June 29, 2011|By Dan Rodricks
We stopped at a supermarket in Baltimore County to buy some apples and peaches, possibly picked by undocumented immigrants employed by an orchard somewhere across the fruited plain. At the entrance to the store, a woman sat at a table offering an anti-Dream Act petition to Friday evening shoppers who appeared eager to sign it. They want to repeal a new Maryland law that would allow in-state college tuition to the undocumented children of undocumented immigrants.
Of course, most of those kids, while not citizens, have been through our high schools already. In fact, the Dream Act only applies to Maryland residents who, starting in fall 2005, attended one of our high schools for at least three years and got a diploma.
In addition, they have to prove their parents paid Maryland taxes for at least three years and that they're still paying taxes.
They have to file an affidavit pledging to apply for permanent residency.
They have to register with the U.S. Selective Service System.
No matter how bright or prepared for a four-year college they might be, they have to attend a community college first. (Students who went through a community college, starting with the fall semester of 2010, are also eligible; they have to meet all the requirements stated above, including the bit about their parents being taxpayers.)
Dream Act opponents don't always mention all the conditions attached to it, so I do every chance I get.
But back to the supermarket, and its presumed support of the Dream Act repeal.
Does it occur to anyone who goes into that independent grocery — or all the other supermarkets around us — that the food we buy, and the prices we pay for it, are directly connected to farms that employ immigrants? They are seasonal migrant workers, a lot of them. But a lot of them also settle down in Maryland and other states and raise their families here. They work hard. They work cheap. They keep the price of apples and peaches — and a lot of other goods and services — reasonable.
I suggest that if you are so adamant about denying undocumented families everything — if, indeed, you'd like to see them all deported — then you should not buy the apples and peaches they pick. Stay away from the fresh produce unless it comes with a stamp: "This cucumber picked by an American citizen." Stay away from apple juice and apple sauce, the canned fruit cocktail that contains the fruit that illegals pick. You should avoid buying and eating vegetables, too, unless they're locally grown and picked by naturalized or native citizens. (And stay away from Big Macs, with that lettuce, onions and pickles.)
A reporter asked a farmer in Echols County, Ga., about the Peach State's recent passage of an Arizona-style law to require private employers to verify the immigration status of all new hires. "People don't understand how it's going to affect the price of food in grocery stores," Dee Ritter told the Valdosta Daily Times. "It's a bad situation for a produce farmer. Already, there has been a lot less help around, and it'll only get worse. They're scared and worried, saying they're going to have to leave for some place without such stringent laws. ... They're the workforce. It's not just farming, it's housing and landscaping."
Pardon me if this sounds like apples and oranges now — comparing Maryland's Dream Act with Georgia's E-Verify law — but you get my point about the American supermarket: It sells, and presumably makes a profit from, immigrant-picked produce. The rest of us look the other way when it comes to the "legality" of what we buy and eat. We know that immigrants (legal or otherwise) are in the food production chain, and that their presence keeps the prices down. They are in the servant class, too; they keep many American homes, hotels, hospitals and businesses clean and looking superb from the curb. They cook meals; they bus tables. They pay into the Social Security trust fund — by the hundreds of billions, according to its chief actuary — that we're counting on for retirement.
So, crackdowns on this undocumented underclass — seeking them out and deporting them, or depriving their children of a break in the cost of education — highlights one of the great hypocrisies in our midst: We accept the contributions undocumented workers quietly make to our lives, while wishing they weren't here. And some of us are all too eager to penalize their kids.
Dan Rodricks' column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. He is the host of Midday on WYPR 88.1 FM. His email is dan.rodricks@baltsun.com.
