Today's Immigration Battle - Corporatists vs. Racists (and Labor is Left Behind)

[Freedomless]

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/mar...6raceriots.htm

http://rense.com/general70/d4sp.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0329-21.htm

Today's Immigration Battle - Corporatists vs. Racists (and Labor is Left Behind)
by Thom Hartmann

The corporatist Republicans ("amnesty!") are fighting with the racist Republicans ("fence!"), and it provides an opportunity for progressives to step forward with a clear solution to the immigration problem facing America.
Both the corporatists and the racists are fond of the mantra, "There are some jobs Americans won't do." It's a lie.
Americans will do virtually any job if they're paid a decent wage. This isn't about immigration - it's about economics. Industry and agriculture won't collapse without illegal labor, but the middle class is being crushed by it.
The reason why thirty years ago United Farm Workers' Union (UFW) founder Caesar Chávez fought against illegal immigration, and the UFW turned in illegals during his tenure as president, was because Chávez, like progressives since the 1870s, understood the simple reality that labor rises and falls in price as a function of availability.
As Wikipedia notes: "In 1969, Chávez and members of the UFW marched through the Imperial and Coachella Valley to the border of Mexico to protest growers' use of illegal aliens as temporary replacement workers during a strike. Joining him on the march were both the Reverend Ralph Abernathy and U.S. Senator Walter Mondale. Chávez and the UFW would often report suspected illegal aliens who served as temporary replacement workers as well as who refused to unionize to the INS."
Working Americans have always known this simple equation: More workers, lower wages. Fewer workers, higher wages.
Progressives fought - and many lost their lives in the battle - to limit the pool of "labor hours" available to the Robber Barons from the 1870s through the 1930s and thus created the modern middle class. They limited labor-hours by pushing for the 50-hour week and the 10-hour day (and then later the 40-hour week and the 8-hour day). They limited labor-hours by pushing for laws against child labor (which competed with adult labor). They limited labor-hours by working for passage of the 1935 Wagner Act that provided for union shops.
And they limited labor-hours by supporting laws that would regulate immigration into the United States to a small enough flow that it wouldn't dilute the unionized labor pool. As Wikipedia notes: "The first laws creating a quota for immigrants were passed in the 1920s, in response to a sense that the country could no longer absorb large numbers of unskilled workers, despite pleas by big business that it wanted the new workers."
Do a little math. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says there are 7.6 million unemployed Americans right now. Another 1.5 million Americans are no longer counted because they've become "long term" or "discouraged" unemployed workers. And although various groups have different ways of measuring it, most agree that at least another five to ten million Americans are either working part-time when they want to work full-time, or are "underemployed," doing jobs below their level of training, education, or experience. That's between eight and twenty million un- and under-employed Americans, many unable to find above-poverty-level work.
At the same time, there are between seven and fifteen million working illegal immigrants diluting our labor pool.
If illegal immigrants could no longer work, unions would flourish, the minimum wage would rise, and oligarchic nations to our south would have to confront and fix their corrupt ways.
Between the Reagan years - when there were only around 1 to 2 million illegal aliens in our workforce - and today, we've gone from about 25 percent of our private workforce being unionized to around seven percent. Much of this is the direct result - as Caesar Chávez predicted - of illegal immigrants competing directly with unionized and legal labor. Although it's most obvious in the construction trades over the past 30 years, it's hit all sectors of our economy.
Democratic Party strategist Ann Lewis just sent out a mass email on behalf of former Wal-Mart Board of Directors member and now US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. In it, Lewis noted that Clinton suggests we should have: "An earned path to citizenship for those already here working hard, paying taxes, respecting the law, and willing to meet a high bar for becoming a citizen." Sounds nice. The same day, on his radio program, Rush Limbaugh told a woman whose husband is an illegal immigrant that she had nothing to worry about with regard to deportation of him or their children because all he'd have to do - under the new law under consideration - is pay a small fine and learn English.
The current Directors of Wal-Mart are smiling.
Meanwhile, the millions of American citizens who came to this nation as legal immigrants, who waited in line for years, who did the hard work to become citizens, are feeling insulted, humiliated, and conned.
Shouldn't we be compassionate? Of course.
But there is nothing compassionate about driving down the wages of any nation's middle class. It's the most cynical, self-serving, greedy, and sociopathic behavior you'll see from our "conservatives."
There is nothing compassionate about being the national enabler of a dysfunctional oligarchy like Mexico. An illegal workforce in the US sending an estimated $17 billion to Mexico every year - second only in national income to that country's oil revenues - supports an antidemocratic, anti-worker, hyperconservative administration there that gleefully ships out of that nation the "troublesome" Mexican citizens - those lowest on the economic food-chain and thus most likely to present "labor unrest" - to the USA. Mexico (and other "sending nations") need not deal with their own social and economic problems so long as we're willing to solve them for them - at the expense of our middle class. Democracy in Central and South America be damned - there are profits to be made for Wal-Mart!
Similarly, there is nothing compassionate about handing higher profits (through a larger and thus cheaper work force) to the CEOs of America's largest corporations and our now-experiencing-record-profits construction and agriculture industries.
What about caring for people in need? Isn't that the universal religious/ethical value? Of course.
A few years ago, when my family and I were visiting Europe, one of our children fell sick. A doctor came to the home of the people we were staying with, visited our child at 11 pm on a weeknight, left behind a course of antibiotics, and charged nothing. It was paid for by that nation's universal health care system. We should offer the same to any human being in need of medical care - a universal human right - in the United States.
But if I'd applied to that nation I was visiting for a monthly unemployment or retirement check, I would have been laughed out of the local government office. And if I'd been caught working there, I would have been deported within a week. Caring for people in crisis/need is very different from giving a job or a monthly welfare check to non-citizens. No nation - even those in Central and South America - will do that. And neither should the United States.


The rest of the article can be viewed at the above link.

funny, i thought the pilgrams were illegal aliens when they landed on plymouth rock?

[charlesa6]

Hmmmmm! funny!

[idknow]

it is NOT, i repeat, NOT racist to build a fence.

why?

Simply because looking at someone to determine where they are from (geographically) is THE ONLY WAY to do so without being invasive, and without requiring an interrogation to the detriment of anyone's privacy!

I recall reading some part of the CFR some years ago and noted that the rules written concerning whether or one was a citizen could only be assumed unless there was some obvious evidence to the contrary: for instance, how they spoke English.

Nor is amnesty the answer. that is capitulation to what P. Fox of Mexico is wanting; he wants Mexicans to attack, infiltrate and get (i dont use the word "take") jobs and send as much money they earn back to their families which will give a bump to the Mexican economy.

Crossing international borders without permission *IS* an act of war.

Why haven't we declared war on Mexico?

Has it been discussed by our Elected stewards?

I have not heard one whit of discussion in the news-papers, tv nor on the intetnet.

why?

[charlesa6]

Originally Posted by idknow

it is NOT, i repeat, NOT racist to build a fence.

Yep!!!!!

I recall reading some part of the CFR some years ago and noted that the rules written concerning whether or one was a citizen could only be assumed unless there was some obvious evidence to the contrary: for instance, how they spoke English. Prejudice!

Nor is amnesty the answer. that is capitulation to what P. Fox of Mexico is wanting; he wants Mexicans to attack, infiltrate and get (i dont use the word "take") jobs and send as much money they earn back to their families which will give a bump to the Mexican economy. [/quote]We all human being, always looking for better life, for ourselves, and the families.

[/quote]Crossing international borders without permission *IS* an act of war. No! Manage to survive, and travellers.

Why haven't we declared war on Mexico?
No can do.

Has it been discussed by our Elected stewards?

Working on it!

[/quote] I have not heard one whit of discussion in the news-papers, tv nor on the intetnet.
Not yet.

why?[/quote]Of course not! What about berlin walls? What about Israel walls? etc. They all just are protecting their gateway for the intruders.

[moorishexecutive]

I totally agree with kgod999, all Europeans (white people) in America are illegally here. I'm not a biggot but I am a racist, for a racist is one whom loves his people and loves the heritage by which he derives his or her bloodline, and if being a racist is wrong, then we are all guilty of it. You all know the history of this country and very well know that the "whites" whom occupy this land are guilty of being illegal aliens themselves. Talk about the kettle calling the pot black. These same people whom this country try and keep out derive their bloodline from the same natives, aboriginals of this country and lawfully have more of a right to this land than those whom try to keep them out.

Originally Posted by kgod999

funny, i thought the pilgrams were illegal aliens when they landed on plymouth rock?

[Freedomless]

It appears to be a setup. With no interference from the government of America, it appears that the America and Mexico are in a joint effort to sabatoge "We the People".

Land, countries, etc. have been concered or taken, through war and the like since the beginning of time. My family (Indian, English, German, Spainish, Greecian, etc), and most that I know, came to this country as legal aliens. Today most people are a combination of many nationalities. So, I believe that it is hard to say that something belongs to any one group of people.

Borders are borders and Mexico and America are in violation of the law. America is acting unlawfully as well as illegally.

[idknow]

Originally Posted by charlesa6

Prejudice!

We all human being, always looking for better life, for ourselves, and the families.

No! Manage to survive, and travellers.

Working on it!

Of course not! What about berlin walls? What about Israel walls?
etc. They all just are protecting their gateway for the intruders.

What the heck did you do to the quoting blocks?

Anyway, your mention of the walls built to divide Berlin is inapplicable: that wall was NOT built on an international boundary to prevent invasion; that wall divided ONE city!!!

The Wall which Israel built, that wall WAS built on internationally accepted borders to keep OUT people who want to kill, steal and destroy people and property - btw, the peaceful arabs live INSIDE/within the wall as full citizens of the country; the violent ones are kept outside and THAT is the purpose of a wall.

The wall, or fence that I believe should be built along the southern American side of the international border with Mexico would prevent people from entering WITHOUT permission!

Again, there is nothing racist about building a wall at an international boundary to protect the people who live within a country.

[Purge]

Section. 4. The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.