Opinion > October 18, 2007

By Lauren Wright | Guest columnist

During the third session of the immigration conferences on Oct. 6, Alejandro Portes revealed his championed theory on Mexican immigration with a dazzling diagram and about 44 bar graphs: there is a “disconnect” between public opinion and reality of immigration policy in the United States. Yup, that’s it. Indeed, his lengthy academic career studying the sociology of immigration at Princeton has been spent well.

Furthermore, he asserted that intransigent nativism and forced assimilationism “do not match up” with the hourglass labor market, a need for labor at both ends of the market, networks between immigrants and their original communities and networks between immigrants and their employers. Another gem of wisdom: “Not necessarily all immigrants want to be in the United States forever,” Portes stated (between bouts of reasons why immigrants need to be here and how our acceptance of them is inadequate). The implication of the helpless (and apparently confused) nature of our Mexican immigrants made it logical for me to assume that the real disconnect might be between scholars like Portes and the “marginalized population at the bottom of society.” Consistency was the only element left out of Portes’ painstaking summary.

Then the question-and-answer session happened. A schoolteacher stood up and asked why it was so important for everyone in the United States to go to college, also sharing a deep concern for the value loss of “hard, physical labor.” Portes could not help but jump at an opportunity to better his image as a selfless sociologist, purely concerned with the greater good for Mexican immigrants. Halfway through a heartfelt emotional deposit referencing the dangerous slums, drug infested alleyways and gangs the children of Mexican immigrants would be subjected to if they did not go to college, I might have been the only one thinking the conversation had transformed completely in the last five minutes. The air of superiority most people sitting in Brendle Recital Hall must have missed throughout the panel discussion was blatantly apparent when Portes justified illegal immigration by arguing that immigrants take jobs Americans don’t want (the jobs at “the bottom” of the market).

He complemented this with two more contradicting statements: “Immigration is good for Mexico and good for the US,” and “immigration is increasing racial inequalities.” How can immigration be good for Americans or Mexicans if it is creating more inequality and causing discrimination? Analysts like Portes who describe immigration as a way to fill the dirty jobs Americans don’t want are the very people who are discriminating against immigrants.

Sure, the academic elite can get away with disjointed declarations that assume that Mexicans are the only ones with a pitiable enough social location to do our dirty work and once they get here, they will need massive health, education and welfare benefits because they are not competent enough to pave their own way like every other American has.

But I can’t get away with it, so I am not going to try. I will assert, however, that the proponents of Mexican immigration want immigrants to stay for all the wrong reasons. Networks between immigrants and their American employers are characterized by exploitation. The real disconnect is not as complicated as Portes seems to think. There is a disconnect between Mexicans and Americans, just as there is between every ethnicity in the world. But we need to stop treating immigrants as an eager slave army waiting to help Americans and using their manual labor potential as a positive aspect of immigration. It is not fair or consistent.

Lauren Wright is a sophomore from Rancho Sante Fe, Calif.