The Latino Evangelical Left

Daniel, I think your observations are accurate, but I'm wary of your implicit assumption that we would be better off if immigrants didn't immigrate. As a historian I would note that we are a nation of immigrants. As a believer in free markets I would argue that open borders stimulate the labor market and encourage efficient production and wealth creation. As a believer in Christ I propose that we should see immigration as an opportunity for ministry rather than an invasion.

I do believe that many Americans struggle to differentiate between ethnicity and nationality.

You are right to note that the two are not necessarily exclusive. I guess my sympathy towards illegal immigration stems in part from my antipathy for nationalism. The nation-state is a funny and relatively modern construct. Bendict Andersen was thinking of the nation when he coined the phrase "imagined communities." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_communities

If the nation is a social construct like class, gender, and race, then it can be deconstructed. I believe that Christians in all places and times form the ultimate imagined community, the universal church. The community of believers transcends class, race, and gender. In Christ, we are neither bond nor free, Jew nor Greek.

So I feel a cognitive dissonance whenever I think of denying citizenship to someone, even at times fellow believers, simply because they were born in a different country. Law is arbitrary and all too absolute. The wave of a pen determines whether or not you become "American." You came to Ellis Island in the 1920s, okay, citizen. You came to the Rio Grande in the 00's, no go, illegal alien.

The principal difference between Ellis Island style immigration policies and today's is that they actually allowed people to immigrate and become citizens while we don't. Today, except for a very small number of visas issued to academics and skilled professionals, we do not allow foreigners to immigrate into the United States. What has changed between then and now is not the desire of foreigners to enter America but rather our desire to welcome them.

It is important to distinguish between becoming a "legal alien" and becoming "American." The desire to become a "legal alien" simply denotes that a person wants to live in America and enjoy the privileges (freedom, jobs, education, etc) that we enjoy. Becoming "American" carries a great deal of baggage and implies cultural assimilation. I would argue that neither the majority of immigrants at Elllis Island nor those today desired to become "American." If you'd asked the fresh-off-the-boat Mr. Gepetto if he wanted to become "American" rather than "Italian" he would have laughed in your face (in the unlikely chance that he understood English). The same was true with the German immigrants of the mid-18th century, the Irish from the 1850s, the Italians of the 1880s, the East Europeans of the 1920s, and the Hispanics of the 1990s. What matters is not their intent, but the end result. The melting pot works wonders. Besides, we shouldn't think of some distinctly "American culture." America has always been a cultural hybrid. Immigrants become more like us and we become more like them until the distinctions become distant memory. The question that logically follows then is why we should treat the Lopez family differently from the Jaworskis, the Bertini's, the O'Connors, or the Mullers?

I remember a San Francisco Chronicle article from a couple years ago in which the reporter went to visit the home of an illegal alien. The lady spoke nothing but Spanish and loudly proclaimed she had no desire to become American. She said something to the effect of, "The day that my hair turns blond and my eyes blue is the day I become an American!" While she was telling this to the reporter her son yelled (in English) from the next room, "Mom! I want a burger!" The son marched into the kitchen wearing a San Francisco 49ers jacket and turned on the TV to watch the Simpsons. Cultural assimilation is inevitable (though it is arguable whether recent immigrants are the better for it!).

Now let's get down to economics!

I'm a believer in the economic free market. Your solution, promoting business opportunities inside Latin countries, is a distortion of the market. Immigrants are drawn by jobs at businesses in the US and fill a void in the labor market during economic expansions. Most businesses do not relocate to Latin America because of the costs of relocation, government corruption, and lack of security from gangs and extortion. Thus, if the government directly subsidizes business relocation to Latin America it is undertaking something which the free market determined was not the most efficient way to expand wealth. This destroys potential wealth.

I'm also an advocate of free trade, the idea that goods and services should freely flow across national boundaries. The explosion of global wealth over the past 300 years is a direct, partial result of the expansion of lowered barriers to trade. Labor is every bit as much a part of the market as cars, widgets, investment, or ideas. Why should we build a (literal) wall to prevent the free exchange of labor when we vehemenently oppose (financial) walls to the free exchange of other goods or services? Because the exchange of goods and labor in a free market is not a zero sum game, immigration enriches both "native born Americans" and Hispanics.