MB Civic

By Steve Crosby  |  July 8, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

THERE ARE two simple reasons why there are millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States. First, they want to improve their lives and the lives of their families. Second, there are hundreds of thousand of individuals and companies who are happy to employ them. If there were no jobs, there would be no immigrants. The contributions they make to society and economy are substantial — and a prerequisite to our social and economic health. Yet to listen to the debate about porous borders and “illegal aliens,” you would think that these people are imposing themselves on us; you would think that hostile foreigners are pouring over our borders, despite our every effort to discourage them.

And no one is calling for state troopers to arrest people who hire undocumented immigrants to mow their lawns.

The immigration debate is largely carried on with willful prejudice against the people we invite across our borders with the temptation of good jobs; with blatant intellectual dishonesty about the causes (and remedies) of the issue; and, all too often, as a cynical way to rouse economically vulnerable and racially sensitive middle and lower classes into political action.

Listening to this debate is particularly upsetting from my new seat as dean of the McCormack Graduate School at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. John McCormack was elected to Congress on a platform that included repeal of the National Origins Act, with immigration quotas he called “highly discriminatory to most nationalities, and greatly offensive to those of Irish, Jewish and Italian birth or extraction.” Those were the people whom members of Congress wanted to exclude in the late ’20s, and who eventfully built much of the city’s — and nation’s prosperity. And UMass-Boston — home to an undergraduate student body that is 40 percent nonwhite, 60 percent first-generation college students, and where more than 70 languages are spoken — represents both the history of Boston and its future: highly motivated, hard-working newcomers to America, or children of families trying to improve themselves in America, attending an inexpensive public university, often holding one or more jobs.

These are the kinds of people who built Boston, and America. And so are the idealistic strivers who are fighting for a future when they avoid our irrational and inadequate immigration laws to accept the jobs we offer them. No one in this debate is immune to the need for reasonable standards of security, nor of a nation’s inherent right to regulate its borders or its population. But such a debate should be honest: discussing the real, difficult economic imperatives and conflicting social values, rather than demonizing those who are merely doing what we would probably do in their shoes, and what our economy calls on them to do.

From its inception, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill, Boston has been at the forefront of the debate about immigration and about the country’s ability to accommodate diverse peoples of all types: Anne Hutchinson, King Phillip’s War, abolition, “Irish need not apply,” busing, the gay marriage decision. Our history of diversity, and dealing with diversity, is by turns, rich, traumatic, and inspirational. At this moment in history, when immigration is again in the forefront, when Boston’s future seems dependent on immigrants and other diverse peoples, and when this nation of immigrants is turning fearful and shutting down its shores, perhaps Boston can again lead the way:

Let’s assess our own attitudes, laws and institutions honestly, and remedy what needs to be remedied; let’s lead the way for this country to work its way through this era of insecurity and intolerance; and let’s make Boston a shining example of harmonious diversity — because it is right, and because it is in our own economic self-interest.

Steve Crosby, dean of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at UMass-Boston, served as secretary of administration and finance for Governors Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift.