Go west to discover the true America

06 June 2007

Differences over Iraq are only the most obvious manifestation of the East–West divide. Go west and you get a sense of the possible, a sense that deserts can become town houses, country clubs and shopping malls; that families matter so much that the baseball field includes an adjacent swimming pool for use by children too young to appreciate the choreography of a game devoid of pace and violence; that a massive increase in population represents hands to work rather than bodies to hasten global warming.

But you also understand why Congress’s popularity rating languishes in the 25 per cent range, down there with President Bush’s. The President and Congress are pushing an immigration bill that includes a form of amnesty for the 11, or 12, or 13 million illegal aliens, most of whom have slipped across our border with Mexico in pursuit of jobs that pay little by US standards, but handsomely by the standards of Mexico’s mismanaged economy. Most would dearly love what Brits call ‘indefinite leave to remain’. The proposed legislation puts that status within reach of the latest wave of immigrants, many of whom are members of what in Britain is known as the aspirational class.

Arizonans are outraged. Washington lawmakers see downtrodden workers; Washington lobbyists see a source of willing, cheap labour for their business clients. Arizonans see crowded schools, increased pressure on hospital facilities, rising crime, and politicians out of touch with reality. But they nevertheless create water stations in the desert to prevent illegals from dying of dehydration. They would be more generous to these strangers in a strange land if experience with prior amnesties hadn’t proved that such generosity serves as an invitation to the next wave of immigrants. So they want a fence, 2,000 miles long and virtually impenetrable. They are fans of minimal, don’t-fence-me-in government, but great believers that government’s job is to fence out illegal immigrants — with the help of private citizens who form local groups to hunt for illegals crossing the border.