Walls

If I were more well-read or perhaps an English major, I might have made the allusion myself. The commonplace "Good friends make good neighbors" has been repeated in Congress, mostly by this guy, to justify the proposed border security wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The Senate today passed a bill that calls for 370 miles of fence; the House wants 700 miles (I suppose they could average it for the compromise - 370+700 / 2 = 535 - that was easy!). But one NPR commentator traced the phrase back to "Mending Wall," a poem in which Robert Frost laments his neighbor's mysterious allegiance to it. Why mend the wall, Frost asks, if what's on one side (the apple trees) will never infiltrate the pines?

The world which Frost imagines, where words, people, and actions do not have to be walled in or out, is not quite the same as the one in which we live. Face it: humans are wired to identify with small family, ethnic, or clan-based groupings. Not only is it the best way to increase chances of survival if you're a caveman, it's also the most efficient. If I'm in a situation where I have to choose between a black-skinned, brown-skinned, or white-skinned person to do a job for me, and I have no other information to go on, I'll most likely choose the person who is most like me because that's at least something I can go on (white-skinned, in case you were wondering).

In modern society, we beat back this innate response with rationalism, and because of ration we can identify with people who aren't in those exclusive groups - we feel a connection with people who share the same interests, live in the same state or country, or who speak the same language. But that central prejudice is and will always be there no matter how much we try to suppress it.

Which brings me back to what I was going to talk about in the first place: walls. Hearing all this talk about the "border security fence" with Mexico reminded me of the "border security fence" being built in Israel/Palestine, ostensibly to keep terrorists out of the predominately Jewish Israeli terriritory. This fence, intentional or not, is turning out to be an outline of the land Israel wants to include in a future permanent border settlement.

The difference between Israel and America is that Israel is (and wants to continue to be) a mono-ethnic state. Whether you call it elitism or racism, it's just a magnification of that innate response to revert to tribal allegiances when other group identities start to crumble (like in Iraq or Rwanda). The Jewish state was created out of fear that Jews can never be integrated into other societies. And who can blame Herzl and all those other Zionists for believing that after 2000 years of persecution?

But America has certainly distinguished itself in its ability to integrate Jews and immigrants of all kinds into society. That is because, essentially, America is a land of immigrants. People might say that the German Jews of the 1920s felt just as German as today's American Jews feel American, but Germany was hardly a melting pot - in fact, its growth was marked by an underlying sentiment of nationalism and militarism.

Despite our underlying allegiances to our own ethnic groups and even to our nation, Americans overwhelmingly identify with illegal immigrants. Our rational minds allow us to superimpose our own experience on to theirs, and this creates an overwhelming empathy. Do you think Israelis are doing the same with suicide bombers?

While I do sympathize with illegal immigrants who have come to this country to better their lot, I also recognize the unsustainability of the current situation. Immigrants cannot continue to pour into the country undocumented - it creates too many challenges for all parties involved: workers, families, employers, schools, government, etc. I am in favor of limiting would-be illegal immigrants' access to our country. But the way to do this is not by building a wall; that does nothing to solve the problem. In order for them to stop coming, would-be immigrants need to be convinced that either 1) they have just as good of a chance of achieving prosperity if they stay in their home country, 2) there are no jobs in the U.S. for workers who are undocumented. Since number one is pretty unlikely in the near future (as much as Vicente Fox wishes), number two is the most sensible and the one which our federal government has the most potential to affect.

Therefore, I agree with the first two parts of the Senate plan: giving some immigrants (those who have been here more than 5 years) a chance at citizenship after paying the necessary breaking-the-law fines, and 2) creating a guest worker program that allows foreign workers to fill "jobs Americans don't want to do" (I love this phrase). But in my opinion, enforcement has to be on the local, employer level - i.e. if you don't have papers you can't get a job. Once that point becomes clear to would-be immigrants, it will stop them from crossing the border.

That is, if the National Guard doesn't get them first.