Even John McCain says the violence is way beyond anything ever seen and we know John McCain is not some idle liar. Right. He's devoted a good part of his life to politically expedient half-truths and outright lies and this time's no exception. Of course, he gets a lot of help from the media.
"Staggering" numbers of immigrants coming in over our "unsecured border" is just one.
Senator John McCain, of Arizona, in a floor speech defending his state’s newly passed law requiring local officers to investigate individuals’ immigration status, described “an unsecured border between Arizona and Mexico, which has led to violence, the worst I have ever seen.” He went on to cite numbers for illegal immigrants apprehended last year “that stagger.”In fact those numbers are surprising: they are sharply down, according to the Border Patrol—by more than sixty per cent since 2000, to five hundred and fifty thousand apprehensions last year, the lowest figure in thirty-five years. Illegal immigration, although hard to measure, has clearly been declining. The southern border, far from being “unsecured,” is in better shape than it has been for years—better managed and less porous. It has been the beneficiary of security-budget increases since September 11th, which have helped slow the pace of illegal entries, if not as dramatically as the economic crash did. Violent crime, though rising in Mexico, has fallen this side of the border: in Southwestern border counties it has dropped more than thirty per cent in the past two decades. It’s down in Senator McCain’s Arizona. According to F.B.I. statistics, the four safest big cities in the United States—San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso, and Austin—are all in border states.
The real problem comes from undocumented workers whom we hired and found extraordinarily convenient. Quite apart from underpaying them, we turn on them when we no longer need them or when -- as now -- we're having our own economic difficulties.
There are reasons to be uneasy about illegal immigration. In some industries, dirt-poor newcomers lower wages. State and local budgets suffer when workers are paid under the table. The fact that people lack legal status is itself disturbing. The huge immigration surge of the late twentieth century is the first in our history in which many, if not most, immigrants have come here illegally. Yet anti-immigrant backlashes don’t always track closely with actual immigration. They track with unemployment, popular anxiety, and a fear of displacement by strangers. They depend on woeful narratives of national decline, of which there is lately no shortage. Scaremongering works.
But there are so many of them, and they're still coming in. ...Not.
Even as illegal immigration is falling, recent CBS/Times polls show that the number of respondents who consider immigration a “very serious problem” is rising—from fifty-four per cent in 2006 to sixty-five per cent this May.
The problem is largely in our own heads and -- surprise!! -- it's full of racist undertones and invented violence.
Jan Brewer, the governor, has suggested that Mexican parents of American citizens take their children to Mexico. She has also claimed that most illegal border crossers serve as “drug mules,” and that beheadings have occurred in border areas—claims flatly contradicted by the evidence.
The problems caused by immigration are caused by us, on this side of the border, and our desire to have a large pool of cheap labor available as needed. I doubt powerful corporations will allow any kind of bill that restricts their continuing access to underpayable labor. There's going to be hell to pay before we get anything like immigration reform. The New Yorker's William Finnegan, who is quoted substantially above, believes it'll be tougher to pull together than health care reform.
