IMMIGMAYHEM: NO EASY ANSWER TO ETHNIC RIFT.

Byline: JONATHAN DOBRER Local View

THE idea of "A Day Without Immigrants" was not bad. With all the posing, posturing and hypocrisy about immigration from both right and left the issue demands to be taken seriously. For those who want to talk about getting rid of illegal aliens, we ought to consider what would happen if all the Hispanics (and this is the group we are actually talking about, even if mostly in code) were taken in some kind of Migra-Rapture and we were all left behind.

Just who would mow our lawns, bus our tables, harvest our crops and care for our children? How would many single-parent families have the single parent go to work? But why stick with the first generation of newcomers? How about those who have been here since youth and are now teachers, doctors and other kinds of professionals?

Yet it is also true that were we to have open borders, we would be flooded by people who naturally seek better lives for themselves and their families. This is what decent people desire and do. It is how we all got here including the native American Indians.

We have legitimate and important differences in our society concerning immigration and the consequences of both tolerating and encouraging illegal immigration. We must have a dialogue, even a debate concerning this hot-button issue. However, there is great danger that our conversation, though naturally heated, may become venomous.

I do not believe that I have received so much passionate and unfortunately racist e-mail on any other subject. Yes, certainly it would be nice if we were just discussing immigration and it were only a question of following or breaking the law, but this is not the case. There is an issue of "race" here. And while I know "Hispanic" is not a race, organizations like La Raza don't help ameliorate our confusion of race, culture and ethnicity.

What we are really talking about is both ethnic and cultural. Many have fears that Spanish will overtake English as our national language and we will lose a sense of truly being one nation. Many, even from a liberal perspective, now want to make English our official language.

The controversy concerning flags and the singing of our national anthem in Spanish is also instructive standing for far more than a song or a colored cloth. "Why don't they' learn our language? Why do so many of them march with Mexican or El Salvadoran flags? This is America. Carry our flag. Show your allegiance to us if you want us to help you to stay."

Culture and language are legitimate issues for disagreement. I understand how people feel alienated in their own communities as the signage changes to Spanish or Urdu, Thai, Chinese or Korean. This must be very much how many New Yorkers felt at the turn of the last century seeing Hebrew letters spelling out Yiddish words and even their own alphabet rendering words in Italian. Ours is not the first time or culture to say, "There goes the neighborhood."

Yet Jewish, Italian, Polish and Irish immigrants became good Americans, and we wonder today why our great-grandparents felt so threatened by them. (Except that many of our great-grandparents were, of course, them).

But isn't this different? I mean, there are so many and our borders are so porous. Aren't we really being invaded not by a charging army but a flood wave, a slow-motion tsunami? Isn't the failure of our government to enforce the borders just like Katrina?

Yes, the levees have failed and a sea of illegal immigrants is pouring in. Water seeks its level and low-paying (by our standards) jobs are attracting people. And like Katrina, it is those on the bottomland below the sea-level of poverty who are most displaced. The irony is that the loudest complaints and greatest fears are expressed by the least threatened and most benefited by cheap labor.

This is a difficult and divisive issue, and it deserves a frank conversation. Since we are dealing with the lives of real people who already live here, who work here, who have children who are by law American citizens, we need to be aware of our deepest values and their humanity. Advocating the deportation of 12 million mostly brown people has a name: ethnic cleansing. This, of course, will not happen and is not a danger. However, some day we will be embarrassed that this possibility was even considered.

But aren't they going to "take back" California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas in a reconquista, as some of their more intemperate spokesmen either threaten or brag? Isn't the combination of the lowering white birthrate and the higher Hispanic birthrate, coupled with illegal immigration, going to make the Southwest brown? Won't white Americans be a minority as whites are already a minority in the high school system in Los Angeles and the university system in all of California?

The issues of language and culture are discussable. The drive to preserve American culture and the English language has some merit. It is, after all, difficult, possibly impossible, to find a bilingual country that is truly a country and not busy tearing itself apart. Neither Canada nor Belgium is a good argument for bilingualism. They seem to prove that language creates separations and corrodes national identity. Nor does Switzerland advance the cause. Its four languages each identifies separate cantons. Switzerland is a multilingual federation and not a single country.

The dirty not-so secret is that there is ample hypocrisy to go around. From the right that wants to label economic refugees as criminals and deport them, yet also wants cheap labor in homes, fields and factories, to liberals who love Hispanic people and want them to stay, but do not pay their maids, nannies, gardeners a living wage or any benefits.

Our borders are not controlled, and that creates a national security issue. But a wall will not keep out motivated economic refugees or invaders. The Great Wall did not protect China by keeping invaders out, nor did East Germany's wall keep people in or ideas out. As the poet wrote, "Something there is that does not love a wall."

The only way to control immigration is by controlling the end-users. No one would climb the walls, slip under the barbed wire, swim the rivers and cross the deserts if there were not jobs. If we made businesses pay minimum wage, Social Security and health benefits, the job market for illegal labor would not disappear overnight, but it would certainly diminish.

The danger inherent in punishing employers is that our government will go after the little guys. We'll prosecute and fine the mom who hires a nanny and the family that uses a gardener instead of the agribusiness that hires and exploits thousands and the sweatshops that employ hundreds. Perhaps the way to go is strong employer sanctions for those who employ 10 or more undocumented workers from anywhere.

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