Edward Abbey was talking about these issues in 1988 and he took a lot of hate for it.

Immigration and Liberal Taboos
by Edward Abbey

In the American Southwest, where I happen to live, only sixty miles north of the Mexican border, the subject of illegal aliens is a touchy one. Even the terminology is dangerous: the old word wet**** is now considered a racist insult by all good liberals; and the perfectly correct terms illegal alien and illegal immigrant can set off charges of xenophobia, elitism, fascism, and the ever-popular genocide against anyone careless enough to use them. The only acceptable euphemism, it now appears, is something called undocumented worker. Thus the pregnant Mexican woman who appears, in the final stages of labor, at the doors of the emergency ward of an El Paso or San Diego hospital, demanding care for herself and the child she's about to deliver, becomes an "undocumented worker." The child becomes an automatic American citizen by virtue of its place of birth, eligible at once for all of the usual public welfare benefits. And with the child comes not only the mother but the child's family. And the mother's family. And the father's family. Can't break up families can we? They come to stay and they stay to multiply.

What of it? say the documented liberals; ours is a rich and generous nation, we have room for all, let them come. And let them stay, say the conservatives; a large, cheap, frightened, docile, surplus labor force is exactly what the economy needs. Put some fear into the unions: tighten discipline, spur productivity, whip up the competition for jobs. The conservatives love their cheap labor; the liberals love their cheap cause. (Neither group, you will notice, ever invites the immigrants to move into their homes. Not into their homes!) Both factions are supported by the cornucopia economists of the ever-expanding economy, who actually continue to believe that our basic resource is not land, air, water, but human bodies, more and more of them, the more the better in hive upon hive, world without end-ignoring the clear fact that those nations which most avidly practice this belief, such as Haiti, Puerto Rico, Mexico, to name only three, don't seem to be doing well. They look more like explosive slow-motion disasters, in fact, volcanic anthills, than functioning human societies. But that which our academic economists will not see and will not acknowledge is painfully obvious to los latinos: they stream north in ever-growing numbers.

Meanwhile, here at home in the land of endless plenty, we seem still unable to solve our traditional and nagging difficulties. After forty years of the most fantastic economic growth in the history of mankind, the United States remains burdened with mass unemployment, permanent poverty, an overloaded welfare system, violent crime, clogged courts, jam-packed prisons commercial ("white-collar") crime, rotting cities and a poisoned environment, eroding farmlands and the disappearing family farm all of the usual forms of racial ethnic and sexual conflict (which immigration further intensifies), plus the ongoing destruction of what remains of our forests, fields, mountains, lakes, rivers, and seashores, accompanied by the extermination of whole specie's of plants and animals. To name but a few of our little nagging difficulties.

This being so, it occurs to some of us that perhaps evercontinuing industrial and population growth is not the true road to human happiness, that simple gross quantitative increase of this kind creates only more pain, dislocation, confusion, and misery. In which case it might be wise for us as American citizens to consider calling a halt to the mass influx of even more millions of hungry, ignorant, unskilled, and culturallymorally-generically impoverished people. At least until we have brought our own affairs into order. Especially when these uninvited millions bring with them an alien mode of life whichlet us be honest about this-is not appealing to the majority of Americans. Why not? Because we prefer democratic government, for one thing; because we still hope for an open, spacious, uncrowded, and beautiful-yes, beautiful!-society, for another. The alternative, in the squalor, cruelty, and corruption of Latin America, is plain for all to see.

Yes, I know, if the American Indians had enforced such a policy none of us pale-faced honkies would be here. But the Indians were foolish, and divided, and failed to keep our WASP ancestors out. They've regretted it ever since.

To everything there is a season, to every wave a limit, to every range an optimum capacity. The United States has been fully settled, and more than full, for at least a century. We have nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by allowing the old boat to be swamped. How many of us, truthfully, would prefer to be submerged in the Caribbean-Latin version of civilization? (Howls of "Racism! Elitism! Xenophobia!" from the Marx brothers and the documented liberals.) Harsh words: but somebody has to say them. We cannot play "let's pretend" much longer, not in the present world.

Therefore-let us close our national borders to any further mass immigration, legal or illegal, from any source, as does every other nation on earth. The means are available, it's a simple technical-military problem. Even our Pentagon should be able to handle it. We've got an army somewhere on this planet, let's bring our soldiers home and station them where they can be of some actual and immediate benefit to the taxpayers who support them. That done, we can begin to concentrate attention on badly neglected internal affairs. Our internal affairs. Everyone would benefit, including the neighbors. Especially the neighbors.

Ah yes. But what about those hungry hundreds of millions, those anxious billions, yearning toward the United States from every dark and desperate corner of the world? Shall we simply ignore them? Reject them? Is such a course possible?

"Poverty," said Samuel Johnson, "is the great enemy of human happiness. It certainly destroys liberty, makes some virtues impracticable, and all virtues extremely difficult."

You can say that again, Sam.

Poverty, injustice, over breeding, overpopulation, suffering, oppression, military rule, squalor, torture, terror, massacre: these ancient evils feed and breed on one another in synergistic symbiosis. To break the cycles of pain at least two new forces are required: social equity-and birth control. Population control. Our Hispanic neighbors are groping toward this discovery. If we truly wish to help them we must stop meddling in their domestic troubles and permit them to carry out the social, political, and moral revolution which is both necessary and inevitable.

Or if we must meddle, as we have always done, let us meddle for a change in a constructive way. Stop every campesino at our southern border, give him a handgun, a good rifle, and a case of ammunition, and send him home. He will know what to do with our gifts and good wishes. The people know who their enemies are.

-- from from One Life at a Time, Please (1988)

Regarding terminoligy in para. 1 - Abbey is wrong:

The correct term is "undocumented alien" or "undocumented immigrant". This is what's used in the laws.

It's like "illegal drugs". The correct term is "controlled substances". "Illegal drugs" is the vernacular.

Regarding paragraph 3 - what he says are old arguments. They said the same thing about immigrants in the 1840s. Abbey's arguments were written 17 years ago, and we haven't yet experienced the demographic apocalypse. The things he's listed, are still problems. In fact, look at how many large gas guzzlers people have bought, and how much more plastic packaging we have today. Ecologically, we're very wasteful.

Wage pressures have been very hard on people, but, I believe it comes more from the general anti-labor attitude of the state than anything else. Another major cause was the Clinton administration's push of welfare reform that pushed a lot of folks into the labor market.

Para 5 - he should have watched out what he wished for.

Para 7 - Another anti-immigration environmentalist. His invocation of the army will inspire insubordination, because many of then are the children of immigrants.

>"Poverty," said Samuel Johnson, "is the great enemy of human happiness. It certainly destroys liberty, makes some virtues impracticable, and all virtues extremely difficult."<

What is the cause of this unhapiness, though, except the division of people for the benefit of one group of people, and the impoverishing of the other group.

Liberty should belong to everyone, not just those who can afford it, as Johnson implies. Liberty purchased by the unfreedom of others is not liberty at all, but theft.

>Or if we must meddle, as we have always done, let us meddle for a change in a constructive way. Stop every campesino at our southern border, give him a handgun, a good rifle, and a case of ammunition, and send him home. He will know what to do with our gifts and good wishes. The people know who their enemies are.<

Oh guess what. America does arm some Latin Americans, like the contras and the El Salvador death squads. They arm the wealthy landowners who exploit the campesino. They caused many to die, and others to flee, some to America. They pressure Latin American countries to adopt trade plans that create the unemployed farmer.

I think it's preferable that some immigrate and work, and send money back, forming a cross-border culture that will ultimately alter Latin America, especially Mexico, making it more like the US, as much or more than they make the US like Latin America.

Here are some response to the article and JohnK's response:

People (immigrants or not) have every right to send their money anywhere they want to (Mexico, Las Vegas, etc.). That is their money and it's compensation for work they have done.

Every immigrant group remains tied culturally, financially or otherwise to their native land. It's always been like that but after a generation the ties are less and less strong.

Everybody knows this by know but the article was written before Bill Clinton passed NAFTA and before corporations "invaded" Mexico and destroyed their local infrastructure and farming base.. Then they up and moved everything to places like China where they could find cheaper labor leaving the Mexican people screwed.

The author of the article mentions Puerto Rico. Would SOS and other hate groups oppose a large wave of Puerto Rican immigration into their cities (Ventura, etc.) My guess is yes. And that would expose them as racist since they wouldn't be able to hide behind the "we just oppose illegal immigration" argument. They can deny it but I believe that would be the case.

Don't forget that Abbey was the product of his time and the labels and rhetoric he employed in his writings was the result of the social and economic environment he lived in.

It's not exactly fair to judge him for calling people "illegal" any more than it's fair to complain about people saying "blacks" instead of "people of color" today. What;'s socially acceptable rhetoric and labels changes -- some times starkly -- over the years.

Abbey's perspectives were also inbued with specific examples of the consequences of unchecked population growth due to the years he spent as a Ranger interfacing with an increasingly stupid tourist populace. His distain for people of _all_ walks of life seems to me to have been pretty big when it came to the sheep mentality that's brought America the SUV Republican IQ mindset we're laboring under today.

Also Abbey's complaints about racial aspects oif pollution aren't unique. The environmentalist movement as a whole seems to me to have a large number of people lamenting the consequences of poverty and ignorance.

Any way, when Abbey drew heavy criticism when he was alive, I considered it a bit unfair given thathe wasn't unique by any means.