An Idea Whose Time has Come

In 2006, the Secure Fences Act was passed in both Congress and the Senate. The funds have since been approved, and the entire project is merely pending a few token studies concerning its impact on the environment, its feasibility, and its pecuniary implications. How did we arrive at such a place in American history?

The whole nation has been crying out for immigration reform since well before the 1960s. JFK heard their voices, but he was killed before he could radically change the quota system. Since then, restrictive immigration laws have been tightened and roughly enforced on our nations’ southernmost border and in our reluctance to accept asylum-seekers (refugees in other countries).

Our borders are places of violent clashes, deportation, and imposing fences.

Our legal immigrants are forced to become pochos, forced to forget their homeland in an effort to distance themselves from extralegal citizens the government and the media has vilified and quietly deported.

“Illegal” immigrants live in terror, working low-wage jobs, foregoing medical care, and paying extortionate rates for normal amenities in an effort to remain in a country which disrespects them and the country they left behind.

The entire nation cries out for immigration reform. Even the politicians could hear it on Capitol Hill. They could hear it, but amidst the din of partisan politics and the difficulty of making tough decisions on true immigration reform, both the Democrats and the Republicans opted for an easy way out, a symbol of border security and “immigration reform.” The wall was passed overwhelmingly by most major politicians, including my own Texas senators Cornyn and Hutchison, as well as mainstream presidential candidates such as Obama and Clinton.

And so here we are today. Brownsville, Texas, will be studied later on this month so that construction of the wall can begin in 2008. The symbol of a wall, laughable and medieval and impossible to believe, looks as if it will be coming next year unless the citizenry of the United States can raise its voice once more, refuse to be distracted by “token” gestures of immigration reform, and demand a real solution instead of this expensive “tokenism.”

Victor Hugo famously said, “There is no greater power on earth than an idea whose time has come.” The idea of immigration has been a long time coming, and it must be nonviolently urged to the forefront of American thinking.

The clearest fight for true immigration reform and against pseudo-solutions is the proposed border wall on our southern border. As Martin Luther King, Jr., outlines in “The Time for Freedom has Come,” we must do this by three key steps. First, any efforts to halt the construction of the border wall must expose the moral defenses of pro-fence politicians. The moral element never figured into the border wall monologue, but if this fence is to be stopped, a dialogue must begin which addresses the moral element of such a symbol of separation. This blog site is a beginning, but it must be preached from the pulpit and headlined in our newspapers. It must be sung over webcasts and it must be written in informed letters to our politicians. The moral element is clear – a Mexican border barrier signifies mistrust, racism, and nationalism – but the message has not been clearly voiced nor loudly proclaimed.

The second keystone concept of nonviolent resistance for King is that it must weaken the morale of its opposition. If well organized, a national boycott against key companies or an illegal immigrant strike could certainly weaken the morale of an opposition which secretly welcomes illegal contribution to our national GDP but publicly denounces extralegal workers. This contradiction has existed for decades, and its demise must be one of the main aims of any nonviolent movement.

Lastly, a nonviolent call for true immigration reform and no border wall must work on our nation’s conscience. So far, deportation detention centers like those at Raymondville, Texas, and the processing centers like the one at Port Isabel, Texas, have worked largely under the radar of human rights groups and national publications. It is difficult to prick the nation’s conscience without media coverage. We must no longer wait for the Associated Press to run a feature article on a single immigrant in a single detention center. These violations of basic human rights must be forced into the public eye via nonviolent demonstrations. Illegal immigrants should no longer suffer in these places alone and unnoticed. The Bible beckons us to be a “voice for the voiceless,” and nonviolent demonstrations should aim to translate these muffled calls for help from Spanish or Sudanese to an English which will awaken the once-great collective conscience of our country which has been lulled to sleep these 45 years.

BY working on the American conscience (and by this I mean all the Americas), by weakening the morale of supporters of immigration tokenism, and by exposing the moral defenses of those who would call for a Mexican border wall, nonviolent resistance will not only block the construction of the wall but will fluently call for reconsideration and reconstruction of our nation’s outdated, provincial philosophy on immigration. But we must begin by countering the wall; to ignore this physical representation of bad immigration policy would make us akin to the priest in the parable of the Good Samaritan, plotting a sermon on brotherly love as he strides past the bleeding wayfarer. The time for this idea has come; the time is now.

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