The Fence Campaign

President Bush signed a bill to authorize a 700-mile border fence last week, key part of the Republicans’ midterm election strategy. The party of the Iraq war and family values desperately needs you to forget about dead soldiers and randy congressmen, and to think instead about the bad things immigrants will do to us if we don’t wall them out. Hence the fence, and the ad campaigns around it.
Across the country, candidates are trying to stir up a voter frenzy using immigrants for bait. They accuse their opponents of being amnesty-loving fence-haters, and offer themselves as jut-jawed defenders of the homeland because they want the fence. But the fence is the product of a can’t-do, won’t-do approach to a serious national problem. And the ads are built on a foundation of lies:
Lie No. 1: We’re building a 700-mile fence. The bill signed by Mr. Bush includes no money for fence building. Congress has authorized $1.2 billion as a down payment for sealing the border, but that money is also meant for roads, electronic sensors and other security tactics preferred by the Department of Homeland Security, which doesn’t want a 700-mile fence. Indian tribes, members of Congress and local leaders will also have considerable say in where to put the fence, which could cost anywhere from $2 billion to $9 billion, depending on whose estimates you believe.
“It’s one thing to authorize. It’s another thing to actually appropriate the money and do it,” said Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican. “I’m not sure that’s the most practical use of that money.”
Lie No. 2: A fence will help. A 700-mile fence, if it works, will only drive immigrants to other parts of the 2,000-mile border. In parts of the trackless Southwest, building the fence will require building new roads. Who uses roads? Immigrants and smugglers. And no fence will do anything about the roughly 40 percent of illegal immigrants who enter legally and overstay their visas.
Lie No. 3: The Senate’s alternative bill was weak, and its supporters favored amnesty. In May, the Senate passed a bill that had a fence. Not only that, it had money for a fence. It also included tough measures for cracking down on illegal hiring. It demanded that illegal immigrants get right with the law by paying fines and taxes, learning English and getting to the back of the citizenship line. It went overboard in some ways, weakening legal protections for immigrants and hindering judicial oversight. But it went far beyond the fence-only approach. Its shortcomings and differences with the House bill might have been worked out in negotiations over the summer. But instead, House Republican leaders held months of hearings to attack the Senate bill. And all we were left with was the fence.
Will the Republican strategy work? We’ll know next week, but we hold out hope that hard-line candidates are misreading the electorate. Voters all over are concerned about immigration, of course, but many polls have repeatedly shown that they warm to reasonable solutions and not to stridency. They can recognize the difference between the marauding army of fence-jumpers they see in commercials and the immigrants who have become their neighbors, co-workers, customers and friends. Citizen anger cuts both ways, and many voters, Latinos in particular, say they are put off by the Republican hysteria.
Poll results in some races suggest that xenophobia and voter deception are not necessarily a ticket to victory. In Arizona, Randy Graf, a Republican, is running for Congress as a single-issue candidate focused on border security, Minuteman-style. He has said that if his strident argument won’t fly in his prickly border state, it might not fly anywhere. He is trailing Gabrielle Giffords, a moderate Democrat who supports the comprehensive approach to immigration reform endorsed by the Senate and — once upon a time — by President Bush.
Whatever happens in November, Congress will eventually have to deal with the 12 million illegal immigrants unaffected by the fence, and the future flow of immigrant workers. That means tackling “amnesty” directly. The sad thing is that Democrats and moderate Republicans — and Mr. Bush — already did this, and settled on an approach that is both tough and smart.
But now is the time for stirring up voters, and the pliant Mr. Bush has decided to go along, adding his signature to the shortsighted politics of fear.

Editorial publicada en el New York Times el 30 de Octubre del 2006

El Muro

No es fácil aceptar un muro en la frontera común porque materializa una distancia que muchos de nosotros tal vez no queríamos ver; una distancia que ni la democracia, ni los miles de millones de dólares que se intercambian, ni siquiera los millones de personas que tienen los dos pasaportes, han podido reducir. No es fácil aceptar un muro fronterizo porque frustra las aspiraciones de muchos sectores que albergaban la esperanza de que Norteamérica fuese algo más que un espacio comercial dominado por eficientes corporaciones exportadoras. No es fácil, finalmente, aceptar un muro porque nos obliga a reconocer que una amplia franja de la sociedad estadounidense nos tiene miedo.
Hemos sido incapaces, como país, de resolver nuestros problemas demográficos, económicos y laborales, y encima tenemos que escuchar a políticos de salón pontificar sobre lo que se pudo hacer y no se hizo; sobre las habilidades de una mítica diplomacia que nunca se atrevió ni siquiera a sugerir tocar el tema migratorio en la relación bilateral.
Por eso no comparto la idea de quienes ven el muro como un fracaso de la política exterior. Muchos errores y quebrantos ha tenido esa política, empezando por plantear la relación con Estados Unidos con base en la simpatía personal entre los dos presidentes, pero me resulta impreciso señalar que el muro sea consecuencia de una impericia gubernamental.
Fox se equivocó en el tono de la relación y en los alcances que tenían los intereses compartidos. Pero, aun así, me parece que bajo su mandato se ha hecho el intento más consistente por defender a los mexicanos que viven en el exterior, empezando por plantear el tema como una prioridad y terminando por cuidar que sus remesas no se quedaran en las rendijas de los intermediarios.
El muro, como violencia simbólica, es un mensaje cuyo destinatario somos todos. No inspiramos confianza al vecindario porque no solamente no somos capaces de generar las condiciones para que la gente no emigre de manera multitudinaria, sino porque somos incapaces de controlar la violencia en nuestro propio territorio. El muro será una suerte de espejo en el que tendremos que vernos. Un espejo que reflejará con amplitud las miserias propias.
La migración como válvula de escape al desempleo va a ser cada vez más complicada y la presión laboral aumentará. Podremos decir que la falta de competitividad de nuestra economía se debe a la ausencia de reformas y el resultado es el mismo. Podremos decir que la falta de competitividad se debe a las mafias sindicales y políticas que tienen secuestrada la agenda y el resultado será igual. Podremos decir que todo es debido a los monopolios y habrá quien culpe de esto hasta a la madre tierra. Pero nos veremos solos en el laberinto, retozando en nuestras miserias.
No inspiramos confianza al vecindario y en vez de advertirlo y pensar en una solución que desde la dignidad nacional intentara articular una respuesta, hemos continuado en nuestra eterna guerra de los particularismos, en nuestra patética chabacanería mostrada sin tapujos en la glosa del informe. No es con victimismos ni mucho menos con bravuconerías como debemos enfrentar esta realidad, sino encontrando la respetabilidad de la que hoy lamentablemente carecemos, precisamente por no poder tener en orden nuestra propia casa.
Ya lo decía Tocqueville: el principal problema de Estados Unidos vendrá del sur, y hoy nos han dejado claro que les inspiramos miedo, por eso se quieren encerrar. Es duro reconocer que, a pesar de todo lo que se ha intentado, somos vecinos y punto.

Editorial publicada en el Universal el 9 de octubre del 2006 por Leonardo Curzio