Documentary Analysis: The Farmingville

The Farmingville documentary examines the clash between long time residents of a Long Island, NY suburban community and Mexican day laborers who move into their neighborhood. The illegal immigrant population has grown to ten percent of the town’s population because of the area’s successful restaurant, landscaping, and construction industries. Many in Farmington are not happy with the arrival of the immigrants in their community, and yet they accept that the day laborers perform the jobs that the residents do not want to do themselves. The immigration problems Farmingville faces are being experienced throughout the country, so it is interesting to see how this town deals with its illegal immigration problems. The documentary does not offer any solution to this problem, however, but instead ends with the dilemma that America needs to decide what its identity is in relation to immigration. In other words, is America still a nation of immigrants or is it now closed to further immigration, especially from countries where the people do not look like us? After seeing this documentary, it is clear to me that our country needs to address
the problem of illegal immigration from Mexico and come up with a solution that Americans and illegal immigrants can live with. My position on illegal immigration is a complex one.
I find that I confront the same dilemma the people of Farmingville face. On one hand, I believe that illegal immigration points out how insecure our nation’s borders are from outside penetration. I do not agree, however, with how some Farmington residents chose to deal with this problem. For example, one resident creates a group that blames the workers for bringing crime, noise, and overcrowding to the area in an attempt to rid the town of the illegal immigrants. She even calls on outside national immigration control groups to deal with the problem. All this hate group achieves is to increase the tension between the two groups. This tension is what leads to the attempted murders of two Mexican day laborers who are stabbed and beaten by two white men with ties to racist
groups. On the other hand, even though I do not like that our nation’s borders are insecure, I understand how the lure of economic opportunity has brought immigrants to America for hundreds of years in the hope of improving themselves and helping their families. There are those in Farmington who recognize this and try to improve the plight of the immigrants. One citizen creates a group to help the day workers and to counter the hate group that wants to clear the town of Mexican immigrants. This group, along with a Mexican refugee connected to a local church, act as advocates for the day workers. They find housing for the immigrants and attempt to have a hiring hall built for the day workers in order to keep them off the streets. Their involvement, however, does not end the tension between the locals and the immigrants. The documentary ends without resolving the immigration problem in Farmington. Local officials claim that they are powerless to act against the workers because immigration is a federal issue. The conflicts in Farmington demonstrate that the U.S. government needs to come up with a policy concerning illegal immigration. As we learned in our textbook, Europe and the Middle East have found a way to deal with the immigration problem by creating a guest worker solution. This policy allows immigrants to migrate to a country temporarily for employment opportunities. Similar to immigrants in Europe, Mexican immigrants in the U.S. would be allowed to take low status and low skilled jobs that local residents will not accept. In addition, as guest workers minimum wage laws and other support programs would protect them. I believe that creating a U.S. guest worker program would be the best solution to the illegal immigration population in our own country. This would allow a legal basis for the immigrants to be here which should create less tension with locals. The immigrants would be able to improve their economic status, and companies would have the cheap labor they want in order to keep their business costs down.