Monday’s immigrant protests and boycotts were widely reported. This is because it is an easy story. Giant protests under well-known skylines make for really good video footage. The immigrants’ rights movement is powered by a huge, loosely organized group of people with lots of organizers ready to talk to the media. Getting both sides of the story, a basic principle of journalism, is also simple because those in favor of stricter illegal immigration laws are equally as willing to have their opinions heard by members of the media. There are also taglines aplenty: A Day Without Immigrants, The Great Immigration Debate and Immigrant Anger, to name a few.
But somewhere along the line of putting the story together, the media have lost track of the underlying principles of the story. While the coverage and analysis of protests has been good, that is really all we are being offered. America has been very well informed as to what is happening, but not so well informed about why.
Those watching the news know that the catalyst of the movement is House Bill 4437, which passed in December. This bill makes illegal immigrants felons and criminalizes actions that citizens take to help illegal immigrants. This would mean that the religious groups who give water to people crossing the border in need could go to jail. Hillary Clinton made headlines in March when she said this legislation would “literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself.”
She’s got a point. For all the pandering the GOP does to the religious right, this bill appears to go against basic Christian ideals. Perhaps that is why this bill, which was designed to activate the Republican base before the 2006 midterm elections, has backfired so much. Getting people to vote with their hate instincts has worked before, which is why gay marriage bans appeared on the ballot in so many swing states in 2004. But it didn’t work this time. Apparently the immigrant community, legal and illegal, is even more widespread, better organized and louder than the Neoconservatives.
These protests say a lot about divisive politics. You can only play the people against each other for so long before you strike the wrong nerve. However, the political condition of America doesn’t get as much attention as the symptoms of a divided nation.
Another aspect of the illegal immigration issue that goes fairly unreported is why so many Mexicans need to come to work here. Anyone who has been to Mexico knows that it is what we now call a developing country, or what we used to call a Third World country. As soon as you cross the border you know instantly you are in a very different, much more impoverished place. However, when the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed, the United States and Mexico were treated as equals.
Take agriculture for example: the U.S. produces much cheaper goods because we have advanced agricultural technology and larger farms. This means that the same products produced by Mexican farmers on small amounts of land using ancient techniques simply cost too much to be competitive with U.S. products. Mexican tariffs on imports previously leveled the playing field somewhat until NAFTA abolished tariffs on trade between the U.S. and Mexico but not subsidies. The U.S. government heavily subsidizes its farmers. The Mexican government cannot afford to do that. So without tariffs to keep their products competitive or subsidies to help guarantee minimum prices, these Mexican farmers often simply go out of business.
It is possible that U.S. trade policy could be contributing to our own illegal immigration problems, but unfortunately the media rarely take the time to investigate below the surface.
I have one last observation. I regularly hear the argument that illegal immigrants are OK because they do the jobs Americans don’t want to do. This is nothing short of bogus. I’ve worked at McDonald’s, and my friends have worked in factories and on farms.
Americans will certainly do any job; we are hard-working by nature. We are also fair by nature, and we believe in a living wage. When companies take on illegal immigrants, they do so because they can pay those workers less money than would be demanded by American workers. Hiring illegal immigrants is like outsourcing, only employers bring the workers to this country.
Illegal immigrants are not stealing our jobs, and we are not too lazy to do the work they do. Employers have simply found an illegal way to cut labor costs. We wouldn’t have an illegal immigrant problem if there weren’t a reason for them to come here.
I hope, as protests go on and the leaders of the immigrants, rights movement emerge, the larger underlying issues will come to light, and maybe even be looked into by the mass media. Because, like talk show host Randi Rhodes says, if it’s not on TV, it didn’t happen.

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