have to wonder how much of singling out a specific race for this claim is actually warranted and how much is a myth perpetrated and fuelled by a populist right wing press.
Unfortunately, it is a single race that is causing most of the problem because those are the people who continue, at the rate of 3 million a year, to invade my country.
Believe me; I understand why they want to leave Mexico. And I sympathize. But, the reason that they come here instead of your country is proximity coupled with the fact that in my country, big business has our congress bamboozled into thinking that there is a labor shortage. You continually hear our great leader espousing the opinion that the jobs that the illegals take are the jobs that Americans won't take. What is NOT said is that real wages in the US are in a decline and the decline is fueled by the lowest end jobs filled by illegals at the bottom along with the high end jobs filled by cheap foreign labor (legal visas) in the high end jobs. There is a 10% unemployment rate among tech workers and yet our Congress is currently considering a bill to allow an additional 60,000 H1b visas to import more tech workers from low wage countries. Do you think the high unemployment is caused because Americans don’t know how to program or American programmers are unwilling to work for $60,000 per year, or because too many low wage workers are imported each year? I can relate stories from personal friends who where laid off from their jobs, not because the company was downsizing, not because they weren’t doing their jobs, but because their employer wanted to reduce its costs and so were replacing all existing employees with cheaper foreign labor. And to add insult to injury, they were forced to train their replacements to get their severance pay!!!! This is a big win for the company. They get competent workers (although unfamiliar with the business, it is cheap enough to hire several) who save them 60% on wages PLUS 100% on benefits!
Yes it is true, Americans don't want those jobs
at the salary now being offered. Would you be willing to take a 60% wage cut along with a 100% benefits cut. I think not. If the jobs paid a living wage by American standards (after all, the workers have to "live" in America), Americans and legal immigrants would take them. They wouldn't need to resort to hiring illegals or importing cheap legal labor or exporting the jobs entirely. Not too many years ago, hotel housekeepers spoke English as did busboys and Burger King employees and the programmers who worked for me. So don’t tell me Americans wouldn’t take those jobs. This is resulting in growing unemployment among Americans and legal immigrants and continued exploitation of the illegals. It IS exploitation. Since they are illegal they have no recourse, no higher authority to complain to, little opportunity to change jobs. They can’t complain about working conditions. We are going back to the days when you owed your soul to the company store. Read John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” or Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” to help you remember what life was like for the poorest Americans in the US in the early part of the 20th century.
We have a rapidly growing underclass of single Hispanic males. Since they are illegal, they are most likely separated from their families. Crime among them is increasing (no surprise here). They are not “living” here; they are “existing”; sending every spare penny home to support their families. This is a heart wrenching situation and it needs to be stopped. And speaking of the money they send home, it is the largest source of foreign exchange that Mexico has and amounts to some $20 billion each year. What does that tell you? It tells you that not only US big business but also the Mexican government has a vested interest in the status quo.
NAFTA which was heralded 10 years ago as the “answer” was supposed to help Mexican workers and the Mexican economy by enabling American companies to cheaply establish factories in Mexico. Instead, it depressed wages in Mexico further because there was so much competition for the jobs that wages dropped.
The rebuilding of New Orleans is another government fiasco. It frightens me to be on the same side of any argument as Jesse Jackson but I happen to agree that New Orleans should be rebuilt by former residents and local companies as much as possible. Instead, our great leader waived some federal law that required companies to pay prevailing wages in situations like this. They are also waiving any penalties for companies who hire illegals, not that any penalties would have been imposed anyway. This law was a way to prevent profiteering in disaster recovery. But it was repealed so instead of local workers and local companies getting the contracts for the cleanup and rebuilding, large non-local corporations were given no-bid contracts and are currently advertising in Mexico and other depressed countries for workers. This week in the news CNN was talking about 70 American electricians who were working on rebuilding a government installation who were let go and replaced with non-English speaking workers.
I don’t know what the answer is but it is NOT amnesty. We tried that already. It only encouraged more illegal immigration. I object to rewarding people who have broken the law. Plus, legalizing the 20,000,000 currently here also results in opening the door for millions more family members so the number could easily double.
I would very much like to save the world but realistically, I can’t. I do what I can. I contribute to charities, I volunteer my time but I am not willing to give up my life. It has to stop somewhere. We can only absorb so many immigrants at a time and at the moment we are being overrun. It is creating serious social issues. The American people are looking like the bad guys because we are finally standing up and objecting. I say enough is enough. We must secure our borders. I am very sorry to have to do this. Part of what made America is being lost in this action but to not do so ensures its loss also. Once the borders are secure, we can talk about a guest worker program and a gradual repatriation of all people here illegally. They cannot be rewarded for breaking the law. The law that fines companies for hiring illegals must be strengthened and enforced. It must cost a company as much to hire an illegal as it would to hire an American or legal immigrant.
Occasional ranting helps but I also regularly send emails to my representatives telling them where I stand. Do the rest of you do anything?
