Immigrants good for America

Carlos Alberto Montaner

It was an act of valor. Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, a candidate to the presidency of the United States, had absolutely nothing to gain when he introduced a bill to temporarily halt the expulsion from the country of two undocumented teenagers of Colombian origin.

Dodd's move could have cost him dearly; surveys show that illegal immigrants enjoy very little sympathy in the country. To ask for their deportation, even if materially impossible to carry out, generates more votes than trying to legalize them, which is the only really reasonable option. With that gesture, Dodd showed that he has character. He legislated with his head, not his anger.

The impetus for the legislation was the case of two teenagers who are culturally Americans but were born abroad. Juan and Alex Gómez, 18 and 19 years old, came to the United States 15 years ago and were being threatened with immediate deportation to their country of birth, a country with which they never had the least emotional or intellectual contact. To them, quite simply, the United States is their country.

They are two good young men, excellent students, who probably will become successful professionals. Their classmates initiated a campaign to keep them in the United States.

With his bill, Dodd postpones the brothers' deportation until 2009. Before Dodd, and for the same humanitarian reasons, Republican Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, an old and staunch friend of all Latin American immigrants, had introduced a similar bill in Congress, moved by a visit by the Gómezes' classmates.

It seems that Dodd was persuaded by Ana Navarro, a Nicaraguan who came to the United States as a child. As time passed, she normalized her immigration situation and became an outstanding American lawyer.

She said something I found convincing: ``I saw myself reflected in those two boys. What harm would [the authorities] have caused me if they had deported me from this country -- my country? They would have destroyed me.''

Both Dodd and Díaz-Balart were right. To expel those kids, and the other thousands of people like them, may be legal -- but only demonstrates that the law is ill-conceived and hurts not only certain immigrants but also the country itself. Why be inflexible in discarding valuable people, people who are willing to contribute to the welfare of the community?

Some years ago, I witnessed a similar case: Dr. Pedro Meneses, an eminent Venezuelan plastic surgeon who was trained in the United States, was unable to remain in the country -- against his ardent wishes -- because U.S. law prevented it.

It is true that every nation must guard its borders, but common sense dictates that immigration laws should serve as a filter to invite or keep productive foreigners, not as a blind mechanism to indiscriminately expel masses of citizens whose absence will hurt society as a whole.

A nation's quality depends on the virtues of a substantial number of the people who form it. Nobody willing to work is redundant, whether he's a humble tomato picker -- in a society where the natives don't want to pick tomatoes -- or a brilliant scientist.

Delinquents and loafers are redundant; not that infinite army of field hands, housemaids, construction workers, professionals and entrepreneurs of all kinds. They all create wealth with their efforts. They all benefit us. Every time one of them is expelled, we all are harmed.

Unfortunately, most people see immigrants as a problem, whereas they are really an extraordinary means to foster development.

I heard Esperanza Aguirre, president of the Madrid Autonomous Community, say so when, during a visit to Florida International University, she was asked why her region had become the richest in Spain.

''It's the fire in the immigrants,'' she said, unhesitatingly. To put out that fire is one of the sorriest ways we know of hurting ourselves.

October 9, 2007

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