Why is there so much of a flap about “border security”? Millions are spent on walls, guards, fences, listening devices, even National Guardsmen to protect our borders, particularly the one with Mexico, Sure, a lot of drugs get smuggled across the desert, and a lot of Central Americans who don’t know any better are brought across by coyotes (human smugglers).

But Mexicans seeking illegal employment or residency in the US need not resort to such desperate measures. They know the drill. They can just walk across the border at established crossings just as hundreds of thousands do every day legally to go shopping, visit relatives, see a movie, work, study, or get their teeth fixed. Once they’re here, they don’t have to go back home unless they choose to do so. They blend right in. Those with a little money to spend can even fly in; air travel is cheap these days.
Did you think all those Hispanics in Florida came in on rafts?

So why are we spending millions on border security, and demanding to spend even more? I don’t think security has anything to do with it. I think its purely political theater, to delude white Americans into thinking that America is doing everything it can (or maybe, not doing nearly enough!) to stop illegals from coming. And maybe we do it to obscure the obvious truth, that we’re not doing the one thing that would stop the flood of illegals immediately and permanently: make it a criminal offense to hire a non-citizen without a work permit, and to fine or imprison any employer who did.

Those businessmen smart enough to realize this situation cannot continue indefinitely sought to set up some kind of immigration law that would guarantee their supply of Mexican workers without undue social dislocation or legal consequences. This is why the Bush family, from Texas, has long been a champion of immigrant rights. Mexican labor has been a key factor in their economy since, well, since Texas WAS Mexico. But in order to get the blue-collar Republican vote they’ve had to tell them a totally different story.

The Mexican worker is a vast source of cheap, exploitable, docile labor for US businessmen, an important and influential Republican party constituency. Those who are illegal are particularly valuable, they are terrified they will be betrayed to the immigration authorities just before payday, and they will cooperate eagerly in their own exploitation to avoid being deported. Those Americans (many of them Republicans too) who lose their jobs to these folks have to be convinced that its the evil Democrats who are responsible for this ripoff, and so they demand even more “border security”, and “no amnesty”, and to “throw the criminals out”. A little nativism and bigotry doesn’t hurt either. This issue has split the GOP into “establishment” and TParty wings: the Bosses and the Bubbas.

The Democrats, on the other hand, are not exactly angels either. They want to keep the Mexicans coming because those who do become citizens, and those citizens related to the illegals, will never vote Republican as long as the GOP is so vocally hostile to immigrants while simultaneously treating them like slave labor. Mexicans may be scared, but they’re not stupid. They know exactly what is happening to them. So the Mexicans are exploited as cheap labor by the elite, hated as job competitors by the peasantry, and used politically by the Liberals to win elections. And the blacks see them as competition for social services, even though as non-citizens they have access to very little. Divide and conquer. Its how the aristocracy has always kept the serfs weak and in conflict so they don’t unite against them.

The Mexicans, like the blacks, who have long been exploited in much the same way, realize this perfectly well. They don’t need me to explain it to them. And one day, they will get their revenge.