At the core of this new brand of racism is the politically fostered image of Mexican men and women ignoring the process of the law, hopping the border and taking our hard-earned jobs. State and federal legislators, governors and the Bush administration engage in endless political debate about the best ways to keep illegal immigrants out of the U.S., and the message is being heard by the people — immigrants, 56 percent of whom were Mexican nationals in 2005, are bad and shouldn’t be allowed on U.S. soil.

Such absolutist theory ignores the economic contribution illegal immigrants have given to this country.

Undocumented immigrants contribute an estimated $8.5 billion in social security and Medicare funds every year, according to the Social Security Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service determined undocumented immigrants paid almost $50 billion in federal taxes from 1996 to 2003. Illegal immigrants’ work in agriculture, construction, low-end manufacturing, food preparation and cleaning services has provided the industries with cheap labor that in turn allows them to keep their prices down.

Because of increased educational opportunities for U.S. citizens, uneducated workers are getting harder and harder to find. The amount of working-age and native U.S. residents with less than 12 years of schooling fell from 50 percent to 12 percent between 1960 and 2000, according to “The Economic Logic of Illegal Immigration,” a report by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan U.S. political think tank.

Immigrants fill the roles uneducated U.S. citizens used to, and moving from a country with low opportunity for labor to a country desperately in need of it makes finding a job and supporting a family infinitely easier. Obtaining proper documentation to work in the U.S. is especially difficult for uneducated workers, and entering illegally is usually the only option.

The U.S. truly is the land of opportunity for many, many people abroad, and now is not the time to close our doors to immigration. Anti-immigrationists too often forget undocumented workers are human beings like the rest of us. They work hard, often for much lower wages than U.S. citizens, and they contribute tax money to a system where they will never receive benefits from, yet they are continuously met with racist and derogatory words and actions.

This exclusionist sentiment can be dangerous — it can lead to irrational xenophobic hatred and even violence against anyone who speaks with a Spanish accent. Some people are learning to prey on people they know aren’t in the U.S. legally because those people are much less likely to report a mugging or assault to the local police, and cannot open bank accounts because of their status. And while most of us would never dream of attacking or robbing anyone, the pervasive, underlying sentiment continues to grow.

Derogatory names, jokes and even thoughts and assumptions about people who look or speak a certain way are all forms of racism, however unfounded. Legal immigrants make up two-thirds of all foreign-born residents in the U.S., and 50 to 70 percent of new immigrant arrivals come legally, according to a report from the Council on Foreign Relations.

Whether here legally or not, Mexicans and all Latin Americans in the U.S. don’t deserve to be treated like second-class citizens. People should be judged on their character, not their appearance.

Liz Kersjes is the State News opinion writer. Reach her at kersjese@msu.edu.