Good Fences?

Sentiment appears to be growing to build a fence cutting Texas off from Mexico in order to limit "illegal" immigration. Conservatives in the Lone Star State continue to see the immigration issue as one where "Americans" need to protect their borders from an onslaught of foreigners who come with their drugs, their babies and their potential to spread terrorism, though the last I remember, all threats of terrorism from foreign groups has come from within our borders or against U.S. institutions in other countries. This wall is truly reflective of overall U.S. foreign policy as well as an anxiety and reactionary fear that "America" is changing and becoming a non-white and non-Protestant country.
We're becoming like Israel, the U.S.'s largest off-shore military base (to paraphrase Noam Chomsky) in building a physical barrier to separate the United States with the people who come and provide basic low-paying and little-respected labor that seems to be much needed by the white upper classes in this nation. Growing numbers of Latino laborers are in the United States legally and illegally performing the jobs that whites refuse to do: farm labor, manufacturing, dish- and carwashing; child care providers are ever-increasingly Latino as well as the majority of workers in the service industry. White Americans are either moving up the socio-economic ladder and choosing other lines of work or choosing not to perform these jobs out of pride and feelings of racial superiority. The discussion of welfare reform and border closures can continue for eternity but the fact of the matter is that Americans (regardless of color) demand low-paying service jobs and are complacent with Latino workers filling those positions and the issue of legal status is moot. Living in the Bay Area of Northern California, this writer sees the demand for jobs filled and the recipients of such provided labor well-contented as many of my colleagues recommend their nannies and housekeepers to me. What provides needed food or clothing to such people provides a free hour or two from the kids for a date night, an opportunity to work out at the gym or the chance to head to Tahoe a couple of hours early knowing the house is spotless; it's stunning how the two worlds are so divergent in values and economic necessity. What exactly, other than the riling of the conservative base, would closing the border with a ten-foot wall actually serve? Suddenly, with the cutting off of immigration, "iron laws" would be ignored as the labor pool would dramatically be severed and recipients of such needed labor would see a massive increase in their childcare or housekeeping bills. A simple matter of labor supply and demand would kick in but with negative effects for citizens of the United States whose most valued goal is the cheap deals they're receiving.
This leads to another point when discussing the matter of immmigration: there is no such thing as an "illegal". While people may be in this country (10 million, which is, recognizably, an issue to seriously discuss and solve) illegally, there is no such thing as an illegal person. To hear some throw around such labels as "illegals" while those people, with valuable souls and identities as human beings denigrated (or defined) strictly for their citizenship status seen as second-class humans sickens me. We're not talking threats of terrorism, considering the President and the NSA seem to have the whole tracking-the-bad-guys-legally-or-not thing down and the "War on Drugs" merely being a matter of "fearing when white suburbanites smoke too much pot or do crank" and so we're talking about a matter of why people continue to risk their lives coming to this country. The U.S. (and not "America" by the way, as last I checked, Canada and Mexico are still found on this continent and God-know-how-many nations lie below Belize) still serves as a model nation for economic improvement and hope for so many that live in pre-industrial, poverty-stricken nations (and places that no proud U.S. citizen would expect in this country). Being reminded of that rocking social critic and poet Bruce Springsteen, whose music from the mid-90s rings truer now than when I first heard those songs, sings of people who risk everything in order to do nothing but provide more for their parents and children. "Across the Border", from The Ghost of Tom Joad, is most likely the elegaic story defining the immigrant experience in the United States. The Promised Land, a place he identified for the working class in the 1970s has now been in the late 1980s and 1990s the same goal for people of non-white and foreign status who still wish to do the same that we wish: give our families the best we can. Who doesn't wish that for their families? Why do people in the United States wish to deny the same opportunities to people whose ancestry happens to arbitrarily differ from those who came to this nation and for the same reasons a century ago?
I believe in the promised land...