Needs of Haitian immigrants match our own
WASHINGTON – Driving across the country this summer with my son and his trusty pit bull Leo (only a mother …), I learned that America is large and full of jobs.
Everywhere we went, we saw “Now Hiring” signs – posted in shop windows, restaurants, Walmarts, gas stations and on the sides of trucks - everywhere, in other words, except perhaps for Ludlow, California, population, 10; temperature, 116; gas pumps, two. (A ghost crossroads in the Mojave Desert, Ludlow was so hot, I walked over to a bush and congratulated it.) But everywhere else along our route, and probably where you are today, help is wanted. Badly wanted.
For some reason, Ludlow popped into my head as I watched the disturbing video of mounted Border Patrol agents galloping toward Haitian migrants stranded along our southern border. Maybe it was the heat, or the agents vaguely resembling cowboys, or the dusty travelers desperate for water.
But there was something else – all those unfilled jobs and all those people, 16,000 primarily young men in Del Rio, Texas, and 20,000 more reportedly on the way, escaping the violence, food shortages, unemployment and political instability of Haiti. Eighty percent of the people in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country live on less than $2 per day. And yet we are turning these folks away?
There must be a better way. When U.S. restaurants close because there are no cooks and servers; when contractors can’t build houses and apartments because there are no laborers or craftsmen to be found; when we have to call out the National Guard to drive school buses; and by the way, who the heck is going to execute this massive infrastructure bill anyway? That is, if it ever makes it through the legislative gantlet.
The border fiasco suggests an obvious supplyand-demand solution, but there’s no accounting for the lack of imagination in Washington, where two plus two always equals zero. An orderly, humane immigration process is what everyone wants. It is what we need. But we haven’t found enough votes to get it done for more than 20 years.
So, let’s do it.
I’m not being naive. I hear all the rage from the right and it’s justified, even if it’s aimed at the wrong people. When we see foreigners, if I may use that word, scrambling across borders with women and children in tow – and no destination in mind except the benevolent lap of President Joe - it can sometimes be hard to see their individual humanity. We can’t project ourselves into their circumstances, nor imagine trudging through jungles and deserts, forging rivers and risking death on a slender bet for something better for them and their kids.
The best argument conservatives can muster goes something like this: “Those people” disrespect our laws from the get-go, so how can they become good citizens? It’s a point. But people who have never known anything but lawlessness, who’ve been hostage to violence and corruption in their own countries, may not get the point right away. First, we eat.
Liberal arguments for leniency are equally unconvincing and a touch manipulative. Some images – this time the little girl in a green dress dodging the terrifying horseman – are horrific if also familiar.
But the constancy of such images should tell us something: They’re not going to stop, not as long as we have what others want – freedom to be and the opportunity to become. We can either export the magic of democratic freedom and capitalist prosperity, which history proves we do badly. Or we can accept that the needs of today’s would-be immigrants seem to match our own. It’s time to reimagine our borders and our policies.
This go-round, obviously, the sheer numbers of people overwhelmed our ability to process them in an orderly fashion. But the alternative can’t be what we’ve witnessed the past several days. Where, oh where, are the visionaries and doers?
I can tell you this much: the entire route from South Carolina to California is screaming for help. Why not make a virtue of necessity?
Contact Kathleen Parker kathleenparker@washpost.com. at