Why are we suddenly so concerned about immigration, when in reality, the numbers of immigrants have actually DECLINED?
Because the economy is scaring the bejeezus out of us. That’s all it is. When the economy dips, people bring up immigration as a huge issue again. They’re looking for a reason, any reason, to be angry instead of afraid because being afraid feels a lot worse than feeling angry.
Look…I’m no fan of our economy having a private slave class of starving Mexicans coming over here and working in conditions that are frankly inhuman. I also hate that they’re being used in the same manner corporations used to use scabs in order to kill the unions. And I also hate the notion that companies think they can benefit from the tax dollars of Americans while they send higher paying technical and human resources jobs overseas.
But it’s easier for people to point their fingers at poor Mexicans and scream for blood rather than point their fingers at the wealthy people who supplant them with those poor Mexicans because those people want jobs from those corporations.
I’ve long considered immigration a fine issue that should be handled by international law presided over by the UN. It makes more sense to me for me to go through a simple, unified process to get a job in Germany or Russia or Brazil, and for people from those countries to be able to go the the US. Rather than our current situation where some countries will let you in, some won’t, some will make you do a song and dance. They rarely follow the same system and most of the time it’s totally screwed up. The people in those countries generally agree with that feeling.
But as long as you blame the individuals and not the corporations, you won’t accomplish anything. You can stop and search every last foreigner who comes in. The bottom line is that if you are starving, you go where the jobs are and you take a chance, even if you are going to be kicked out…at least you might get a meal in prison while you’re being held for extradition. As long as the US has the signs “keep out” and “help wanted” both at the border, we’re going to continue supporting an illegal slave class that drives down wages and makes poor people here even more poor. We’ll keep spinning down the toilet until we tighten up our guts and kick the employers in the shins.
You want to solve the real financial problem? The solution is unionization. Everyone, every single person, who isn’t a permanent employee and has gone through the standard background checks, who works for a company has to be a member of a union that establishes fair working wages, health care, and workplace safety standards. Even if you’re in this country illegally, you wouldn’t be driving down wages and standards, you’d simply be judged on your hard work and merits fairly. The boss can’t just look at one guy who wants 15 bucks an hour, and another guy who’s willing to work for 8 bucks an hour, unless there’s an experience difference.
Notice when illegal immigration became a problem? Wasn’t it…oh…sometime in the late 70′s/early 80′s? You know, right around the time when the government, in collusion with corporate CEOs, began union busting? At one time, a good 25-30 percent of all workers in this country were in unions. Now it’s about 10 percent. Guess what happened to the other 15-20 percent? Their wages went down and those are the jobs that are being occupied heavily by people in this country who are here illegally. The general replacement for unions, consulting companies, mostly won’t take on jobs that provide less than a set amount of pay per hour because they can’t operate as cheaply as a union can because they don’t handle as many contractors at once. Bring back the unions and put everyone who isn’t an employee of a company into them, and yeah…you’ll lose some consulting jobs…but the union will hire those folks back. But you’ll solve a lot of your immigration problems by requiring employers to only employ salaried or union workers.