Illegal Immigration, the Seeds of Racism & the People We’ll Choose to Be

Incentives are a funny thing; they’ll sneak up on you if you’re not careful.

Back in the late 90s, my team was hired by a large nursery to help them get their workers compensation claims under control. For those that have never worked in the industry, injuries at nurseries are not uncommon. In addition to all of the sharp hand tools used, there is a fair amount of bending and lifting throughout the day. The nursery that hired us was one of the 100 largest in the state, so it was reasonable for them to have a certain amount of employee injuries – but not at the level of frequency or severity that they had been experiencing for a few years. It was really bad; we had been hired because the company’s founder’s sons that now ran the operation recognized that rising insurance costs were about to drive them out of business.

The solutions, it turned out, were easy to spot. The sons, having never worked in the groves and fields as young men like their father, didn’t understand the effects the job took on their workers’ bodies. They had diversified into larger plants and trees, but had not known to invest in the training or equipment one needs to keep insurance costs down. They had always relied on people to just bend over and pick up a two-pound plant out of the ground; it hadn’t occurred to them that using the same method for 50, 75 or 100 lb plants would lead to unanticipated expenses. We laid out a simple, three-pronged plan. There would need to be some minor capital investments in equipment, there would need to be training on proper lifting technique, and shifts should start with a mandatory 5-minute group stretch. (Remember, they were about to go under with rising insurance costs and we were trying to appease underwriters as well as reduce claims.) For the entire meeting up to that point, our ideas were met with nodding heads and verbal commitments by each brother to change the very culture of safety in their family business.

As we were wrapping up, as an aside, we noted that one of their larger ongoing back injury claimants was an illegal alien. We could close that claim out quickly, we told them, by letting the injured worker know that we would have light duty work for him were he able to legally work for the nursery. Since he wasn’t able, he could be terminated and all future indemnity costs would disappear.  As soon as we explained this, the brothers began looking at each other, wide eyed and smiling. I cringed inwardly. I knew we had just made a mistake.

The updated equipment was never purchased, of course. And taking the time to train or stretch was seen as a waste of the company’s time and money. The claims continued to flood in, but now with each claim came notification from the employer that they had “reason to suspect” the claimant was an illegal worker, along with a request to send the light-duty letter so we could avoid making indemnity payments. Over the course of the next year the number of employee injuries increased 20%. But without indemnity costs their annual claims cost decreased 55% – and their insurance premiums went down as a result. They were able to terminate our services the next year with a glowing letter of recommendation.

Today they have moved from being one of a top-100 nursery to being a top-15, and by all accounts are going strong.

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Yesterday in a post by Elias on the walking litmus test that is Newt Gingrich, the conversation veered off into the subject of illegal immigration. Like many “big problem” political issues, I have never felt satisfied with the way either side chooses to approach the subject. The way the subject appears to be framed, at least in my experience, can be encapsulated thus:

Position A: Illegal immigrants are the salt of the earth; we need them to do the jobs that Americans just won’t do. They provide no big-picture economic downside. The reason the other side doesn’t like them is because they are Latino.

Position B: Illegal immigrants are the scourges of the Earth; they take away jobs that Americans are clamoring for. Their criminal ways make our neighborhoods unsafe, and they are going to bankrupt the country. The fact that they are Latino has nothing to do with anyone’s reactions against them.

While I recognize that each of the positions as stated above lack nuance and do not speak for all people everywhere on this subject, I think you’d be hard pressed to find large patches in our national dialogue that don’t fit pretty neatly into one group or the other. My problem with both is that neither looks to address all the factors in what might well be a large problem; also, I don’t see either position as being particularly self-aware.

If there was one uniting theme in the thread over at Elias’s joint, in was that racism doesn’t exist/barely exists/is irrelevant when it comes to the illegal immigration debate. Tom, Will, Koz and Jaybird seemed very clear on this. And while I get where they’re coming from, I also think that they are wrong. I think racism does play a role, and that left unaddressed we risk it playing an even bigger one – and not just in the ways one might assume.

The Balloon-Juicy formula that {concerns about illegal immigration = racism and nothing else} is of course absurd. But that doesn’t mean that racism doesn’t exist, even in the tiniest ways. At the top of this post I pasted a photograph of some teenagers. Here is another:

I know even as I write this that everyone will claim that they and no one they know would ever look at the first group of kids differently than the second; that were they to drive past the first group of kids any fleeting connection to illegal aliens would never, ever, ever cross their minds. So let me not wait until the comments section to call bulls**t.

Concerns about illegal immigration, right or wrong, do effect the way that we as a society view those Latin Americans that we don’t know. For one, it reflexively calls into question the “American” part of “Latin American” in a way I as an Irish American have never had to deal with. Lars Larson, a regional talk radio show host from my neck of the woods, rightly claims that he was ringing the bell on “the illegals” long before it was a popular right-wing talking point. Two years ago, when illegal immigration was the Big Issue of the Month, he would read any part of the police blotter that mentioned a crime committed by an illegal alien. The names themselves – San-CHEZZZZ, En-REEEEEE-co, JuAAAAn – were read with an exaggerated gusto. (Similar “enhanced” name pronunciation was also a staple for the guy who followed him, Michael Savage.) Listeners would call in about a name they read in the newspaper that was obviously Latino in origin – didn’t Lars think they must be “illegals” too?

I know already that many here will argue that this isn’t racism; and that if it were white Canadians working illegally we would be having the exact same conversations. But I remain dubious of this argument; for me it just doesn’t pass the sniff test.

I suspect that all of the things that make illegal immigrants different from most of us – their appearance (up to and including skin color), their language, their customs – make it easier for us to filter them down into the a “different from us” category. And when I say “us” I really mean all of us, on both sides of the political fence. Because I do think that the seed of racism – that ability to see an “Other” as different and less than ourselves – exists at the very heart of this issue .  And the side that worries me the most in this regard isn’t the conservatives.

It’s the liberals.

My wife and I each work full time; we also hate doing deep household cleaning. Two years ago we had just built and moved into our dream house and were preparing to get the old one ready for market. I’d like to say that we just couldn’t find the time to do the kind of cleaning needed to get it ready, but to be honest we probably could have. We just didn’t want to. So we hired a cleaning service instead. We hired the one that gave us the best quote, and I confess I was surprised when they arrived to find just how many cleaners that quote got us. It’s hard to believe they weren’t being paid under the table; they certainly were being paid s**t wages with no benefits regardless. And they did a bang up job. Seriously, I did not think our old house was capable of looking that good.

The latino women who cleaned our house (none of whom spoke English) might be working here illegally, or they might be working with a green card. Who knows? I certainly don’t. But in either case, they allow me – and the rest of liberal and centrist America – to have our cake and eat it too. We get to insist upon having a baseline standard of living, basic level of healthcare, and safe working conditions for everyone – except the people we don’t feel like paying extra to have them.

So at the end of the day what is the difference, really, between the nursery that hired my team in the 90s and myself?

Wordsmith notes – correctly – that with our current system it is very easy for employers to get duped into hiring illegal aliens. But while this is true, it misses the point that in many ways employers are incentivized to be duped. I mentioned above that injuries are common in the nursery industry; but there are a lot of other industries where the risk of significant and tragic injury (roofers, arborists, flaggers, etc.) is far, far greater. At what point are we giving people a “taste of opportunity?” And at what point are we really just relying on disposable people?

And yet, the issue isn’t even that simple.

I have a friend that works in the HR department of another nursery, one that is far larger than the one I mentioned above. His company has a drug testing policy – both at point of hire and post-incident. I have heard him say this before, but wanting to make sure I got the story straight I shot him an email last night and got the following response:

“we’d like to hire more locals. but it’s hard work and not get rich pay. about 85% of the locals fail the pre-hire drug test. the guys from mexico never fail the test. NEVER. locals show up late, disappear for days, and bitch if redirected. mexicans do opposite, and the overall quality of work is MUCH better. despite what you hear about mexicans and crime, if money or tools ever go missing, or cars get broken into in the parking lot, it always ends up being the local guys hired. honestly if it were up to me we wouldn’t hire any locals as laborers at all ever.”

To me, this brings two points to mind: The first is that the picture the right likes to paint of illegal aliens being a bunch of criminal ne’er do wells preying on your community might just be wishful thinking on their part. The second is that what rattles us about illegal immigrants might not just be that they work illegally; it might also be that they work better.

And even then, it’s not so simple.

If we don’t crack down on illegal immigrants, what are we losing in potential tax revenue – and who will be picked to pay more or lose services to offset that loss? (The poor and middle classes seems a good bet.)  If we do crack down, how do we adjust with the likely downturn in productivity, coupled with increased costs in basic items like food and services? Also, how much of our national anger is really because of the “illegal” part, and how much of it is because non-citizens of any sort are making money in the US at a time when so many citizens are unemployed – something that eliminating illegal immigration doesn’t actually address?

There are many reasons I don’t like talks about building The Wall vs. not building The Wall. The biggest reason is that it acts as a marker, and allows us as a country to avoid asking ourselves these more difficult and important questions.