Two Sides of Immigration ... and a Third Way

LT. Col. Rick Noriega is tanned, rested and ready.

He spent a year in Afghanistan defending America against al-Qaida.

As state representative from the southeast sector of Harris County, the Democrat spent a month in Austin striving to defend Texas schoolchildren against the Republican leadership.

Now he is ready for his next assignment.

He fully expects to be called up as part of the National Guard contingent President Bush promised Monday night to defend the Texas border against immigrant workers.

Rick Casey breaks Noriega's views into three categories, all of which offer great insight. Of immediate interest to the issue writ large:

In the war on illegal immigration, when Noriega looks at the "enemy," he sees his great-grandmother. Ignacia "Nacha" Noriega of San Luis Potosi married in 1904 at the age of 20 and moved onto a ranch with her husband, according to a brief history prepared by one of Noriega's cousins.

...

It's a common story, one of a woman who led a hard life, but was determined to give her child a better one.

"And so far for me, my life represents the American Dream," said Noriega. "There are so many wonderful opportunities in this country, and that's why you have such a pull for people to come here who simply want a better life for themselves and for their children."

Noriega said he didn't know if Nacha obtained legal papers when she immigrated for good. The laws, he said, were much different then.

But the dynamic is the same, and though it can be channeled by laws, it can't be tamed.

Noriega summed it up: "Somebody said, hunger is always more powerful than fear."

And another story putting things in a more modern context ...

A Houston bar operator and the son of the man accused of leading a human trafficking operation have pleaded guilty to their roles in an organization that held scores of Central American women in servitude.

The two admitted to participating in the operation that lured women to the U.S. with the promise of legitimate jobs, then used violence and death threats to force them to work as bar girls and sometimes offer sex to favored customers.

Lt. Col. Noriega is absolutely right when he says that hunger is a stronger motivator than fear. When you see stories such as this latter one, or the recent news of a shootout in SW Houston over illegal immigrants being held hostage while their "importers" awaited payment, you get an immediate sense of the risk people are willing to take in order to reach an end state of living a better life with more opportunities.

So it strikes me as somewhat empty when I hear the word "comprehensive" used in regard to immigration reform when I have yet to really hear about any efforts to help close the economic gap that drives immigration far more than the number of boots on the ground along the border. If, as our friends on the right would like us to believe, immigration is a problem of some great enormity that requires drastic actions in order to save our schools, hospitals and workplaces (remind me again who the offender is in that last situation?) ... if this is the case ... then why are we treating Kenyan foreign policy more seriously than we are Mexican? ... or El Salvadoran? ... or Nicaraguan?

As luck would have it, one voice has pushed forth on this concept.

"In Mexico, we need to consider some type of Marshall Plan," McLarty told a Latin American energy conference in a San Diego suburb. McLarty said the three countries could provide $20 billion in development aid over a 10-year period.

"That sounds like a lot of money, and it is," said McLarty, who served as White House chief of staff from 1993 to 1994 and is now a consultant. "Consider that the United States spent $100 billion in Iraq in just this past year. Unless we help out our neighbors to the south, and especially Mexico, we will continue to have this issue of immigration which will hurt our relations."

Mexico's energy minister, Fernando Canales, on Tuesday at the same conference said Mexico will continue to have difficulty developing its energy infrastructure as long as international private investment is outlawed. Mexico's constitution calls for all energy sources and development to be controlled by the national monopoly, PEMEX.

The United States needs to make nuanced efforts to help open Mexican energy development to outsiders, McLarty said.

Mexico ranks 14th in the world in raw energy reserves but imports a quarter of its natural gas from the United States and is a net importer of all petroleum products including gasoline and diesel fuel.

"The hot-button issue on the other side of the border is immigration," McLarty said. "At the heart of that is the flow of workers. If you had more development of the infrastructure in Mexico, more development of the resources there, it would bring more employment in Mexico and keep more of their best and brightest at home."

At least some folks are starting to make sense on the issue ....