LatinaLista — A newly released Gallup Poll must be music to the ears of all conservatives who have laboriously hammered on the point of illegal immigration.
According to the poll, four million U.S. Hispanics would leave the country permanently if they could.
Those Latinos who opted for this one-way ticket out of the U.S. are not the native born. Rather, they are the ones who continue to send remittances back home, still don’t have a good command of the English language, feel isolated and only comfortable around other Latinos and are struggling economically.
The desire of these individuals to leave the United States is less a reflection on current immigration enforcement policies, the political climate or economic times but a reality that was always known to exist — most migrants only wanted to come to the U.S. to work, not to reside permanently.
It was a result of past, and current, immigration policies and administrations that refused to see this reality and thought that by making the border difficult to cross, from either direction, that would repel these migrants from risking their lives to cross illegally.
Yet, when someone can make more money more quickly and help their families, with change to spare, the choice isn’t that difficult to understand. With their return route cut off, these same men and women who had planned only a temporary absence from their families were forced to stay. They started new families and new lives but never forgot those back home.
Instead of looking at this Gallup Poll as a victory for current practices and rhetoric, Congress should look at a Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill that finally accepts this reality and creates a solution that benefits migrants, their home countries and the United States’ need for cheap labor.
