BORDER RELATIONS : DEALING WITH MEXICO SEEKING WORKABLE ANSWER TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION.

Byline: Raoul Lowery Contreras

EVERY day of the week, they gather at intersections throughout the San Fernando Valley. Most are in the United States legally, according to the Border Patrol and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Many of these people can be found at home improvement centers throughout Southern California. Some can be found at officially sponsored centers, as in Laguna Beach, where individuals, contractors and homeowners can drive by and select day workers for odd jobs, construction work, moving and whatever other casual labor jobs that need be done.

These people, mostly Mexican nationals, are living symbols of the current state of Mexican and American relations - simultaneously needed and disliked; functioning economic units and criticized for it; looked down upon, yet used for their productivity.

They've come to the United States, legally and illegally for the same reasons Mexicans have come for two centuries - work, a better life and escape from a less than desirable economic situation in their homeland. It is not, however, an invasion.

A real ``invasion'' occurred in 1915, just one year after U.S. Army Capt. Douglas MacArthur won a Congressional Medal of Honor in the American invasion of Vera Cruz, Mexico. In 1916, Pancho Villa's irregulars attacked Columbus, N.M., killing some Americans. The United States responded by invading Mexico, for the second time in two years, with President Wilson's ``Punitive Expedition.''

Mexicans shrugged their shoulders, remembering former Mexican Dictator Porfirio Diaz's remark for the ages, ``Pity poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States,'' and thrashed the U.S. Army's 10th Cavalry.

The Americans, who never located Villa's irregulars, showed so poorly that the American commander, Gen. John. J. ``Blackjack'' Pershing, wrote to a friend that his troops looked like ``whipped dogs with their tails between their legs,'' as they left Mexico.

This is the historical back-drop of American intervention in Mexican affairs in this century. The latest intervention wasn't military but political when U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration administrator Thomas Constantine publicly attacked Mexico for permitting massive drug-money laundering through Mexican banks, charges he made without corroboration, proof or even names and places.

With U.S senators like New York's Alfonse D'Amato (R), North Carolina's Jesse Helms (R) and California's Dianne Feinstein (D) joining Constantine by loudly complaining that Mexico didn't deserve to be certified as doing enough against drugs coming to America, it was little wonder that the Mexicans were miffed and irritated at American politicians and bureaucrats alike prior to the largest gathering of Mexican and American politicians ever organized.

The recently concluded 13th U.S.-Mexico Bi-National Conference was attended by more than 300 highly placed politicians of both countries that were led by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and his Mexican counterpart, Foreign Secretary Jose Angel Gurria.

With a background of two military invasions by the United States within the lifetimes of many Mexicans and vituperative comments from Sens. Helms, D'Amato and Feinstein ringing in Mexican ears and blasts from the State Department and DEA Administrator Constantine, the meeting opened with bitter welcoming remarks by Mexican Foreign Secretary Gurria - remarks about potential ``confrontation'' between the United States and Mexico.

Using the widely viewed video incident of the beating of two illegal immigrants by Riverside County sheriff's deputies as his starting point, Minister Gurria pointed out that the beatings were the logical conclusion of American immigration law enforcement.

He challenged the manner of such law enforcement by the United States that led to disastrous high-speed chases of vehicles carrying illegals that crashed and caused several deaths and many injuries in places like Temecula and Alpine, Calif.

Gurria's well-publicized statements demanding better treatment and human rights protections for Mexicans in the United States were intended to raise the stakes of U.S.-Mexican relations, at least for domestic Mexican consumption and were patterned after those of erstwhile candidate for the U.S. presidency, Patrick Buchanan.

As noted in a San Diego Union-Tribune editorial, ``Gurria's words were akin to Pat Buchanan's whipping up anti- immigrant fervor in a speech earlier this year at the international border. The Mexican media love defiant talk against the United States.''

With Mexican bodies lying alongside American roads with border patrolmen standing around denying they were chasing the illegals and Mexican heads being bashed by zealous over-excited sheriff's deputies, there is plenty of reason for Mexicans to perceive that they are in for it in the United States, according to the conventional wisdom in the Mexican media.

But are they, really? To some extent they are, for among Americans there are pockets of nativist and/or bigoted thinking and action that obsesses on any Mexicans, much less those here illegally. This is reflected on talk radio, in newspapers, in community meetings and in the successful Proposition 187 campaign of two years ago.

Mostly, however, they are not. A recent survey undertaken by the University of San Diego's Trans-Border Institute shows that most San Diegans are ambivalent about the overall presence of illegals from Mexico in California.

Considering that San Diego takes the brunt of the illegal ``invasion,'' the survey's conclusions are astounding. Moreover, among Republican lawmakers surveyed, they mostly viewed the problem as one of ``law enforcement,'' not the economics of them working, ``taking Americans jobs'', etc. Meanwhile, Democrats who were surveyed thought the problem was more socioeconomic and one of ``exploitation'' than one of ``law enforcement.''

Immigration swirled around the 13th U.S.-Mexico Bi-National Conference like a vicious riptide, pulling and tugging both countries into areas neither wanted to go.

The Mexicans don't want to stop immigration to the United States, legal or illegal, for it serves as a safety valve to the highly charged economic and political conditions that have almost destroyed Mexico economically in the past year.

These conditions have ripped the Mexican social fabric like no other economic crisis since the left-wing uprisings of the Sixties. Lacking such a safety valve could lead to revolution with real shooting in the streets and millions, yes millions, of Mexicans fleeing bloodshed for the United States.

What would we do with 10, 20 or 30 million or more Mexicans abandoning 30 centuries of splendor to ski-masked, Castro-inspired terrorists? We could easily face such a huge problem if we don't work with Mexico now to solve its economic and social problems, our nativists' bigotry notwithstanding. We have no choice.

Moreover, it is no secret that American industry, particularly the agricultural sector, needs immigrants, legal and illegal, to function. Surveys indicate that as many as 90 percent of California's agricultural work force was born in Mexico. And, this situation is not limited to California.

There are almost 100,000 people of Mexican origin in Washington state's Yakima Valley. The same number now live and work in Nevada, providing key personnel for the hotel and gaming industry. The meatpacking plants of Iowa and Minnesota have large percentages of Mexicans in their work forces.

On Maui, in the state of Hawaii, Mexicans, flown in from California, pick pineapples for the growers who can't find people in Hawaii to pick their crop.

In a word, Mexicans and their American-born families have become essential and indispensable to American commerce and more are needed. Their need can be assessed by the bills introduced into the Congress this year that would have permitted up to a quarter-million guest workers from Mexico into the country with little paperwork.

The proposal was backed by California agricultural interests and they prevailed on anti-immigrant Gov. Pete Wilson to support the bill. But it did not pass.

That failure was unfortunate. Professor Julian Simon of the University of Maryland has documented an interesting phenomenon. When the famous guest worker program of the '40s, '50s and '60s - the Bracero Program - was in effect, illegal immigration directly corresponded to the number of legal workers allowed into the United States. In other words, the more legal workers allowed, fewer illegals came. When legal levels were lowered, illegal entrants increased.

The problem, therefore, of illegal immigration is easily solved and both Mexico and the United States know that and know how to do it. A legal guest worker problem and employer sanctions for those who hire illegals would dry up the problem overnight.

Those Mexicans standing around hundreds of Southern California intersections looking for day jobs send billions of dollars back to Mexico, to their families and do so eagerly for their mission is not to hijack America, but to feed their families in Mexico. Given the opportunity to do so they would work part of the year and spend the other part with their families in Mexico.

This would work for farm workers since the strawberry fields of Oxnard and Ventura don't function the year round. But where this system breaks down is in industrial Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley where workers are required year round by the nation's largest manufacturing complex.

Like honey to bees, the industry of Los Angeles is the draw to thousands upon thousands of people willing to work for low wages. Conversely, they are the base of Los Angeles' wealth. Able young Mexican men working in California fields or factories serve all parties well by keeping them economically busy, productive and away from criminal activity.

Even Gov. Wilson recognizes this in his support for a legal plan to allow up to 250,000 legal seasonal farm workers into the United States. The plan, sponsored by Republican senators, failed and would have been vetoed by President Clinton if passed.

Nonetheless, they still keep coming and will, no matter how many officers President Clinton sends to the border. More officers make it difficult, not impossible. More officers make it look like President Clinton is actually doing something about the border problem, but they keep coming anyway.

Despite a mood of ``confrontation'' that greeted the American delegation as they arrived in Mexico with images of dead Mexicans on California highways, or of immigrants being beaten with nightsticks on world-wide television, the conference ended on a positive, champagne toasted note.

A four-page document signed by Christopher and Gurria highlighted conference accomplishments. The document declared that neither country will deny basic human and constitutional rights to each other's nationals.

The American delegation left Mexico smiling, the Mexicans left satisfied - a confrontation was avoided. Mexicans snuck across the border and the Border Patrol chased them. And at intersections throughout Southern California, they still gather waiting for work and ever thankful that the bi-national politicians who met in Mexico and sipped champagne agreed to protect their human rights.

MEMO: Raoul Lowery Contreras is a writer based in San Diego.

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Photo

Photo: (Color) Tuning in: Secretary of State Warren Christo pher at the U.S.- Mexico Binational Commission meeting.

Associated Press