An open letter to US Senator Jeff Sessions

Mr. Jeff Sessions, US Senator for Alabama
U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C.


SUBJECT: From a Mexican citizen, to  you


Dear Senator Sessions:


With the current immigration reform debate in full swing, although you may be getting an earful of comments and opinions from undocumented Mexicans living in the USA, I believe you seldom, if ever, get to hear from a Mexican who has not left his country to live in the land of Old Glory. Well, with, this letter, you will have what may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to listen to some things you have never heard before.

First of all, and let’s make this clear to begin with, I am not currently living in the USA, nor have I ever had any address of residence in the USA. Furthermore, I do not have any application for legal residence in the USA filed at any US Consulate of Embassy, nor do I have any intentions of ever going to live in the USA and taking up residence in your country. You can take my word for it, honest to goodness! As you can thus see, not all Mexicans are standing in line on an endless queue ready to abandon their country and go to live and work in the USA, legally or otherwise.

Second, I consider myself an informed individual. I deal with such things as computer engineering, quantum mechanics, Einstein’s relativity theory, advanced mathematics, data fitting to formulas, nuclear physics, non-Euclidean geometries and the like. I have published books on these subjects (in Spanish, of course, not in English) which are freely available on the Internet 24/7.

Now let’s get to the crux of the matter.

I understand that one of your main complaints about the 11 million or so undocumented aliens currently in the USA is that once legalized they will exacerbate the US population growth and will compete with US citizens for jobs which should be going to US citizens. To this I respond to you as follows:

Go ahead and deport all those 11 million undocumented immigrants sending them back to their countries (Mexico, mostly)! Send us back our nannies, our gardeners, our farm laborers, our iron works craftsmen, our nurses, our construction workers, our janitors, our carpenters, our plumbers, our artisans, our mariachis, our hotel maids, our car mechanics, our waitresses, our painters, our electricians, our chambermaids, and so forth! We need them right here in Mexico creating wealth and prosperity for Mexico, we don’t need them in the USA creating wealth and prosperity for North America! Go ahead, send them back! I dare you to do it, as a matter of fact I dare the US Congress as a whole to do it! The sooner the better. Personally, I do not care the least bit on the crack in the US economy the massive deportation of those hard-working individuals might cause. The economic consequences in your country of such a massive deportation is YOUR problem, not Mexico’s problem. I do not care if YOUR economy stagnates and dwindles, however I do care if the economy of Mexico continues to stagnate because of that gargantuan drain of hard working people who under the delusion of the so-called American dream end up being deported eventually with their kids taken away from them and their families broken apart. For far too long, Mexico has filled the hole that the end of slavery left in the USA since 1865, and the time is right to put an end to this exploitation. You can start to fill the gap by resorting to criminals who are serving prolonged jail sentences in the US criminal justice system, forcing your thugs and convicted felons to earn their daily living by making them work in hard labor such as picking watermelons and lettuces in the agricultural fields of California (back-breaking work which, by the way, Senators as Dianne Feinstein acknowledge and accept is currently being done by Mexican migrant workers). So, at least, on this important issue, returning valuable hard working Mexicans to Mexico, I believe you and I fully agree. But don’t just keep on threatening to do so, expelling undocumented Mexicans and shutting down forever and completely the US-Mexico border for all the undocumented immigration; just do it! Talk is cheap, very cheap, it’s just empty gas. Furthermore, if it is true (as some segments in the USA such as labor unions claim) that undocumented immigrants take good paying jobs away from American citizens, then expelling every single undocumented immigrant from the USA should THEORETICALLY bring the US unemployment (currently hovering at 7.6 per cent) all the way down to zero! Isn’t this true? Of all people in the USA, you, Senator Sessions, should know it! Just think about it! Zero unemployment in the USA! And all thanks to the US Congress! Wouldn’t that be something? Go ahead! Try this big social experiment (just as the Russians tried back ever since 1917 a big economic experiment, which by the way had to be dumped in 1991 just as the US Congress had to dump the Volstead Act given its abysmal failure; but you can’t blame the Russians for at least trying)! Reach for the big stick and clear the USA of all undocumented immigration, you can even call it the “war on illegal immigration” (just as President Nixon declared his “war on drugs” back in 1971, a war which by the way hasn’t being going well in the four decades that have gone by)! Just picture it, the unemployed citizens of Alabama thanking you, Senator Jeff Sessions, for reducing unemployment in the state of Alabama all the way down to zero, something that has never been seen in modern US history! The whole world is watching! Carpe diem, Senator Sessions, carpe diem.

Regarding your worries about the increase in population in the USA with unrestricted immigration, legal or otherwise, and the USA becoming overcrowded, besides tightening the current requirements for legal immigration you and the US Senate and the US Congress as a whole can do much better than that. Why don’t you shoot for ZERO IMMIGRATION VISAS. That’s right, and you heard me loud and clear. No immigration visas for anybody from now on! And it is the US Congress the one who decides on this; which means YOU! Not an immigration quota of one million immigrant visas per year, not an immigration quota of half a million immigrant visas per year, not an immigration quota of 100 thousand immigrant visas per year, not even an immigration quota of one hundred visas per year, but ZERO IMMIGRATION VISAS. This in turn would vastly contribute to a goal that some sectors in the USA have advocated for a long time: ZERO POPULATION GROWTH. This would certainly ease considerably the work at the US consulates and US embassies around the world (unfortunately, it would also cost many no-longer-needed interviewing officials at US consulates and embassies their jobs). But, PLEASE, don’t let yourself be dissuaded by things that are happening in such places as Laviano or entire nations such as Japan. Just go ahead and cut all immigration into the USA all the way down to zero for good! And if any US citizen insists on marrying an alien who lives outside the USA in order to spend the rest of his/her life with that alien, well then, he can leave the USA at any moment to live with his/her spouse, he/she is free to do so, that’s what liberty is all about. Let him/her become an alien, let him/her be alienated (pardon me, but the pun was irresistible).

There is an added extra bonus, of the utmost importance, in carrying immigration tightening all the way to its pinnacle by closing the gates for good and forever. One of the major points in the new immigration reform being discussed is the tightening of the border to the point of making such tightening a precondition to the legalization of the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the USA. By shutting the doors for good and abandoning any attempts to keep alive the motto “a nation of immigrants”, there will be no possibility whatsoever of any radical Muslim getting into the USA via legal immigration (just in case you haven’t noticed, and this has been confirmed by all the statistics accumulated in the tens of millions of crossings from Mexico into the USA through the authorized ports of entry since the days of the September 11 attacks back in 2001, not a single Muslim terrorist has been caught using the US-Mexico border to cross into the USA; all the Muslim terrorists including the 19 men who leveled the New York city Twin Towers and the Pentagon together with the Muslim terrorists who most recently carried out the Boston bombings plus all the rest, they all had legal entry visas into the USA and green cards issued by the US government, they were all welcomed with open arms). While conceivably the US Congress can attempt to bring all immigration into the USA from Muslim countries (Pakistan, Egypt, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, you name it) to a close, some Arab countries might take it as an offense denouncing it as discrimination based on national origin and religious beliefs, and can even retaliate with countries such as Saudi Arabia imposing an Arab oil embargo which could bring the frail US economy to its knees, sinking it into a black hole. However, by ending the issuance of ALL immigrant visas, with the zero immigration policy applied equally to all nations in the world, the USA cannot be accused of carrying out any discrimination based on national origin or religious beliefs. No immigration from any Muslim country, no radical Muslim would-be terrorists admitted into the USA. Isn’t that the real end objective of “making the borders secure”? Just picture it on the history books: Senator Jeff Sessions, the man who saved America from Muslim terrorism by mustering enough support to pass a zero immigration policy! Ironically, however, it is very likely that most Muslim terrorists in the Middle East and Asia might take it as a major triumph, forcing the USA to isolate itself from the rest of the world, and might even hail Jeff Sessions for his tough stance on immigration issues. Nevertheless, zero immigration is a major change in policy worth considering by politicians such as yourself. But, PLEASE, stop blaming us Mexicans for your problems with the Muslim terrorists you have been admitting into the USA with open arms. It’s hard to forget here in Mexico that the US government, waving the flag of Manifest Destiny and acting as a bully, stole from Mexico more than half of its territory, land which many Mexicans are now forbidden to visit legally even if just for the purpose of spending a short summer vacation (I am referring here to Mexicans who do not qualify for a non-immigrant B visa even though they have no criminal records in the USA or Mexico and even if they hold a steady job in Mexico, or even if they are retired senior citizens who due to old age and one foot on their graves would certainly not be able to compete for any kind of job in the USA, and many Mexicans who will not be admitted even as tourists in a big chunk of land that was once ours). For once in a while, the USA politicians (that includes you!) should try to be good neighbors and put the blame for your homeland security woes on the right places, not on us. If you have been admitting dangerous Muslim terrorists from the Middle East and Asia legally (and irresponsibly) into the USA, you should put the blame on the person you see on the mirror every day you wake up, not on the Mexicans who are mere bystanders on the other side of the fence watching events unfold.

I do admit that it will not be easy for you and the US Congress to pass something aspiring towards zero immigration. To begin with, there are some major US companies (such as Microsoft) which are already complaining very loudly at the tight controls already in place restricting the entrance of highly skilled and competent professionals in the fields of science and technology. And, yes, there are other nations (such as China, rapidly becoming a world superpower with its own space program and majestic tall rise buildings and bridges) that are catching up with the USA, with the end result that the technological leadership once taken for granted in the USA is evaporating with each day that goes by. It is very ironic that, in choking off the legal entry of qualified technicians and professionals into the USA, the US Congress actually did an invaluable service to those nations who otherwise would have lost an extremely valuable pool of very talented people, the same people who instead of creating wealth and prosperity in the USA have no other option but to remain in their own countries creating wealth and prosperity for their own countries instead of creating it for the USA. Can you now understand why, if you kick back to Mexico the millions and millions of hard working undocumented immigrants who are creating wealth and prosperity for the USA, you will actually be doing Mexico a favor instead of a disservice? So go ahead! Send them back! We can use those hands here to accelerate the buildup of our country instead of watching them from our side of the fence contribute to build the wealth and prosperity of the USA instead of Mexico.

Nevertheless, if the US Congress decides to relax its tight immigration policies directed against highly competent and skilled professionals in other countries, you may have missed the boat completely, because a wave of immigration such as the European wave that brought into the USA personalities such as Wernher von Braun (the creator of the US space program), John von Neumann, Kurt Gödel, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Eugene Wigner, and many many other like them is simply not going to happen; for that to happen it would be a must for Europe to immerse itself into another world war and another crazy tyrant such as Hitler would have to seize power in Germany or in some other country in the euro zone where he can do for Europe the same things that were done by Nazi madman. That is simply not going to happen. The Europeans have learned their lesson. Furthermore, with the Asian dragon on the rise and China becoming a technological superpower joining Japan and Korea, I don’t think you’re going to get much from those countries either. Looking back, I’m sure those countries are and will forever be extremely grateful to the US Congress for making legal immigration of their technicians and scientists into the USA so hard. The patents generated by that talented pool of professionals which would have otherwise gone to the USA is going instead to their own countries allowing them to better compete with the USA (and in the process, killing US factories and jobs in the USA). So, where are all the jobs going? Where the patents and inventions are being produced, of course! By whom? By the same people who otherwise could have been part of the brain drains that once allowed the USA to prosper exponentially at the expense of other nations. I might add that the rest of the world is eagerly awaiting the fulfillment of your intentions to scuttle the Immigration Reform of 2013 altogether, either by a filibuster or whatever means you might find in your bag of tricks, for if you succeed in sinking it, then the planned new quota priorities and expansion of immigrant visas for highly skilled professionals will also go down the drain, something which may not make outfits such as Oracle, Microsoft and the like very happy, but will most certainly make very happy other nations around the world like India and Singapur who are contemplating at the possibility of losing some of their top talents to the USA. Go ahead, make their day!

It is my understanding that, starting from the most basic assumption that behind every single undocumented immigrant looking for employment in the USA there must necessarily be an employer in the USA willing to hire him, under the current talks regarding the overhaul of the US immigration system the idea of employer sanctions is being thrown around. For heaven’s sake, do yourselves a favor and stop wasting time! Employer sanctions are already in the books since they were passed in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 signed into law by President Reagan. They were just never enforced as they should have been. Even if the US Congress enacts the death penalty against those in the USA who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants, those penalties will be of no use whatsoever if the penalties are very laxly enforced, and in this regard, besides sporadic bravados such as the Postville raid carried out in May 2008 (which, by the way, bankrupted the local economy of Postville when the meat packing plant was unable to find replacements for the workers that were taken away from them), employer penalties already in the books are non-existent as far as employers of undocumented immigrants are concerned. So, rather, than stiffening up employer sanctions, the US Congress should look more closely into why employer sanctions already in the books have not been enforced as they should have. It is safe to assume that in many American households, even people who work in top government jobs blatantly disregard the threat of employer sanctions. Remember Zoe Baird, the woman who was nominated to be Attorney General of the USA, the very same person who was to act in behalf of the US government as top prosecutor in charge of vigorously prosecuting employers of undocumented aliens and enforcing employer sanctions as called for by Congress, putting an end to all undocumented immigration for all times? Holy guacamole! If you don’t recall who she is, look it up on Wikipedia, or better still, look it up under Nannygate. The extent of the cynicism on this issue is so widespread that even if Senator Jeff Sessions ever broke the law on this issue by knowingly hiring a Salvadorean nanny or a Honduran chauffeur or a Peruvian gardener, I would not be amazed the least bit. Of course, anyone who writes laws into the books knowing well beforehand that those laws will never be enforced or at the most enforced laxly is making a buffoon of himself and is making look all those people who voted him into office as mentally impaired, to put it mildly.

I confess that I am an ignorant regarding your family genealogy, regarding your family tree history as it goes back all the way to the first Sessions who arrived in the USA. But I’m willing to bet that the very first Sessions of whom you are a direct descendant did not have a PhD in molecular biology, nor did he have a Master of Science Degree in Mathematics, nor was he a world renowned authority is some field such as neurophysiology (there used to be a time when most of the immigrants who arrived in the USA were dirt poor and had no formal education, not even what amounts to elementary, being completely illiterate, and some of them were even fleeing from the criminal justice systems in their own countries). This in turn means that, if the same immigration requirements that Jeff Sessions wants to impose on all further legal immigration had been in effect when the first forebear of Jeff Sessions planned to immigrate into America, he would not have fulfilled the requirements, he would not have been allowed entry into America. And there would have been no Jeff Sessions, at least not in the USA. (Would Jeff Sessions himself, at this very moment, meet the requirements for legal immigration into the USA under the current immigration system? Has Jeff Sessions ever asked himself this very important question? Don’t forget that the reason why you have so many undocumented immigrants in the USA is because they have no legal options for immigration, not even temporary legal immigration without the right for permanent residence.) In this respect, if the intentions of Jeff Sessions of stiffening even further the already stiff current immigration system requirements are to keep from immigrating into America people such as the first forebear of Jeff Sessions who landed in America when he most likely was poor and destitute, which would in turn mean no more “Jeff Sessions” being allowed legal entry into the USA, then your efforts in the US Senate regarding immigration issues should be applauded strenuously with a standing ovation.

Just one last thing.

The Statue of Liberty has an inscription on a plaque in the museum in its base that says:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses”.

As things stand at this very historical moment, I believe that the phrase is sheer hypocrisy. Most certainly none of the US Border Patrol agents working near the US-Mexico border believe in it, it is their job not to believe in such fantasies, such is the mandate they have been given by the US Congress itself! The inscription should be deleted, or better still, the plaque should be removed altogether. Perhaps the US Congress might even consider returning the Statue of Liberty itself to France, having outlived its usefulness (it should have been given back to France the very next day that Ellis island was shut down for good as an immigration inspection station). Unless, of course, the US Congress insists on keeping a big lie alive, which would not be the first time in history.

Adios, amigo!

Sincerely


Armando Martinez
Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua
MEXICO