Beware of moderates bearing gifts - proposals to control immigration to the United States - Demystifying Multiculturalism - Cover Story

National Review, Feb 21, 1994 by Peter Skerry

Also very much a part of Mexican-American folk wisdom are frequently retold accounts of Depression-era repatriations, in which parents and grandparents--regardless of their citizenship status--were rounded up and sent back to Mexico by fiscally strained local welfare authorities. Similar stories are recounted about Operation Wetback, an Eisenhower Administration effort to repatriate illegal Mexican immigrants, among whom were often included U.S.-born children. Because such memories die hard among this predominantly working- and lower-middle-class group, criticism of immigrants can quickly shift the calculus of insecurity and resentment. Instead of feeling threatened by immigrants, Mexican Americans end up feeling threatened by the Anglo establishment.

If conservatives are serious about curtailing immigration without at the same time undermining their recruitment efforts among Hispanics, they will need to move cautiously. Instead of waging war on illegal immigrants already here, conservatives may want to focus more on efforts to keep them from crossing the border in the first place. The problem with border-enforcement strategies is that, as I have already noted, this means putting more resources into an agency that has long been viewed as mismanaged and ineffective. Moreover, it is not clear how effective enhanced physical barriers would be. Despite the recent success of Operation Blockade in Texas, it is doubtful that we will have the political will to sustain such a draconian effort along our whole southern border.

For such reasons conservatives may want to ponder enhanced sanctions against employers hiring illegals. Unlike the 1986 law, however, this time sanctions must be implemented with a secure ID card that will give employers a fighting chance of discerning legally resident job applicants from illegals. No doubt some conservatives-- and liberals---find such schemes distasteful. So be it. But opponents should then be pressed to come up with alternative means of stemming the influx of illegals.

In the meantime conservatives should not delude themselves about the difficulties of curtailing immigration or the possible political costs of attempting to do so. Still, immigration does present conservatives with an enormous opportunity to respond both to the legitimate anxieties of Americans alarmed by illegal immigration and to the understandable suspicions of Hispanics not yet convinced of the bona tides of their would-be allies. The necessary balance will not be easy to strike, but prudence, as well as decency, requires the effort.

Mr. Skerry teaches political science at UCLA. His recent book, Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority (Free Press/Macmillan), was awarded the 1992-93 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.