US immigration debate needs a real-world view

SAN DIEGO — Closely following the U.S. immigration debate can make a person jaded. When I’m sick of the dishonesty, hypocrisy, racism, opportunism and fearmongering, I look to The Prophet Bruce.

Bruce Springsteen, a New

Jersey native, lived in Los Angeles in the 1990s, when Southern

California was the epicenter of the immigration debate.

In his poignant ballad

“Sinaloa Cowboys,” he tells the story of two brothers, Miguel and Luis, who migrate from

Mexico and find work picking fruit in the farmland of Central

California, where I grew up.

So it rings true when Springsteen says the brothers “worked side by side in the orchards/from morning till the day was through/doing the work the gueros wouldn’t do.”

I’ll translate: He’s noting that Mexican immigrants do terrible jobs that Americans — especially White people — will not do at any wage.

Former President George W. Bush says the same thing. “Americans don’t want to pick cotton at 105 degrees, but there are people who want to put food on their family’s tables and are willing to do that,” he said in 2018. “We ought to say thank you and welcome them.”

That is spot on. It’s the sort of thing I hear when reporting on immigration from the real world — a million miles away from Washington.

An increasing number of Americans tell pollsters they consider immigration the No. 1 issue facing the country.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, many people know that immigrants keep America humming and that you can’t curb illegal immigration without arresting employers, including homeowners, who are complicit. Yet many Americans refuse to accept the economic realities surrounding immigration, and they seem to believe enforcement alone would fix this problem.

I feel a headache coming on. Time for more Springsteen. In his song “The Line,” the crooner tells the story of a White Border Patrol agent who gets more than he bargained for.

“My wife had died a year ago/I was still tryin’ to find my way back whole/I went to work for the INS on the line/With the California Border Patrol.

“Bobby Ramirez was a 10-year veteran/And we became friends/His family was from Guanajuato/So the job, it was different for him.”

Lately, I’ve been obsessing about Bobby Ramirez. The character is a stand-in for my conflicted tribe of more than 20 million Mexican Americans in the United States.

I’ve spoken to a few dozen of them over the past six months, and many are struggling.

An immigration crisis has awakened an identity crisis. It was a short walk for a group seen as “Mexican” on this side of the border but “American” on the other side.

Our Mexican half sees migrants as optimistic and hardworking risk-takers who built this country and keep it going.

But our American half is alarmed that the U.S.-Mexico border gets trampled every month by tens of thousands of people from more than 100 countries, many of them unvetted or undetected.

We reject the nativist accusation that immigrants are what’s wrong with this country, and we despise politicians who portray immigrants as a burden, problem or threat.

In truth, it’s Americans who are hurting America. How many migrants were part of the violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021”? Not many, I think.

This week, President Biden and former President Donald Trump are headed to Texas to visit the U.S.-Mexico border. Biden will be in Brownsville and Trump in Eagle Pass — about 325 miles apart. Trump promises mass deportations. Biden intends to all but eliminate the asylum process in some cases.

Do I really have to explain why these are terrible ideas? Mass deportations will lead to unlawful profiling of Mexican Americans, and effectively doing away with asylum when border crossings surge transports us back to the late 1930s and early 1940s when we shamefully shut the door on Jewish refugees fleeing the horrors of Nazi Germany.

Now I’m feeling nauseous. I suspect many Mexican Americans feel the same.

What this country really needs is an immigration debate for grown-ups, one that lives and breathes in the real world — where we don’t have the confusion caused by two competing signs on the border: “No Trespassing” and “Help Wanted.”

If there is a rematch of 2020, where Biden and Trump compete to see who can better undermine the Statue of Liberty, what are Latinos supposed to do?

I suggest not voting for either of them and instead writing in the name “Bush” or “Springsteen.”