Fuentes On Immigration: Where Are Your Workers Coming From?

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

I’m interested in Carlos Fuentes’ political side.

There is a fine line, somewhere, that signals the place where you’ve gone too far. I don’t want to cross that line talking about Carlos Fuentes.  The fact that he passed away this week was a great loss for the world of literature and letters in general – even more so for the Latin American world of letters and politics. I’ll say this: he was a great influence in my life, although I never met him, aside from a brief lecture at a local university. But I do know several people who knew him and they speak of him glowingly.

But, like I said, I’m interested in his political side.  Specifically I’m interested in what he had to say about Mexican migration to the U.S. It’s a topic that has good people looking suspiciously at each other, gnarling when they should be building a common good. The good thing is that he left us plenty of fodder t0 discuss. And for that I’ll lean on a recent post written by Leslie Bernstein Rojas, curator at SCPR’s Multi-American blog. She writes:

What he said then resonates now, as migration from Mexico has dwindled in recent years, while some states have passed strict anti-illegal immigration laws that have left farmers in short supply of immigrant workers.

“In Mexico, we have a duty as well, and it is to provide labor to these workers. I wish they had never left Mexico. In the future, I want them to stay in Mexico. Mexico is a deeply divided country — 50 percent of the population of 100 million is poor. There should be jobs waiting for them. There are not. They have to come to the United States. We should provide jobs for 50 million Mexicans and help us step out of poverty. We’re still mired in poverty in Mexico. So I wish we had the offer of these jobs.

If we had a Franklin Roosevelt, he would find a way to give jobs to the 50 million, who would not migrate. But then that would be your problem: Where are your workers coming from?”

It’s a very healthy attitude, to look at the immigration issue as more than an argument about a line on a map and who has permission to cross it. Fuentes framed immigration around the human problems of sustenance, work, corruption, folly and need. Always leading to more: questions, discussions, and considerations.

You can read Bernstein’s complete post HERE.