A woman I was talking to in the boarding line at the airport last month made an interesting analogy re. illegal immigrants in the U.S. She was quite educated, in a narrow sense, having learned to speak several languages. Her analogy got me reflecting:
There is an argument I hear frequently about immigration issues that goes like this: How would you (always directed at an American citizen) be treated if you were present illegally and seeking to work in Mexico? I assume the questioner wants me to respond like this: Well, of course I might be arrested and imprisoned or at least be ejected from the country. And I suppose the implication is that this ends the argument. “You see,” it implies, “Americans just want to do what Mexico would do.” It might clarify to set the argument up as the analogy it is: Illegal Mexican citizens should be to the U. S. as illegal American citizens would be to Mexico (if Mexico were a wealthy country and the illegal Americans were poor and seeking to make a living).
This is an analogy made of parts that are not truly equal. It implies that illegal people seeking employment in another country are the designers and executors of their nation’s immigration laws. I haven’t met an illegal immigrant who had that status or power in their home country. On the contrary, illegal Mexican immigrants are among the most disenfranchised persons in that country. Thus, to imply via the above analogy that how their country would treat illegals from another country is somehow the illegals’ decision and responsibility is a non-argument. Poor Mexicans, whether in Mexico or abroad, do not determine their country’s immigration policies. Furthermore, neither the policies of the U.S. nor those of Mexico direct their citizens to take up illegal residence in the neighboring country. (There are, however, policies of the U.S., such as those promoted under NAFTA, that have put hundreds of thousands of people out of work in Mexico.)
Then there is the problem that the illegal residents and workers in the U.S. are not all Mexican, not even all from the Americas, but from nations around the world. That makes me want to ask the person who posed the analogy why they single out Mexico as one of the elements of the analogy. Would they apply the same analogy to Irish illegal immigrants (of which there are thousands), to Chinese illegal immigrants (people from a truly democratic country where each person’s rights are sacred), or to illegal immigrants from any other country but Mexico?
A Latin saying tells us “Every analogy limps.” Pat Barrett, frequent moretprs poster, says this one’s in a wheel chair. And I say that’s because it has no legs.
