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Home > Press Room > 2006 > Statement
Statement
The Wall
of Shame
Statement on
Immigration by Hector M. Flores, National President, LULAC
January 3, 2006
As leader and President of the
largest and oldest Hispanic civil rights
organization in the United States and Puerto
Rico, I have had the opportunity to travel to
all parts of our nation these past four years.
What I have found is that you don’t have to be
an expert on population trends to know that
Hispanics are now residing by the hundreds of
thousands in the Carolinas, Arkansas, Nevada,
Manhattan, Georgia, Chicago and Wisconsin. We
are no longer concentrated solely in the
Southwestern states. Los Angeles continues to be
an important hub of Latino social, cultural and
political activity, second only to Mexico City.
However, Chicago, with more than one million
Latinos, is in second place and the Dallas
Metroplex is a close third.
Yet in all my travels I
continue to hear immigrant bashing of the worst
kind. Editorials spew out ugly stereotypes,
letters to the editor offer thinly disguised
racial diatribes, and talk show hosts continue
to malign the integrity and work ethic of Latino
immigrants on a daily basis. As I write this, an
increasing number of our elected officials
persist in distorting the truth about the plight
of Mexico and the millions of immigrants coming
to this nation from the south.
This ignorance and distorted
truth is leading some elected officials to
support building walls along the U.S. border
with Mexico reminiscent of the Berlin era and
spending millions more for border enforcement in
an effort to stem the tide of immigration from
Mexico to the United States. These same elected
officials, many with Irish, Italian,
Scandinavian, and German surnames, are only a
few generations removed from ancestors who
immigrated to the United States themselves
seeking a better life. Yet their memory of
history is very short and they fail to see the
similarities between today’s immigration from
Latin America and the immigration that brought
their ancestors here. Why is this?
Over the past 20 years, the
United States has increased spending on border
enforcement more than at any other time in our
nation’s history. Fences in southern California
and Texas, high tech equipment, and ever growing
numbers of border enforcement personnel have
cost American taxpayers billions over the past
two decades. Yet the leading experts all agree
that these expenditures have done nothing to
curtail immigration from Mexico to the United
States. In fact, the only documented effect has
been to make the journey to the United States
more dangerous and as a result thousands of
migrants have died crossing the border in recent
years. Is this what our nation wants—a fence
that will force many migrants toward more
dangerous avenues of entry and even more deaths?
What kind of message do these desert deaths send
to the rest of the world about the value our
nation places on human life?
Contrary to assumption, study
after study has demonstrated that Mexican
immigration to the United States is a huge
financial boon to our country and far outweighs
the amount of public benefits that migrants are
eligible to receive. The combined value of the
labor performed by Mexican migrants along with
the taxes they pay—including sales taxes, income
taxes, and more—and the stimulus effect on our
economy dwarfs the minimal amount that we spend
on emergency medical care and public education
for this hardworking population. It is one thing
to pretend to forget or simply ignore the
hardworking people who pick our food, make our
clothes, build our homes, care for our children
and our elderly, serve us at restaurants and
hotels, and perform countless other essential
but low-paying jobs. But is quite another to
advocate for shortsighted policies that are so
clearly against our own self-interest solely to
make the lives of these immigrants even more
difficult.
In fact, Mexican immigrants
pay far more in taxes than they receive in
public benefits. For example, every year
undocumented immigrants pay billions of dollars
of taxes into Social Security that they have no
hope of ever receiving back because of their
undocumented status. These payments have helped
push the insolvency date of Social Security far
into the future.
Undocumented immigrants pay
federal, state and local taxes on income,
gasoline, clothing, and other retail purchases.
Some economists have estimated that the
undocumented population pumps $500 billion into
our economy every year and pays more than $90
billion in taxes, yet receives only about $43
billion in public benefits. It is clear, even
considering taxes alone and not the far greater
value of their labor, that undocumented
immigrants more than pay for themselves and in
fact, help to sustain a system that even their
most vocal critics say is vital in America.
Yet the myths and half-truths
continue unabated on most editorial pages,
fueled by immigrant bashing radio and TV
pundits. Are these opinions based on ignorance
or racism—or both? Even more damning is the
hypocrisy displayed by these individuals who
themselves benefits from the services and
contributions made possible by the labor of
undocumented immigrants. Whether they are having
work done on their house, eating a salad,
enjoying a meal at a restaurant, or dropping off
their children at daycare, chances are they are
benefiting from the labor of undocumented
immigrants. Their comfort is being provided
courtesy of immigrants who endanger their lives
to travel thousands of miles, through harsh
terrain, leaving their families and loved ones
behind, to work the hardest jobs in America for
little pay. And how do we thank them for their
hard work? By constantly complaining about their
illegal status and passing harsh immigration
bills. It is not the way that one would expect a
nation of immigrants and faith to react. But
then, for all our greatness, America has always
revealed contradictions when it comes to race
and ethnic relations.
I wonder what U.S. citizens
would do if this part of our labor force were
actually deterred by the fences, workplace
raids, and other anti-immigrant policies that
Congress is considering. Does the anti-immigrant
crowd actually expect that unemployed Americans
will step forward and accept those low-pay,
long-hour, back-breaking jobs that offer no
benefits, no overtime, and no vacations? Aren’t
they concerned that many of these jobs will be
sent oversees because businesses here can no
longer compete? Aren’t they worried about
triggering a drawn-out recession as our economy
adjusts to the loss of 10 to 12 million
productive workers and consumers? Will Congress
pass the necessary tax increases to make up for
the lost tax revenue from these workers and
shore up Social Security whose insolvency will
be much closer at hand? Will anyone stop to
wonder why the heck we did this to ourselves
when all we had to do was to provide for a legal
avenue for these workers to come here in the
first place?
There is a much better path
for us to take—one that benefits U.S. citizens
just as much as it will benefit the 10 to 12
million undocumented immigrants working here.
LULAC and some of our elected officials like
Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic
Senator Ted Kennedy support the following
immigration principles:
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We should reunite families
instead of dividing them.
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We should allow
undocumented workers the opportunity to
become full and legal contributing members
of our society, without fear of retribution
and deportation.
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We should create a program
for immigrants to work in this country
legally and allow them, over a period of
time, to become permanent legal residents.
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We should begin assisting
Mexico and other Latin American countries
through loans, grants and other strategic
initiatives to economically jump-start key
geographic areas that send large numbers of
immigrants to this country.
Following these principles
will improve the lives of millions of hard
working immigrant families here in the United
States whose labor we rely on every day. It will
also make our own lives better and safer as we
bring this workforce out of the shadows and
allow our law enforcement personnel to
concentrate on terrorists and drug runners.
These principles are clearly
the right actions for our country to take, but
for them to become law, we must overcome the
“wall of shame” that the anti-immigrant crowd
has been building around our collective moral
consciousness. Do the inalienable rights put
forth by our Founding Fathers and exemplified by
the Statue of Liberty still hold sway in this
land of the free? Are hard-working immigrants
who want nothing more than to contribute to our
country and have a chance at the American dream
still welcome to our shores? Or has the
misguided message of hate overcome our American
values of liberty, hard-work and toleration?
This new year, millions of immigrant families
across our country are hoping that the better
angels of our nature prevail over those who
would stoke old prejudices against the least
fortunate among us. It is my earnest prayer that
we come together in forging that American dream
and not yield to those who would limit it.
Hector M. Flores is the
National President of the League of United Latin
American Citizens, the largest and oldest
Hispanic organization in the United States,
which advances the economic conditions,
educational attainment, political influence,
health and civil rights of Latinos through
community-based programs operating at more than
700 LULAC councils nationwide.
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