Unwanted Aliens—What Is the Solution?
AT 10:00 p.m. one night a Mexican youth with 11 others crawled through a hole in the fence separating the Mexican town of Tijuana from the United States. Fifteen miles (24 km) from the border they were met by a car arranged for by their paid guide, known as a “coyote.” Because the car would not start they were delayed long enough to be spotted by the border patrol and were returned to Mexico.
The next night the young man tried again with 15 others, but this time they were seen by the border patrol from a helicopter when the wash of the plane’s rotors pulled off a plastic sheet they were hiding under and exposed them to the plane’s spotlight.
In his third attempt that same week he was caught again and deported. This time the group was detected by hearing devices while they were walking along a train track. The fourth attempt was successful.
He was only one of an estimated 5 million illegal aliens from many countries who have successfully entered the United States despite the diligent efforts of the border patrol to stop them. Approximately half a million a year continue to pour in. Although many are apprehended and deported, the majority promptly return. Why are these people so determined to enter a country where they are not wanted? The principal factor is economic.
Aliens in the United States as well as in some European countries want jobs and money they can send back home to needy relatives. Those in Europe send back to their home countries of Turkey, Portugal and Yugoslavia approximately 12 billion dollars (U.S.) annually, an important factor in the economies of these countries. But their presence is creating problems.
Competition for Jobs
Slow economic growth and rising unemployment are causing keen competition for jobs. Between the mid-1950’s and the 1970’s several European countries permitted approximately 30 million aliens to enter as migrant workers to fill job vacancies with the understanding that they would return when the need for them ended. But many decided to stay and sent for their families. There are about 15 million migrants still living in these countries. Now with the economic slump, there are too many aliens competing with citizens for jobs.
Violent clashes have occurred in Britain between the local people and migrants from Asia and the West Indies. West Germany has seen a growing number of demonstrations and antimigrant incidents. In Stuttgart anti-Turk hate groups have threatened reprisals on companies that keep Turks on their payrolls.
In the summer of 1982, Semra Ertan, a Turkish migrant, poured a gallon of gasoline over her body and burned herself to death because of her despair over the way the Germans had been treating the Turks. Before her death she phoned a radio station and said: “The Germans should not treat us like dogs! I want to be treated like a human being.”
In France there is growing hostility toward Algerian migrants and their families. Sweden has clamped tighter controls on the entry of aliens. Switzerland has stepped up its efforts to stop illegal immigration. In Italy there are prospects of stiff penalties against employers who hire undocumented aliens. So the aliens that were wanted when the economies of these countries were booming are now an unwanted people.
In the United States the complaints are similar—that aliens are competing for jobs that citizens need. Much of the rising animosity is directed against the Indo-Chinese and aliens from Latin America. A survey by a City University of New York economist revealed that half of all new jobs created nationwide in the late 1970’s were taken by legal and illegal aliens. Another study of 2,000 Houston, Texas, construction workers revealed that 40 percent were noncitizens.
State and local officials are complaining that their budgets do not permit them to continue providing millions of dollars of aid to aliens in the form of education, health-care services and public assistance. But a decision by the United States Supreme Court in June 1982 ruled that states cannot deny children of illegal aliens free education.
When immigration agents made raids on a number of businesses across the United States in May 1982, and deported the illegal alien workers, there were crowds of unemployed Americans seeking their jobs. At one plant where the raid left open 50 jobs, there were 1,000 applicants. A food plant in Chicago was left with 60 openings for which they received 600 applications. But frequently the citizens do not like the jobs and quit.
In a poultry plant north of San Francisco, 18 chicken pluckers were apprehended and deported. For these jobs there were hundreds of applicants. Within a week 14 of the 18 newly hired employees quit. At a fishery in Santa Rosa, California, the ones who sought the jobs of arrested aliens refused to do the aliens’ work of cleaning fish.
A furniture manufacturing company in Santa Ana, California, was left with approximately 100 assembly-line openings by the raids. A spokesman for the company said that the workers sent him by government agencies seldom lasted for a day. The work is hard and monotonous, and the local people do not want it.
The same was true at a California strawberry farm. Most of those who came to replace deported aliens quit the first day because it is very hard work. All day they worked on their knees.
Exploited Aliens
It is not unusual for employers of illegal aliens to take advantage of the aliens’ fear of deportation. The young Mexican man mentioned in the beginning of this article worked for a while for an employer who paid him about one third the minimum wage in the United States and nothing extra for overtime.
In New York City’s Chinatown, 60 illegal aliens from Hong Kong were found working in garment-industry sweatshops for less than one third the minimum wage. In similar sweatshops in Manhattan lofts, Chinese, Koreans and Cubans were found working for even less.
Fruit and vegetable growers who hire illegal aliens claim that they pay the minimum wage, but the money usually is paid to labor contractors who hire the workers. Frequently these contractors, aliens themselves, deduct a large amount from the wages, leaving the workers very little for their hard work.
Being willing to work for much less than local citizens, the aliens are able to revitalize failing industries. Since these industries would likely collapse without them, they are not competing for jobs with local people who demand higher pay, but they are actually creating jobs in other businesses that benefit from these industries.
Efforts to Cope With the Problem
The European countries would like to see their unwanted aliens return home and are pressing them to do so. France even instituted departure grants of $4,500 plus air fare for a family of four. But not enough are responding to the pressure, and so an explosive situation is forming.
In the United States the government is working on legislation that revamps the immigration laws. It grants amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, permitting them to gain legal status if they meet a residency requirement. On the other hand, it provides for increasing the staff and budget of the Immigration Service with the hope of making it more difficult for aliens to enter the country. Additionally it makes it tougher for illegal aliens to get jobs, even setting fines and prison terms for employers who knowingly hire them. By means of this legislation the government hopes to curtail the influx of illegal aliens.
The decision to grant legal status to those meeting a residency requirement was no doubt due to the impossibility of finding and deporting the millions of illegal aliens already residing in the country. But legalizing them creates a further problem. The Immigration Service will have the gigantic task of issuing these people residency documents when it is already swamped with more paperwork than it can handle. It is years behind in processing applications for legal residency. The district director of the Immigration Service in San Francisco said: “We have horrendous backlogs, tremendous delays. We’re falling further and further behind.”
The United States and European countries cannot put up a Berlin wall to keep out unwanted aliens. Even with a beefed-up border patrol there is little hope that the United States can stop the flood of illegal aliens that is increasing with the worsening of economic conditions and political upheavals in Latin America.
The only solution to the problem is a complete change in the worldwide economic and political systems that create floods of desperate refugees. All man’s efforts to make these changes have been dismal failures. Instead of creating an increasingly more united, peaceful and stable world, he is making one that is more divided politically and more unstable economically.
While man does not have the answer to the problem of unwanted aliens, God does. His long-promised world government can make the necessary changes. Under its rule mankind will no longer be fractured into innumerable quarreling governments of human origin but will be united under one perfect, just government of divine origin. The security it will bring is indicated in the Bible prophecy at Micah 4:3, 4, which says: “They will not lift up sword, nation against nation, neither will they learn war anymore. And they will actually sit, each one under his vine and under his fig tree, and there will be no one making them tremble.”