by Pete Hamill, New York Daily News 05-18-2003


Once upon a time, they'd have all been Irish. Their names would have been Liam or Seamus or Bridey instead of Jose and Maria and Panchito. Instead of trailer trucks, the Irish traveled in what were soon called coffin ships, jammed together in the deepest bottom decks, the air stained by the odors of excrement and urine and death. They died of hunger and thirst. They died of typhus. They died trying to get to America.

So when I read about those 18 Mexicans and Central Americans who died on the side of a road in Victoria, Tex., in a sealed trailer with New York plates, jammed with almost 80 other human beings, I hear the Irish pleading for a chance at life. I hear them begging for water and scraps of food for their children. I hear them praying. I hear their shallow breathing as the air runs out. I see them pounding in the dark, fetid air against sealed hatches, desperate to see the sky.

For the Irish are the true ancestors of last week's immigrant dead. The bones of those long-dead Irish, like the bones of so many Africans forced through the Middle Passage, are scattered now upon the vast floor of the Atlantic. Today, nobody knows their names. But we do know how they got to those unmarked graves - and why.

Like today's Mexicans and Central Americans, the Irish sold off what little they had to pay for the cheapest passage. They gambled everything, including life itself, to get to a place where they could work and raise strong, educated children and live with some small measure of dignity. There were racketeers then, too, including some of their own kind, callous men who took the money and didn't care if their impoverished charges ever made it to the distant shore. Millions, of course, made it. Too many did not.

The same is true of those who died last week. In Mexico, many illegal immigrants take loans on their small farms to raise money for the passage. They pay as much as $2,000 to coyotes — people smugglers — to get them across the border. If they should die and not pay off the loans with earnings from the U.S., the family properties are often lost. Meanwhile, on our side of the border, others in the racket often move them farther north, away from scrutiny by the Border Patrol. Last week's human cargo was assembled in Harlingen, Tex., and was to be carried 110 miles to a place called Robstown (the final destination quickly changed to Houston). The driver was a man named Tyrone Williams of upstate Schenectady, now under arrest. He says he didn't watch the trailer being loaded. It was a job, like any job. Potatoes, spinach, humans: Load it up.

The details remain murky. But in the end, it was the worst single death toll of illegal immigrants in 16 years.

And the dreadful truth is this: It didn't need to happen. We have known for years that the policies governing migration from Mexico are irrational, humiliating and dangerous. Americans who want to go to Cancun simply show up at the airport and get a tourist card on the airplane. Mexicans can't do that. I've seen thousands of them lined up at the American Embassy in Mexico City, waiting for hours to go through the legal process of obtaining a visa to go to the U.S. Some eventually give up. Some go alone to the border. Each year, hundreds die making the crossing.

In February 2001, President Bush met in Mexico with Mexican President Vicente Fox, and an accord on a more rational immigration process was high on the agenda. There were followup discussions among American and Mexican bureaucrats. There was much talk that many undocumented Mexicans who had been living for extended periods in the U.S. would be legalized. There were discussions of new short-term work permits for Mexicans, a means of eliminating the coyotes from the process.

All that ended after 9/11. There was no record of terrorists crossing our border with Mexico as there was with the Canadian border. But the attempt was being made to seal both borders. All discussion of normalizing the status of Mexicans inside the U.S. ended. The Mexicans felt betrayed. In the runup to the war in Iraq, Mexico made clear that it could not be counted on as an ally at the United Nations.

But the deaths of these human beings in Texas should push the Bush administration to restart the process of reform. To start with, they could grant immediate citizenship to all Mexicans and Central Americans serving in our armed forces (about 34,000 of them). They shouldn't become citizens in a soldier's grave. Then they could legalize all Mexicans and others who have American children. That would assure that no American children could ever be separated from their parents if the parents are deported.

Nothing can help those who died in Victoria, Tex. But they are surely connected to those of us who are the products of earlier immigrations. And they are connected to the present and future of New York.

Surely some of them must have carried hand-written directions in their pockets, telling them how to get to E. 116th St. or Sunset Park or the South Bronx. All of them were coming for the same reasons the Irish came, and so many others after the Irish.

We honor our own past, and their deaths, by demanding from our politicians swift guarantees that such horror never happens again.