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daily nebraskan
friday, november 17, 1978
opinioneditorial
Depth reporting project rewarding and exhausting
Last March, the UNL School of Journalism em
barked on a depth reporting project to enrich
the understanding between the United States and
Mexico. After months of research, students and
professors packed their bags and left for all parts
of this country and Mexico to gether first hand
news. The result of exhausting and rewarding
work went into the journalism school's Depth
Report Number 14.
My chance to travel to Phoenix and investi
gate the living and working conditions of undoc
umented workers was enticing.
And it was heartbreaking.
Some cry out that undocumented workers are
living off the U.S. welfare system, pay no taxes,
send their children to our schools and in general,
mess up our economy.
These people may throw out
that say undocumented workers,
citizens, are infiltrating and living
And some statistics are cold,
unemployment rate of 40 to 50
need jobs to survive and taking a
the border illegally seems to be
huge statistics
mostly Mexican
off Americans.
Mexico has an
percent. People
chance to cross
little sacrifice.
I visited the Gold mar orange groves in Phoenix,
owned by Arthur Martori and Robert Goldwater,
brother of U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, R.-Ariz.
In these fields, undocumented workers who are
mostly Mexican males, havested oranges and
lemons.
They lived like animals in the fields. There was
no water to wash, no drink provided, no
outhouse, and not even a place to sleep at night.
We met the workers at the kitchen, a place
where they usually gathered to play cards, cook
and talk.
The kitchen was bleak. A tarp hung over trees
was above a wooden box that served as a cup
board. On top of the box were a few meager
staples and cooking supplies.
The kitchen was located near an oil-burning
stove that heated the fruit at night when the tem
perature fell below freezing.
Some live on the ground with tarps overhead
to protect them from rain and wind. More fortu
nate workers take orange crates and convert them
into living units acceptable for dogs. The luckier
ones have blankets.
At night the men could not go anywhere. They
are locked into the fields by their illegal alien
status. Sometimes they spent their money on
comfort, buying liquor or wears that slick-talking
peddlers bring out to the field. Many send their
money home and others pay for field prostitutes.
Some hold the theory that on pay day, the
employers of undocumented workers call the
border patrol to arrest workers before they pick
up their checks.
The border patrol denies this and so do the
employers.
We, as a country which speaks out and believes
in human rights throughout the world, must take
care of unjust and inhuman living conditions at
home.
Illegal immigrant problem' should be solved humanely
Illegal alien. Even the term is suspect.
Sounds like I'm talking about a criminal
from Mars.
But what I'm talking about is the esti
mated 2 to 12 million foreign born persons
who have immigrated to the United States
without U.S. sanctions. (There are an esti
mated 2,500 to 3,500 in Nebraska.)
The most frequent problem that is
routinely addressed in the popular press
and callously bandied about by politicians
in election years, is that undocumented
workers deflate wages and raise unemploy
ment. These evil aliens are also blamed
with sending American dollars out of this
country while taking advantage of our wel
fare system, coasting their children through
our educational system without paying
a dime and a myriad of other social ills,
including a measles epidemic in Southern
California.
Ronald Reagan, that beacon of apple
pie and honesty, has suggested that Soviet
fanancial assistance is behind the alien
horde, which adds a radical tinge to their
image, reminiscent of the early 1900s
attitude when immigration rules were
amended to allow for deportation because
of political beliefs.
This influx of aliens is seen as mostly
Mexican and male. The Immigration and
Naturalization Service estimates from 60
to 75 percent fall in that category. But
ferreting out Mexicans is where the
money and resources are put, so it seems
natural that it is Mexicans who are caught.
Many people enter this country from
Korea, Haiti. Nigeria, Thailand, Iran and
the Dominican Republic. The latter group
enter more often on some sort of visa,
find a job and just stay. They, not the Mex
icans, are more likely to tap higher paying
jobs.
Become dregs
Studies show that Mexicans largely fill
the menial, underpaid jobs which are the
dregs of industrial society. They take the
jobs that no one else, at least not natural
ized U.S. citizens, want because it pays
better for an American to go on unemploy
ment or welfare. An INS study done for
the Department of Labor in 1977 surveyed
the wages of 506 undocumented workers.
Only 10 reported wages of $6.50 per hour
and over; the vast majority ,-3 75 -received
from $2.50 to $4.49 per hour.
Another study estimated that 40
percent of undocumented workers receive
less than the minimum wage, whereas, in
1975. it was estimated that of the total
kate gaul
American work force, only 3 percent
earned less than the minimum wage. And,
when you're here illegally you sure as hell
can't gripe; the grim reality of being sent
back is constantly keeping you in line.
Pay taxes
Undocumented workers are far more
likely to pay taxes than use welfare ser
vices, according to a survey done in 1975
by the Employment and Training Admin
istration's Office of Research and Develop
ment. After a year's screening of Aid to
Families of Dependent Children payment
recipients in San Diego County-where
.--piore illegal aliens are apprehended than
"anywhere else in the U.S. -they concluded
that only 1 percent of the entire caseload
were illegal aliens.
Undocumented workers represent a
class outside of the law, a class whose
human rights are daily ignored, a class
which allows employers to undercut the
safety and health acts, minimum wage and
full employment policy which U.S. labor
fought so long and hard for.
It's a problem which can no longer be
tolerated nor ignored. Many states have
recognized the problem and have
attempted legislation (Nebraska's never go
out of committee). But the people I talked
to. including Pete Urdiales, director of the
Nebraska Mexican-American Commission
and Miguel Carranza, UNL assistant socio
logy professor, told me that it is not mere
ly a state problem, nor solely a national
problem. It is international. And it is a
problem which needs to be looked at
humanely and not in a frenzied state of
emotional duress.
Can't wash hands
America can no longer wash its hands of
world poverty. We are affected by the
underdeveloped world. Mexico has a slim
resource base, a rapidly growing popula
tion, and inequitable pattern of income dis
tribution and 40 percent unemployment.
And their unemployed are seeking a share
of the economic pie, here. The problems
that undocumented workers create-more
rightly that governmental policy creates
must be solved, by all governments working
together.
Carter has proposed an amnesty plan for
"illegals" which would grant permanent
and temporary status' to workers who
could prove that they had been here for a
set amount of time, beef up border patrol,
fine employers who knowingly hire undoc
umented workers (the spectre of a national
mandatory ID card looms-Big Brother sees
all, knows. . .) and provide economic aid
and "cooperation" to "source" countries.
Possible restrictions
He has recognized that merely cutting
off our borders could pose a potential
revolutionary situation in Mexico which
would threaten the $12 billion in Mexican
government bonds and $3.2 billion in
private sector bonds held, by Americans,
and restrict U.S. access to newly discovered
resources of natural gas and oil in southern
Mexico.
But Carter's plan has been lambasted by
most major Hispanic groups. They claim
that the temporary resident status violates
the Fourteenth Amendment's equal pro
tection of the law guarantee, and the Hel
sinki Agreement, which gives immigrant
laborers the same rights and opportunities
as domestic laborers.
Plus no concrete provisions are made
for economic aid, nor for the fate of those
granted a temporary status after it expires.
Beefing up the border patrol could lead to
an increase in mass, inhumane round-ups,
and employment sanctions could lead to
discrimination against minorities. Employ
ers would be expected to examifik docu
ments and make legal judgments-it would
De relatively easy to justity not hiring
someone with a Spanish surname.
The problem is immense, a solution
tar from easy, but it's time that the U.S.
take a look at reality and rejoin humanity,
humanely.
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