TAKING A LOOK AT MARIJUANA & IMMIGRATION

My TMCC classes are presenting their final argument papers in class. So far
they have split on whether or not to add an extra year of science and math
in Washoe County high schools, have supported embryonic stem cell research,
and have supported legalization of marijuana.

Indeed the most entertaining presentation came from a self-proclaimed "pot
head," who, through the course of the semester, has waxed from barely
coherent to sharply insightful. He had done some "street research" for his
paper and found that the price of pot in Reno is very close to the price of
gold: $280 an ounce. (I am taking his word for it, but gold has risen to
around $450 an ounce.)

Of course the fine for misdemeanor marijuana possession (under an ounce) is
also quite high: $300. He thought his point was that he is tired of paying
$300 fines.

A more calculating presentation in another section proposed taxing legal
sales of marijuana to enrich government coffers, rather like cigarettes.
Oddly, one young woman who has written a couple of papers strongly
condemning smoking cigarettes, supported this scenario. I asked her, tongue
in cheek ,of course, if I would then be able to smoke a joint in a
restaurant. She returned a wry grin, but no comment.

My curiosity is aroused, however. I wonder what the cost of an ounce of
tobacco is with the government taxes figured in? Does it approach $280 an
ounce? If marijuana were legal and taxed, would usage fall as tobacco usage
has fallen under the relentless assault of the nanny society? Would
legalizing pot actually reduce usage?

I do find myself more and more likely to support legalization of marijuana.
It's not that I suggest anyone smoke it--and I don't--but it seems more and
more hypocritical to me to allow the other intoxicant, alcohol, and forbid
marijuana. I am aware of the slippery slope argument that opening the door
to pot will open the door to cocaine and heroin and ecstasy, etc., but I
don't see a similarity between these rapidly addictive and dangerous drugs
and marijuana.

Legalizing marijuana does not mean no line can be drawn, but drawing the
line at a more logical point of risk. And then, instead of being alluringly
illegal, marijuana could receive some of the same shunning and health
warnings cigarettes do: it is bad for lungs (maybe worse than cigarettes),
it does induce torpor, and it may have an inverse relation to coherent thought.

I'm not sure my students believe this. They assure me no one has ever died
from smoking pot, but they are all convinced many have died from smoking
cigarettes (rather than health problems cigarettes may have contributed
to). However, this should not daunt the nannies among us. Who would have
thought 25 years ago when I was still smoking cigarettes that one day
people would be shivering on street corners to catch a drag?

Times change.

Another way our country has changed over the past couple of generations is
in our attitude to newcomers, to immigrants. Two of my students argued in
support of immigration, particularly immigration from Mexico. Like me, both
had grandparents who came to this country with little but the clothes they
wore.

My grandmother came from Germany at 18, dirt poor, traveling in steerage,
and in New York City married a man she met on the boat. My father's family
had arrived from England and Ireland a generation earlier. Dale's family
has a longer history here: an ancestor was placed in stocks in
Massachusetts for stealing a neighbor's apples in the 17th century. But at
some point they came, too, making a perilous voyage to get here.

My student's grandmother came to the United States at age 9, smuggled in
with her parents and two siblings by "coyotes." Her grandmother remembers
wading across the Rio Grande and being given "American" clothes to wear so
she and her sisters could sit in the back seat of a car, pretending to be
native born, while their parents rode through Texas in the trunk.

It's remarkable that after almost 400 years, people are still coming to
America to latch on to the opportunity this particularly blessed nation
offers; yet many Americans, forgetting who we are, turn a cold shoulder. Of
course, the cold shoulder is not something entirely new ; Boston didn't
exactly welcome the Irish. And post 9/11there is logic to scrutinizing
carefully those who come to our shores. Unlike my grandmother's day, most
of those who enter our country today bear the tag "illegal" as well as
"immigrant," as did my student's grandmother. Most come from or through
Mexico. Most come for the same reason our predecessors did: to improve
their lives and their families' lives. Most are cheerful hard workers; it's
hard to condemn these people unless you are an Arizona rancher whose land
is invaded nightly by hordes of illegal border crossers or a hopelessly
outnumbered border patrol officer unable to make a dent in the illegal
flow. As with pot smoking, making something illegal attracts criminal
activity. By definition anyone helping others to break our laws is a
criminal. The normally honest, hard-working immigrant becomes by definition
a criminal as well. Hopefully he or she finds work here and isn't sucked
into further criminal activity.

I think the only answer to the problem of our porous southern border is to
make limited immigration from Mexico legal. We would need the support of
the Mexican government to help us police the border. We should offer
incentives.

I've heard we don't give Mexico any foreign aid and Mexico gives us a
significant break on its oil. Mexico relies significantly on the U.S.
dollars illegal immigrants send to families back home. Might Mexico be
cooperative with aid and with assurance that legal immigrants or legal
"guest workers" would continue to send dollars home?

We have a diversity lottery system to admit 100,000 people to the U.S. each
year from countries with low immigration rates. We even give these guys a
free ticket to come. Some of the countries with the largest number of
winners for 2005 are Algeria, Egypt, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco,
Sudan, Togo, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bulgaria, Germany, Lithuania, Poland,
Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Peru. Some of these countries
aren't great friends, and none are our near neighbor. Mexicans cannot
participate in this lottery.

I think we'd do better to have a more open and cooperative arrangement with
Mexico. Many Mexican immigrants would join family members here. Although
there is a difference in language, they'd have a head start in learning
English. Hopefully the stress wouldn't be "diversity" but integration into
an already diverse American culture. Hopefully cooperation would increase
prosperity in Mexico itself, and we would see many "guest workers" happy to
return home.

That's what my students hope to see: substantial legal immigration from
Mexico and integration into American culture. They don't like the onus of
"illegal" attaching to family members and friends; they hope for a way to
make coming to the U.S. from Mexico legal. I'd like to see that happen,
too. I listen to people calling for troops along our mutual border with
horror. The best way to keep our southern border free of terrorist
infiltration is to have genuine cooperation with those on the other side. I
hope we will warm our cold shoulders with confidence that an expanding
American economy has room for people to come and work and improve
themselves. However, I'm all for having the courage to boot out those who
come to cause trouble or live off the largesse of others' work. I think
that cheerful hardworking Mexican guy would agree.