Bottom line: We are a nation of immigrants

For years now, whenever there's a problem in the United States, the response has been to blame everything on the southern border of the United States that we share with Mexico.

Last month right after the Oct. 7 attack by the Middle Eastern terrorist group Hamas on Israel. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene predicted the same thing could happen to the United States "because our country has been invaded by millions of people from 160 countries."

Was she referring to the legal immigration of millions of people from many countries over the past 150 years? We are a nation of immigrants; only the indigenous people are not descended from immigrants. But many Americans feel anyone arriving after their ancestors could not have valid reasons to be here.

Greene went on to say the same people attacking Israel "are right now pouring in ... through our totally open border."

But the reality is that immigrants are pouring in now for the same reasons they always have poured in — to escape persecution and poverty for a better life for themselves and their descendants.

Over 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island's immigration processing system alone between 1892 and 1954, according to Wikipedia, and that's not even counting people coming in other portals such as Baltimore.

But even while Ellis Island was processing millions of immigrants, others were coming across the southern border. There were the young Chinese laborers of the 1880s, young German men during both world wars who were feared to be spies and Jews and Catholics who throughout U.S. history were viewed with suspicion by the mainline Protestant Christian majority.

More recently, Mexican laborers and now Central American and Venezuelan migrants are crossing the border to escape the violence, poverty and hopelessness in their homelands.

But as in all times of great human migration, this is not a political move by cynical residents to threaten a government. Instead, as Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Abrador recently said, "People don't leave their countries because they want to — they do it out of need."

That's why we need a different approach with what is a great migration comparable to that of the late 1800s of desperate Europeans fleeing religious persecution, poverty and war to travel to a new future in the United States. We need to see this migration of Central and South Americans for what it is and handle it in a more productive way.

Since one of the main reasons for people leaving Central American countries is the extreme poverty and lack of opportunity there, one option already being considered is developing manufacturing in those countries. This is explained in "The Case for a Pan-American Manufacturing System" by Bindiya Vakil, Tom Linton and Dale Rogers in the June 14, 2021, Harvard Business Review.

COVID-19 prompted business leaders to redesign their global supply chains, leaning to low-cost suppliers in Central and South America instead of Asia to eliminate long transit times. They urge building a reliable, cost-effective land-based transportation network connecting the three Americas. Developing manufacturing there would provide jobs for those living there and allow them to remain in their homelands.

In addition, developing industry there would take advantage of a huge worker supply — larger than that available in the U.S. — and workers whose average age would be 24 to 28 years old, younger than the U.S. average of 38.5. Providing jobs to millions of desperately poor central Americans would not only make it possible for them to stay but would keep them from having to make a living from illegal drug production and trafficking.

Unfortunately this is not going to be possible in those countries with whom the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations, such as Venezuela. People seeing a better life from such countries probably will have to emigrate to a new country, most likely the United States. For those people, the U.S. has to take its immigration role seriously and recreate Ellis Island on the border. All migrants would have to pass through a system like that of Ellis Island, including physical and mental examinations and finding out what skills and resources they have to contribute to their new country.

Employers would be encouraged to submit lists of the kind and number of laborers they need and immigrants could be routed to them. As some companies already travel to these countries recruiting workers, they could exchange travel costs for recruitment for the travel costs of immigrants seeking work. Such a program may alleviate the chronic labor shortage caused by the massive early retirements and then deaths of workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bottom line — we are a nation of immigrants. We need them as much as they need us.

This is the opinion of Times Writers Group member Lois Thielen, a dairy farmer who lives near Grey Eagle. Her column is published the first Sunday of the month.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Some blame every problem on the southern border of the United States.