Politics and Culture

A Day Without a Mexican is a movie where Mexicans disappear and everybody else mourns their loss (I'd be one of those grieving, by the way. Many of my friends are Mexicans. I'd miss my wife, too).

The LA Times' Tamar Jacoby brought the issue up in anticipation of the "Day Without a Mexican" protest slated for September 12th as well as to decry a two-page letter sent by the INS warning employers not to hire illegal aliens. The protest, the movie, and Jacoby are foolish. Let me count the ways:

1. Jacoby's whole point is a huge straw man argument. Nobody even comes close to advocating the removal of all Mexicans. At most, people want to expel illegal aliens.

2. Jacoby takes for granted an all or nothing choice. In fact, if it turns out that the economy fails as the result of an illegal alien exodus, we'd bring them back- legally.

3. Sans-Mexicaners assume that Mexicans are the only poor people on the planet willing to travel to the United States. You don't think that billions of people, literally, would love nothing more than to live in the freest, wealthiest nation on Earth?

Follow up:

4. Jacoby fails to realize that many parts of the country do quite well without a great number of illegal aliens as I saw first hand on my recent trip through interstate 40. Non-immigrants serving food and cleaning hotels-everything.

5. What did Americans do forty years ago? Were things so horrible then. My dad arrived in Los Angeles in 1965 and he says it was nicer then.

5. It's quite natural for Americans not to want to do "dirty" jobs if they don't have to. However, people who can't rely on government or parental support find plenty of motivation, eventually. Or, is Jacoby saying that Mexicans are somehow superior workers compared to Americans? That's a big problem that won't be solved by lowering wages...

6. ...which are a big factor. People do very difficult work on docks and in mines because they're paid far above the national average.

7. Labor is 10% of agricultural costs. Produce would only go up a few cents a pound.

8. Americans can do their own lawns. Big woop!: imagine the boom in the lawnmower and child care industries. The people Jonathan Edwards met on his "poverty tour" will finally have something to do.

8. Jacoby assumes that all Mexicans are the same and that all do critical jobs. Some do...and some don't. Some Mexicans are a great asset to our nation... and some I'd like to see leave tomorrow. The best example of this Mexican quality duality (every people has such a divergence) occurred in my city, Pico Rivera, last week when decent citizen Maria Hicks died defending Pico Rivera from members of that most asinine of criminal classes- the tagger. I feel horrible for Maria Hicks and her family but would hang her killers from the knottiest tree. How can we separate the Hicks' from the taggers if we have no say in who comes into our country?

9. Finally, why would illegal Mexicans getting "driven further underground" incline Americans to be more generous immigration-wise?

I love my Mexican brothers and sisters (real brother-in-law) and I do think that we're better off with the millions of decent Mexican-Americans in the United States, but that doesn't mean I'll allow myself to be intimidated by this anti-intellectual absurdity. (read other articles on immigration here and here).

A Day Without a Mexican