US must legalise its 'illegal aliens'

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."
- Former US President John F. Kennedy

Crash, the unlikely winner of the Oscar for Best Picture earlier this month, lays bare the crisscrossing tensions of race relations in America, strains that are rarely discussed with any candour and if so, seldom with any compassion. The divisions are further exacerbated by additional waves of immigration and by the unfulfilled dreams of natives and newcomers alike.

The film's directness can cause extreme discomfort. After suffering through the often jarring scenes and the colliding narratives, what remains is a strong sense of foreboding. There is no neat and tidy Hollywood ending. In fact, the film resembles life: lives intersecting, unresolved problems, hostilities ready to erupt with little provocation. Los Angeles Chief of Police William Bratton has new recruits watch the film. In his words, "It tells you a lot about L.A." Actually, it says a great deal about all of us.

As the leaders of Mexico, the US and Canada meet in Cancun to strengthen their relations, and sort out their differences, it is clear that the thorniest issue is not softwood lumber (a tariff battle is currently raging between Ottawa and Washington) but the issue of over 10 million undocumented workers in America. In the main, those workers are Mexican. Without them, though Pat Buchanan and his allies would resist such a claim, the US economy would falter.

Mexican President Vicente Fox is pressing President George W. Bush to legalise their status. In his defence, Bush is pursuing a remarkably liberal policy, proposing a guest worker programme that offers millions a chance to trade in uncertainty for citizenship and offers most a bit of dignity too.

Many Americans are more hesitant, fearful of the consequences. Most Republicans in Congress, seized with a xenophobic cultural chauvinism, are following up on their successful revolt over the Dubai Ports World deal with an equally racist position on illegal immigration.

Instead of recognising the invaluable contributions these people have made, the focus is on how much they cost. As if they aren't people but a commodity. As if we could survive without them.

Frankly, we cannot. Nor can any country whose economy is dependent on a steady supply of cheap, unskilled labour. Unknowingly, you've benefited from their woefully underpaid and unacknowledged status if you've eaten at a fancy restaurant in Manhattan, visited or worked in any office building in any large city, sampled the country's produce, stayed in a hotel, driven on the vast highway network or endured the aging railways.

Unskilled workers, particularly illegal aliens, go largely unnoticed and the work they do from sweatshops making cheap textiles to construction contractors avoiding high wage union workers to dangerous meat packing plants churning out processed foods is shunned by Americans.

Less than a hundred years ago, America welcomed the world's economic, political and religious outcasts. Of course, economic advancement not social altruism was the principal motivation for the open door immigration policy.

Sentinel of democratic virtues

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, in 1889 the people of France sent "Lady Liberty" to the people of America. The statue was positioned in New York Harbour, seemingly a sentinel of the young nation's democratic virtues it was also (unwittingly?) the single greatest motivator for new arrivals. Liberty embodied the spirit of America, its warm embrace and its voracious appetite for cheap labour.

Etched on Liberty's pedestal, Emily Lazarus's The New Colossus, an apt description of the US at the end of the 19th century, inspired millions to seek a better life in the New World: Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including my maternal and paternal grandparents, sailed past that inscription on their way to Ellis Island, the most significant portal for immigrants from 1892-1954.

In the 19th century, the pace of America's territorial expansion and industrialisation heralded a golden age of immigration. From 1840-1920, 37 million foreigners came to the US; the total population in 1890 was 63 million.

Today, approximately 100 million Americans have a descendant who was processed there. The welcome was rough, perhaps fitting preparation for the difficult and often dangerous work that would employ many of the newcomers. Even Lady Liberty, though made in France, was likely assembled by recent immigrants. When she arrived, packed into over 200 crates, it wasn't New York's lawyers and doctors who unloaded the containers. Rather, the grand dame of America stands tall due to the efforts of displaced workmen, carpenters and blacksmiths from Europe.

There was the burgeoning network of railroads crisscrossing America and connecting the Americas, the handiwork of Irish and, later, Chinese immigrants. There were mines, textile factories, automotive industries, and construction sites in cities and towns from coast to coast, all of which required millions of workers. Many thousands were injured or killed, their families abandoned. Too few spoke up for the gross inhumanity that has now stained America's history.

Entire towns were owned by factories or mines. The workers' salaries, barely adequate to feed, clothe and educate their children, were recycled back into the companies' coffers. Gaunt children with smoke-covered faces living in dilapidated houses, such scenes haunt us today.

The injustice and brutality prompted waves of legislation in the early 20th century. Despite laws and an even more welcome change in social norms, the practice of using, abusing and then discarding illegal or unskilled labour remains quite prevalent today.

As Thomas Jefferson put it, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty". The dilemma confronting Bush is no different than it was 100 years ago: will America pay the high moral cost of low labour standards, or accept the consequences of its thirst for cheap goods and services with long overdue benefits and protection for the people who make our standard of living possible.

That's not too great a price to pay for a man's dignity and to preserve a nation's honour.

- Maggie Mitchell Salem is a political and communications consultant based in Washington, DC. Previously, she was director of communications at the Middle East Institute and a special assistant to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.