During the recall election in 2003, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger took a very supportive view of immigrants. His positive outlook on immigration labor boosted his support in the Latino community and may have helped him win the election.

At an April 20 press conference with hundreds of newspaper publishers at the Newspaper Association in San Francisco, Schwarzenegger made comments that portrayed immigration negatively, which in turn go against his very citizenship in the United States and ignore the importance of foreign immigration.

Schwarzenegger encouraged federal officials to increase security along the Mexico-United States border in order to “clean up the lax situation.”

“Close the borders. Close the borders to California, and all across Mexico and the United States,” said Schwarzenegger at the Newspaper Association conference. “I think it is unfair to have all of those people coming across and to have the borders open the way it is.”

These comments do not seem logical coming from a self-proclaimed middle-of-the-road immigrant who is taking time off from his action film career to save the world’s fifth largest economy.

Schwarzenegger came to the United States in 1968 but didn’t become a citizen until Sept. 16, 1984, the same year that the “Governator” made his box office hit film “The Terminator.”

If the feeling of strong nativism, the hostile nationalistic reaction towards perceived foreigners that exists in today’s society existed in 1968, we may not have our bone-crushing governor in office.

Schwarzenegger quickly apologized for his statements not long after the conference, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Immigration is a key to the success of capitalism in the United States. Terror is the key term in the word terrorism. Terrorism is meant to provoke terror in the citizens and government of a country, not to negatively affect the economy by restricting people from crossing the borders. In other words, a disruption to the economy through the blockage of immigration would just be a bonus to any terrorists.

The United States is in anti-immigrant mode due to the current homeland security state of mind created by post 9/11 hysteria. It is very similar to the time period from 1993 through 1996. The first bombing on the World Trade Centers had occurred, and an abundance of Haitian refugee boats were arriving on our shores. American citizens felt that the government wasn’t doing enough, and California had the controversial Proposition 187 on the ballot.

So now we are in 2005 and have more recently tried to take away driver’s licenses of illegal immigrants, as well as allowing a reincarnation of the 19th century Texas Rangers with the vigilante minutemen. The overall opinion must be that immigrants are a danger to our society and are of no help to us.

As Schwarzenegger said in his movie “Total Recall,” “Whatever your name is, get ready for the big surprise.”

According to a study done in 2003 by senior economist Pia Orrenius of the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the pace of the United State’s economic growth would not be possible without immigrants. Orrenius’s study concluded that, in 2003, the foreign-born population only made up about 11 percent of the total U.S. population, but at the same time, it accounted for a larger share of the labor force than the native population.

The fact of the matter is that the native people of this country would rather pass the hard labor jobs, such as picking fruits and vegetables, off to the immigrants. If this is the case and we completely shut down our borders, we are asking for an extremely negative impact on our economy. We aren’t a society full of farmers anymore that will gladly pick up the slack of the missing immigrants. But back to Schwarzenegger’s apology, because he did indeed apologize after stating that the borders should be closed.

Schwarzenegger was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle as saying, “Yesterday was a total screw-up in the words I used, because instead of closing, I meant securing. I think maybe my English; I need to go back to school and study a little bit.”

This is plain and simply a statement of retraction in order to avoid a political massacre.

According to the Chronicle article, the same Hispanic community that voted for Schwarzenegger in 2003 has become uneasy since he took office, due to his lack of legislation for public health and social services.

Many government officials accepted Schwarzenegger’s apology, but it still seems that tempers are rising while the fight between homeland security and civil liberties rages on.

Schwarzenegger assured California’s healthy relationship with Mexico in this statement, “We have a terrific relationship with Mexico. I filmed four movies in Mexico; I love to go on vacation to Mexico. We have a great trade agreement with Mexico.”

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Blake Ellington can be reached at [email protected]