life insurance, and we don't know anything about 401(k) plans."

He said that when he was arrested and taken to a detention center in Newark, immigration officials mocked him for taking a job that paid so little in a state where rents and living expenses are so high. He said that in his 16 months as a cleaner at Wal-Mart, he was given only two nights off.

What the hell were immigration officials mocking him for? Mr. Zavala's story sounds like a classic illegal immigrant story to me. He and his wife are working their butts off to support their family (they have three children), and they don't exactly have many options when it comes to work. Immigration officials mocking illegal immigrants serves no purpose. Officials should be working to help the situation and not make it worse. After all, even though illegal immigrants are breaking the law, most of them are normal people trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. Illegally getting to and living in a foreign country is not easy; it takes a lot of inner strength. I hope that if I am ever in a permanently trying situation, I will have the courage to change that situation no matter what, just like so many illegal immigrants do everyday.