Migrant
Mexicans could boost Manitoban economy, culture
Dallas
Hansen
October
28, 2006
Sometime after lunch last Saturday, I could't get my mind off Mexican
food. Real Mexican food—the kind you find cheap in an
inner-city taqueria, not at some corny, overpriced Tex-Mex theme
restaurant.
Since the taqueria is a concept yet to arrive in Winnipeg,
I was obliged to make my own gorditas: thick tortillas made from a
special sort of nixtamalized corn flour called masa
harina—not stocked at any local supermarket of which I'm
aware. Fortunately, El Izalco, a Mexican grocer on Sargent
Avenue, sells masa and is just a quick walk from my kitchen, which
would soon smell like the taquerias I had loved in New York,
Chicago, and San Francisco.
Given that Mexican immigrants are few in Winnipeg, it's amazing El
Izalco exists. According to the 2001 census there were only
105 immigrants of Mexican birth occupying the inner city. Even
relatively northern cities such as Boise and Minneapolis have sizable
Hispanic populations. Why not Winnipeg?
In the U.S., anti-immigrant populism is on the rise. Valley Park,
Mo., a St. Louis suburb, has made it illegal for employers to
hire, or landlords to rent to, illegal immigrants. Louis J.
Barletta, mayor of Hazelton, Pa., has vowed to “get
rid of the illegal people. It's this simple: They must
leave.” Hazelton landlords who rent to undocumented
immigrants face fines of $1000 daily; employers who hire them
will have their business licenses revoked for five years. Members the
U.S. House of Representatives have called for making illegal
residence a felony.
Should things get too rough for illegal immigrants in America, they
might head north to cross another border, and we should welcome them
to Winnipeg—which lies at the end of the proposed NASCO
(North America SuperCorridor Coalition) superhighway connecting us
to Mexico City via Kansas City and San Antonio. Compared to the
heavily patrolled California, Arizona, and New Mexico frontier,
barging the Manitoba border would, at least during summer months,
be a cakewalk for Mexican migrants.
Were it not for immigrants, Winnipeg's population would be in net
decline. The businesses established in recent years by immigrants
from overseas have put new life and culture back into an inner city
that had been long abandoned by middle-class ethnic Europeans. If
urban infill is being stymied by the market demands of middle-class
whites—who, it is claimed, are interested only in
detached, single-family suburban homes—then we should view
the discord south of the border as an opportunity, at a civic level,
to attract large numbers of an ethnic group who have a proven track
record of embracing urban life.
Said opportunity might be fleeting. “For now, a hard line
on immigration has populist momentum,” observes The
Economist in a June article, “The wrong side of history;
Immigration.”
“But this will surely flag, as have the country's previous
outbreaks of xenophobia, be they against Chinese, Japanese, Irish
or even Norwegians[...].”
The debate is hardly one-sided. Jim Gilchrist, founder of the
Minutemen Civil Defense Corps—a group of civilians who patrol
the U.S. border themselves—found himself mobbed by
multi-racial student protesters earlier this month while giving a
speech at New York's Columbia University. Among those siding with the
Mexicans is The Economist itself, which in a March 31, 2001
cover story, “Let the huddled masses in,”
wrote, “The world has made the movement of goods, money
and ideas freer, but not, strangely, the movement of people. It
is both right to give desperate people sanctuary and rewarding to
welcome new citizens,. History has shown that immigrants bring
ideas, vigour and ambition, as well as their mere
labour.”
Former U.S. president Bill Clinton calls the debate “a
wedge issue,” saying it's “a way of creating a
divided community and distracting people from the real challenges
facing the country, whether it is in Iraq and Afghanistan, or
homeland security, or how to build a clean energy future, or how to
solve the health-care crisis, or how to create new jobs for
America.”
Sure, it's easy enough to say that would-be immigrants should seek
legal channels. But the current system is stingy, and full of
holes. Unskilled Mexican workers, who would here face little
culture shock, have almost no chance to come to Canada within the
current structure. Meanwhile, African refugee claimants, from
troubled countries with skeletal economies, are accepted in droves.
But the futility of trying to stop illegal immigration is best shown in
a recent ABC News interview () at the U.S. Mexican border with
president George W. Bush. “We got lights, we got
cameras, we're gonna have infrared, motion detectors,”
says Bush while, in the background behind him, a group of Mexicans
jump over the border fence.
dallashansen.com
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