Frame of Reference
I swore to myself - No conversations about politics over the holiday. Yeah, right. That worked out well.
The conversation turned to politics, covering a wide range of topics, including but not limited to immigration.
About midway through, I had an epiphany. Talk about immigration is occurring in the wrong frame - it is occurring in the “crime” frame.
The model looks like this: Bad people break the rules. Good people follow the rules.
Undocumented immigrants break the rules, therefore they are bad people. What happens is amazingly simple - people think about immigration as a matter of rule following or rule breaking. In the bad people/good people frame, illegal immigrants aren’t desperate people trying anything to get a better life, they are simply bad people. The analysis sounds simple, but it captures a world of assumptions of crime, punishment, the legal system and people. Like any effective frame, it isn’t linguistic trickery, it is effective linguistic shorthand.
In this frame, good people follow the rules; by breaking the rules you don’t become a bad person, you reveal that you are a bad person who breaks the rules, who doesn’t follow the rules. Illegal immigrants don’t deserve compasion, they require punishment as do all bad people - punishment which will keep them from crossing the national border again. Simply sending them back to where they came from isn’t enough - we don’t trust that the government there will actually punish them.
Calls for a fence or a wall along the southern border is what you do when someone can’t be punished but must be contained. You might lock a child in his room at night if he consistently misbehaves and doesn’t honor your instructions. Locking his bedroom door to keep him contained is a near final action before locking him away from society.
In the good people/bad people frame we’re the good people who follow the rules, who do what we’re supposed to do. We’re harmed by bad people who don’t follow the rules.
A more productive discussion about immigration would actually invite us to examine the reasons people are willing to break the law to cross the border and come to the US. Desperate people make desperate choices. What do we do to reduce the despair?
November 25th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Like most political issues these days, immigration policy is often debated in an information vacuum. Before condemning illegal immigrants, we ought to consider how hard it is to get a legal visa to immigrate from Mexico, for example. Congress determines the number of immigrants allowed to enter the United States by country of origin by allocating the number of immigrant visas. In 2006, the quota for Mexico was 173,753. One estimate of illegal cross-border immigration is 500,000 a year.
November 25th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
So Glendon you finally get it . Congratulations.
What to do to end despair. Perhaps quit hiring illegal aliens for the tasks at hand, despite it being profitable for some criminals in our Country. Force them to stay in their own Country until they do. We can help by militarily fortifying the border against the drug dealers operating from mexico, running drugs and people.
Then we can fine into extinction any businesses that continue to hire illegals.
While we are at it let’s abrogate nafta and our participation in gatt.
Let’s see, when a legal alien in the grace of an H-1b visa loses their job, they currently have upon such report by their employer, 72 hours in which to collect themselves and return to their country of origin. How does that sound for those that wish to come legally, as that is the law?
I don’t know what to tell you about those that have already broken our immigration laws, which by the way, are about the MOST lenient on Earth.
It’s a sorry tale for them isn’t it? Tales of what have become of legal immigrants are of far more importance to me.
November 25th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
All of this Glendon, will have the effect of starting a Revolution in Mexico, that is way past overdue.
The current arrangement of American finance and mexican graft and oligarchy dictatorship is screwing everyone on both sides of the border. It is past its end of tolerance.