Book review
The Devil’s Highway By Luis Urrea
By Peter Chirichiello
The Devil’s Highway: A True Story, is an account of twenty-six men who tried to come to America illegally through the strip of the American-Mexican border called “The Devil’s Highway.” Only twelve of the twenty-six survived. It was covered heavily by the press and was of great interest to the American people, not only because it is an issue that has yet to be solved, and in some minds made worse, but it was also the largest amount of illegal immigrant deaths at one time.
This book contains a very important story, a story of human rights. The author of the book, Luis Alberto Urrea tells the story as an observer, and as someone who is bringing to light the problems of American border policy, but does not try to give any definite solutions; that is left up to the reader.
The book raises the question: What can be done about the border situation in America, and are we approaching it in the correct manner? The questions has been debated on just about every major news network on television. The responses vary depending on if you’re listening to Fox, a conservative network that would tend to lead toward the construction of a border wall, not only for security reason, but economic ones as well, or a more liberal network like ABC which may be more compassionate to “illegals” in America.
According to Urrea, America is not taking the correct approach. What is being done now is the construction on a border wall, a wall the is not working; what it is doing is making the path to America more and more dangerous, in turn killing more. But isn’t that the point? Aren’t we supposed to be making it harder for people to come to our country illegally? After all they aren’t just coming here to steal out jobs and hurt our economy? Not exactly. In reality most jobs illegal immigrants are taking are jobs that average American does not want, jobs that do not pay well, and require little to no education. Illegal immigrants are willing to work in terrible working conditions for long hours. In Max Weber’s book The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism, Weber argues that having citizens that are willing to work for little pay (like illegal immigrants) is actually a benefit to the capitalist society. Weber claims “the presence of a surplus population which it can hire cheaply in the labor market is a necessity for the development of capitalism,” because when wages are decreased so is the efficiency of the work, therefore cheap labor is needed in a capitalist society (p. 61); and the cheaper the labor the cheaper the product will be for the American consumer.
Urrea points out that the perceived economic downfalls of illegal immigration are actually false. “Mexican immigrants use about $250 million in social services such as Medicaid and food stamps and another $31 million in uncompensated health care. That leaves a profit of $319 million.” At the end of the book Urrea brings up many facts like this that contradict the popular belief of illegal immigration.
The border wall needs to be looked at closer. What are the implications of a wall? And if Americans are so concerned about the economy we need to consider what has more of an adverse affect: having illegals enter America (which is inevitable, wall or not) or, building a wall that would cost over three million dollars per mile (San Diego Tribune), not to mention the maintenance that will be needed over the years? Another factor to consider is the private land that the government is taking from it’s citizens to build the wall (San Antonio Current); in this case the rights of American citizens are being controlled as well as a result of the wall.
Especially in the election year that we are in and the ramifications of the Iraq war, where America’s foreign policy is being heavily questioned and the economy is in a recession, can we afford to be isolating ourselves form other countries?
References
Harman, Greg. “San Antonio Current - News & Politics.” San Antonio Current - Home Page. 25 Mar. 2008 .
“Hitting the wall | The San Diego Union-Tribune.” SignOnSanDiego.com | The San Diego Union-Tribune | San Diego news, California and national news. 25 Mar. 2008 .
Parsons, Talcott, R.H. Tawney, and Max Weber. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Dover Value Editions). New York: Dover Publications, 2003.
Urrea, Luis Alberto. The Devil’s Highway: A True Story. United States: Little, Brown and Company, 2005.
mwalsh @ April 10, 2008
Great article and book choice.
I think today a lot of Americans do precieve the wall as a good thing rather than looking at all the negatives. Such as how many people are dying and how it really effects our economy. I really hope that your article inspires more people to do research about immigration and the wall.