Posted on 09/09/2001 7:47:17 AM PDT by real saxophonist
Give illegals the rights they have earned
Cynthia Tucker - Staff
Sunday, September 9, 2001
The newspaper story of the immigrant Mexican boy's bitter disappointment was poignant and memorable. Under the headline "The Dreams of Rigo Nunez," Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Jim Dyer profiled a 17-year-old who, despite a childhood of hard labor, became one of the brightest and best at Dalton High School in the nation's carpet capital.
Rigo worked hard because his teachers assured him his academic talents would help him secure a scholarship to college. He did not wish to spend his life as a laborer in a carpet mill.
But in Dyer's 1999 profile, Rigo had just learned that, despite his excellent grades, he would not get a scholarship to an American university. You see, he was an illegal worker, making him ineligible for college in this country.
The story of Rigo Nunez stuck with me not only because of the injustice of the boy's plight but also because he was named and photographed by the newspaper. I was surprised by the reporter's decision to identify the boy --- which made him vulnerable, I thought, to agents from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
I was both reassured and surprised by the reporter's response. There would be no INS raid, Dyer assured me, no effort to deport Rigo. With an American economy bustling and begging for workers, the INS had settled into complicity with American business: Only criminals and coyotes --- the hustlers who smuggle undocumented workers into this country for a stiff fee --- would be rounded up.
(The INS later denied that implicit policy, but it has been confirmed by the fact that there is rarely a raid on a North Georgia workplace, despite the fact that virtually every carpet mill, poultry plant and construction site uses illegal workers.)
Thus did I come to understand America's ambivalence toward undocumented workers, who are overwhelmingly Mexican: We will use them to pluck our chickens and mow our lawns and dig our construction trenches (where, every month or so, a worker is killed in a cave-in), but we will not give them any legal rights. So they are left with no workplace protections, no health insurance and no right to attend our colleges and universities.
This is the strange state of affairs that Mexican President Vicente Fox wishes to change with a new immigration policy that grants some legal status to undocumented workers who are already here. Fox understands, as do many American economists, that if INS were able to round up and deport all 3 million or so undocumented Mexicans, the nation's construction and agriculture industries would collapse, as Emory University marketing professor Jagdish Sheth points it.
But American xenophobia is not to be underestimated --- especially toward immigrants of darker hues. Even those businesses that depend on Mexican labor are afraid to support immigration reform. Dalton's Carpet and Rug Institute trade group recently considered offering public support for general amnesty for illegal Mexican workers, but backed off because it feared controversy, according to The Wall Street Journal.
President Bush ought to plow ahead with plans for broad immigration reform (and he ought to include all undocumented workers, not just Mexicans), despite the political firestorm. Sometimes, a politician ought to expend his political capital just to do the right thing. This is one of those times.
Cynthia Tucker's column appears Sunday and Wednesday.
cynthia@ajc.com
The right to remain silent.....
I have taught at a university for nearly 20 years. I am fairly sure this statement is completely untrue. Universities and colleges set their own admission standards, and they vary from one another. I have never heard of a university or college who makes legal status a criterion for admission.
What Tucker appears to be saying (hard to tell for sure), is that illegal immigrant status could harm the student's ability to receive financial aid and scholarships. I administer scholarships, myself, in my job, and none requires U.S. citizenship. Financial aid might well be a different matter, however.
If the student in this case is such a hard worker, what would be wrong with his working his way through college, assuming he might be ineligible for financial aid? It might take him a couple more years to get through if he had to work a lot of hours, but he'd still be a young man when he was done, and he'd have his degree.
Possibly not being eligible for financial aid is NOT the same as being ineligible for college. Tucker seems to be trying to confuse the two, making them appear to be one and the same. Very typical of leftish arguments.
No where in this article does it say that this young man tried to get citizenship the legal way. Was the attempt even made? I certainly appluade his hard work but the right to attend colleges etc... belongs to those who are CITIZENS.
I was born in this country, served this country for 21 years in the A.F. and it just burns my butt that these pepole want all of the same priviliges as CITIZENS. I see homes being purchased in my area for $150,000-$175,000 by families that have "come over". They get together with multiple incomes to make these purchases. Me, Mr. born-in-this-country, has to settle for what I can afford ($100,000 which doesn't get much in this area).
I would have no problems with this if they would just do it the right way, at least learn about this country and it's history, at least make it look like they are attempting to fit in. Instead, they are trying to make this country look like their former country. Just the other day, a lady was actually pushing a cart down our street, selling something, I don't know what.. But it looked just like a scene from Mexico -
Ooops.. rambling now...sorry...
We are supposed to assume (I guess there's probably some kind of UN 'convention' on the topic by now) that the "human rights" of the poor Mexicans fleeing here to make a living trumps any so-called law of the host country against it.
I see similar thought processes on this issue as the thinking that led to the horrific war crimes our "fearless bombers" committed from three miles up in the air on the people of Serbia a couple of years ago.
I left Dalton last December after living there 15 years while my sons reached college age. It's a mill town with a mill town mentality. When I moved to Dalton the Hispanic population was around 2%. When I left, it was about 50%. The tens of thousands of carpet workers are a population of people in servitude. The carpet mill owners love the situation. The Hispanic workers don't make a fuss for fear of bringing attention to themselves. The owners pay them the equivalent of McDonalds on overtime pay and work them however they see fit with little fear of losing the workforce.
I don't miss the place.
This kid needs to stop crying and look around and see how many AMERICAN kids work their way through college. He can get off his lazy butt and do the same.
Recently the WSJ wrote that the carpet manufacturing areas were having a shortage of labor because the laborers of past were retiring, and their kids were educated and didn't want anything to do with manual labor in the mills. Thus, a vacuum.
The right to be captured, imprisioned, and deported, the same right that an american has if caught illegaly in Mexico.
The right to return to Mexico, free of charge!
In this topsy-turvey LIBERAL world businesses are supposed to act like some junior FBI and figure out if workers have legal status, but government agencies giving our tax money away are FORBIDDEN from asking the parasites about the same status.
Could anything be more ridiculous? Come here to work and make a contribution -- penalize private businesses. Come here to suck the blood out of the system -- government will seek them out to give them our money.
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