Jack in the Box Takes a Side in the Immigration Debate
Story by Christopher Patrick Nelson

I've seen a car parked in my Downtown San Jose neighborhood with a bumper sticker that says, “Your vote may not be counted, but your dollar always will be.” I agree. The corporations that run this country always boil their goal down to the question of what will make money for them, rather than what is good for our nation. Thus, the companies' conclusions on the future have the raw honesty of the absolute cynic.

Jack and the Box restaurants have recently begun selling Mexican torta sandwiches. These food items are made up of ciabatta buns, real cheddar cheese, (as opposed to the “cheese food” featured in most burgers) and sirloin steak. (Yes, you read that right.) I am ignorant of the cooking practices of Texas, but in California, white natives, Asians, African Americans, Pacific-Islanders, Middle-Easterners, Eastern Europeans, and Indo-Pakistani's do not eat tortas. Furthermore, Chicanos, correct me if I'm wrong, do not order tortas when they go to La Victoria on Fourth and San Carlos. All of the above groups eat rather Anglicized Mexican food, like the San Francisco Mission District-born burrito. (They also go for “Health-Mex” and Taco Bell's “Mexican food.”) My point in saying all this is that the people who consistently order tortas are Mexican immigrants, especially the undocumented ones working too hard to assimilate by learning English.

I said, undocumented immigrants eat tortas .

When for-profit multinationals like Jack in the Box put out a product, they are in it for the money. They have expert chefs to tell them what ingredients are necessary to achieve the desired taste, accountants to tell them just what they can afford to mass-produce, and marketing consultants to tell how to sell the food. Most importantly for us, they have researchers to estimate what the future of fast food restaurants will be. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger can give the Minute Men his blessing to shoot border crossers, Congress can pass bills funding the Berlin Wall – sorry, the Border Wall – and Patrick Buchanan can write books warning that Mexico will forcibly take back the Southwest. But Jack in the Box knows which way the wind is blowing – they are betting millions on it. Their catering to the consumer habits of Mexican immigrants in not unusual, corporations are doing it in all sectors of the economy. They would not do it if they thought mass deportations, or a sudden drop in immigration from the South was in the cards. Corporations like Jack in the Box are predicting that despite the current political uproar, immigration patterns of the country was not change – more Mexican immigrants.

You may think undocumented immigrants destroy the very fabric of this great nation. You may consider crossing without thousands of dollars in documentation for “a better life” a human necessity, compared to the death the U.S. rains on Central and South Americans. Jack in the Box, however, is not on one side or the other, so to speak; they are on the side that makes them rich. President George Bush, Jr. also has consultants to tell him what the future of the U.S. population will be, and he apparently heard the same things Jack did, considering all those commercials he did in Spanish. Who speaks Spanish? Illegal immigrants do. Who eats tortas ? Undocumented immigrants do. Symbolic political gestures aside, the immigration debate is over. Jack in the Box, and the rest of corporate America, has spoken.

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