The raid at Michael Bianco, Inc. in New Bedford, MA tore apart families. Working immigrant women and men were whisked off to detention centers out of state, while their children were left in Massachusetts.
The Department of Social Services is furious, as no one told them the raid was going to happen, and they had no support. There are still children in Massachusetts who do not know where their parents are (Texas, as it happens).
We can scream and holler all we want about undocumented immigrants and how awful they are, but until we understand and change the Byzantine system one must navigate to get visas, it’s time to shut up. Unskilled workers are not going to get the 140,000 immigrant visas for employment in the US–those are reserved for very highly skilled workers, as in engineers. They may have a shot at getting one of the 66,000 seasonal employment visas, but there’s going to be overflow. We make this overflow, and we make undocumented immigrants a necessity.
When we complain about those nasty illegal immigrants taking our jobs, I hope we actively switch places with them. As it stands today, even our “legal” guest workers are treated like crap.
Foreign citizens who come to the United States as guest workers are routinely cheated out of wages, forced to live in squalid conditions, and denied medical care for workplace injuries, a report released yesterday by a civil rights group found.
The report - ‘’Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States'’ - comes as Congress is poised to debate a major bill that would create a large temporary worker program and offer a path to citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants.
snip
In one instance, a group of Thai workers alleged that a company held them captive and sometimes watched over them with guns in North Carolina and New Orleans, where they were transported to help demolish flooded buildings after Hurricane Katrina, the report says.
In another, 12 Guatemalan guest workers were allegedly held captive and then forced to work 80 hours a week in a Connecticut nursery field for $3.75 an hour before deductions for telephone service and other costs.
Maybe we’d have a leg to stand on if we didn’t insist on getting the absolute lowest price for our crap. Maybe we’d have a leg to stand on if we’d insist that all workers get a living wage. Maybe we’d have a leg to stand on if the US didn’t colonize other nations through a corporate front, and we made sure the only option open for the poor was sweatshop work in export processing zones, a nice no-man’s land where corporations can benefit from someone else doing the dirty work of exploitation.
Many of the workers seized in the raid were from El Salvador. Export Processing Zones in El Salvador have a horrific record of abuse and exploitation.
The ICFTU report accused the government of President Francisco Flores of falling foul of international protections such as guaranteeing employees the right to form public sector unions, ensuring enforcement of laws against various types of discrimination, and defending the rights of unions to collective bargaining in EPZs.
Those protections became legally binding when El Salvador, one of the WTO’s 145 members since May 1995, ratified treaties drawn up by the WTO and International Labour Organization.
Now, we can blame these bad, bad gummits for allowing this to happen. But let’s not forget–it’s US companies that insist on squeezing out every last drop of sweat from workers for as little money as possible that also bear the brunt of responsibility. It’s US consumers who insist on paying a pittance for another piece of clothing that we don’t really need. It’s US companies that push planned obsolescence, which means we have to replace things more often. And so yes, replace it cheaply, since if it was expensive, we’d be up in arms. Whose going to cause more problems–angry US citizens or the voiceless workers in EPZs?
Trying to get a voice in the EPZ isn’t easy.
ICFTU has long documented working conditions in the country’s EPZs - industrial areas set up with special incentives, such as tax “holidays,” to attract foreign investors. It cited an official study of four of the largest zones three years ago that found “a clear anti-union policy…whereby any attempt at organizing was repressed.”
A more recent example of anti-union discrimination, according to the union’s report, occurred at the Tainan company, which makes clothes for major United States labels. After a long struggle–that included strikes, petitions, and appeals to the parent company in Taiwan–the union was recognized.
“Shortly afterwards, however,” the report noted, “the company began suspending and dismissing workers again, claiming a lack of orders.” In fact the firm, which has since closed its El Salvador plant, was sub-contracting orders to non-union workers, says the report.
People don’t put themselves at dire physical peril to come to the US because they love doing menial work for a pittance. They do it because they have to. And maybe, just maybe, we’d have a reason to complain if the US wasn’t complicit in exploiting people overseas.
122 Responses to “But those immigrants take really good jobs from worthy Americans!”
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I hate to quote Gore Vidal, whom I’ve come to detest for his defense of Timothy McVeigh, but in one of his novels he put it with devastating accuracy: For a country that depends on cheap immigrant labor, the United States is amazingly xenophobic.
my favorite thing about the “taking our jobs!” bs is that the only reason illegal immigration is viable is that they’re doing jobs Americans won’t do.
Amazing isn’t it?
Well, thank heavens for the Mexicans…They will do the work that not “even Blacks” will do (Vicente Fox, 2005)
What you need most, you fear the most.
Mexico needs to be forced to provide for her people - half of which lives in poverty, and 1/5 of which lives in what’s called “extreme poverty”. One excellent way of doing so would be to end the flow of money from workers - documented or undocumented - back across the border to families in Mexico. $26 billion last year alone. Tell me that’s not an incentive for the Mexican government to do nothing.
This strikes me quite deeply. I was in a long-distance relationship with an american woman for 3 years, going to the US twice a year for 2-3 month stints and racking up huge phone bills to stay in touch. We planned to get together for good as soon as I finished college.
For pratical reasons, we decided that I had to go to the US instead of her moving to Brazil: she was terrible with languages and would have a much harder time getting gainfully employed here.
Still, there was no way I could get a Visa. I was determined to do things the legal way, because I didn’t want to add the strain of doubt (as in, “did he marry me for a green card”?) to what was already a challenging relationship. I navigated every lottery, every work visa opportunity, with no luck. If you’re not an indian or chinese code farmer or some other highly specialized technician, they don’t want you.
Eventually, that added to the strain and broke us apart. Since then, things actually got worse: Brazil was taken off the lottery list for Visas (because someone decided there are alreadu brazilians enough there), reducing the options to illegal entry or marrying a native.
And let’s not even mention the US companies that hired terrorists to protect their business interests in Colombia.
But, yes, CC, clearly the problem is poor people sending their wages home. What do you propose — that we stop paying illegal workers altogether and formalize their slavery? Heck, we’ve already got slavery coming back here in Los Angeles. Why not formalize it so the poor companies don’t have the burden of paying wages to their illegal workers, right?
I have a feeling you don’t actually know what a Christian is supposed to be doing with his/her life. Hint: Jesus never said that the rich should get richer by exploiting the poor. In fact, he spent all of his time saying things like, “It is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into Heaven” and “Sell all of your worldly goods, give the money to the poor, and follow me.”
my favorite thing about the “taking our jobs!� bs is that the only reason illegal immigration is viable is that they’re doing jobs Americans won’t do.
Actually, most of the jobs they do are ones that you couldn’t legally hire an American to do anyway, because the companies want to pay below minimum wage. Which is probably why conservatives keep trying to do away with the minimum wage.
“Mexico needs to be forced to provide for her people - half of which lives in poverty, and 1/5 of which lives in what’s called “extreme povertyâ€?. One excellent way of doing so would be to…”
get the US government to stop screwing the crap out of Mexico’s economy?
opoponax~
Please provide an example. Even better - explain why my idea has no merit.
oh, and mnenmosyne, i’m aware of that. but when you put into context that we’re not talking about skilled trades or clerical work but things like scrubbing toilets, flipping burgers, and dangerous unskilled factory labor, it really puts the whole thing into perspective.
opoponax explained damn well why your idea has no merit, which is putting it extremely charitably.
As for providing an example of how the US has gutted Mexico’s economy, there’s the corn issue, which has been dicussed in some detail on Pandagon in the past.
a) I don’t believe that opoponax “damn well” did. Forcing Mexico to take care of her own by cutting off funds from workers in the U.S. would go a long way in ending the corruption that is rampant in the Mexican government.
b) I don’t support NAFTA; I never have. Are you saying it’s entirely the U.S.’s fault that half of the Mexican population live in poverty?
Mr. Xtian-it may not be our fault, but we are enabling it…
The silver lining to this story is that the feds
as well as the undocumented laborers. It’s been said many times in the immigration debate, but bears repeating: if the government wants to meaningfully decrease the use of illegal labor, it has to address the demand (employers), not just the supply (laborers).
I don’t think it’s true that Americans won’t do the jobs the immigrants do. I think Americans would be willing to do the work if they were compensated fairly for doing it. Employers know they can hire an illegal and screw him/her out of the paycheck, so why hire an American? Plus, working like a dog for $6 an hour (soon to be $7! Wow!) is not worth it for many Americans.
CC — i didn’t say your idea has no merit whatsoever. it’s just, well, mexicans aren’t crossing the border because they’re intrepid world travelers (or even because of Teh Precious Freedoms, which don’t apply to them here anyway).
they come here because there is nothing for them in Mexico.
a large part of the reason there is nothing for them in Mexico is because it is in American corporations’ interest to keep the Mexican economy weak. the reason you can get a pack of 3 t-shirts at walmart for $0.99 is because rather than having a t-shirt factory in Missouri or whatever, Hanes can open one in Mexico. the exchange rate is in their favor, there’s no minimum wage, people are absolutely clamoring for work no matter the conditions, and labor laws and safety standards are weakly enforced, if they exist at all. if the Mexican economy were to become strong enough to keep Mexicans from fleeing this clusterfuck, conditions for said American corporations would become unprofitable.
so, you know, the least we can do for poor Mexicans stuck in the circle jerk that is the Mexican economy is let their families across the border send money home.
furthermore, i don’t know what your ethnicity is or how your family came to the US, but i doubt you’re a native american. unless you’re african-american, how and why do you think you got here, if not for people coming to the US for economic reasons, often so as to send money home to family back in Europe? maybe you should just go back to Sweden or Germany or whatever, where you people belong…
Vocab word of the day: attenuated.
Like that matters.
This is a politically and historically ignorant statement. It has no factual basis and even if it did, is logically inconsistent.
The corruption that’s rampant in the Mexican government is part and parcel of US corporate exploitation of Mexico. End US corporate support of the Mexican elites, and the Mexican people would end the corruption in rather short order as they are attempting to do in Oaxaca and Chiapas right now.
And yes, I am saying that to a first approximation, it is the US that is responsible for half of Mexico living in poverty.
“I don’t think it’s true that Americans won’t do the jobs the immigrants do. I think Americans would be willing to do the work if they were compensated fairly for doing it.”
but part of the jobs immigrants are coming to is the pay. of course any of us would happily scrub toilets and pick lettuce if we were paid $20 an hour for it, with full benefits, pension plans, and paid vacation. ok, maybe not happily. but we’d do it. but that’s not what’s up for debate here. illegal immigrants are not taking the jobs under those ideal conditions, they’re taking them under the conditions that exist. because even the shittiest job in the US is better than A) nothing, or B) the jobs that are available back home.
“they come here because there is nothing for them in Mexico.”
Precisely. Perhaps you’ve visited Mexico in the last few years - perhaps not. I have, on numerous mission trips, carrying trailer loads of donations - food, medications, clothing - to help the poverty-stricken deep inside Mexico. The average Mexican farm worker earns (in pesos) the equivalent to between $0.50 and $2.00 a day - and that’s all day, 12-14 hours.
You’re right. There is nothing for them in Mexico. Maybe it’s time to change that.
It’s not that these are jobs that Americans won’t do. It’s that they are jobs that wouldn’t exist in the first place were it not for the existence of a large supply of cheap labor. Businesses would be more likely to automate many of their processes, were it not for the fact they can find plenty of people to work at subpar wages. They’re not “taking away jobs,” they’re allowing employers to expand the market for poverty-level industries.
Conservative Christian, let’s follow your idea for a minute.
We cut off capital flows to Mexico. How isn’t clear (doing so would abrogate our trade relations–Mexico is a WTO member, so we can’t just declare financial transactions with Mexico verboten), but suppose we just do, and to hell with trade.
OK, now the Mexican economy goes from impoverished to desperate. What happens next?
How does the Mexican government “care for its citizens?” With what resources? You’ve just cut off a big part of the Mexican economy!
At best, your idea makes the situation in Mexico even worse. At worst, it sparks outright civil disorder in Mexico. Now you have not just economic migrants but war refugees attempting to cross the border. All this, let’s keep in mind, as a result of the US abrogating its treaty obligations.
Any other ideas?
CC says:
You’re right. There is nothing for them in Mexico. Maybe it’s time to change that.
Well, yes. If Mexico were Canada, we wouldn’t have nearly the problem with illegal immigration. Everyone knows this. Everyone has known this for sixty years. No-one knows how to get there from here. Your idea is nonsensical—you seem to believe if we removed the capital flows from the US to Mexico, they’d stop this sneaky “being impoverished” and instead get on with turning into Canada, by some amazing governmental fiat.
not to mention, how exactly would you prevent American immigrants from sending their own fairly earned money back home? isn’t one of the lynchpins of American capitalism the idea that we can generally do what we want with our wealth and property, within limits, of course? if i have $1, i can buy an apple, i can deposit it in my bank account, or i can give it to you. or i can bring it home and put it in a jar. whichever i choose. the government cannot require me to keep that money circulating within the US economy, without some pretty scary implications.
the only countries that have those kinds of restrictions on spending and currency and the like are communist ones. which, y’know, i’m guessing you’re not sympathetic to.
No, it’s viable because the immigrants will do the job for a payscale that someone who expects to live here legally cannot, and those who work legally do things like show enough income to legally get livable housing, get health and life insurance, be able to participate in the above-ground economy and do things like legally own a car and pay for the insurance on it, etc, etc, etc.
And because little operations like the U.S. government will let multi-million dollar contract$ go to outfits like that leather-working factory for creating backpacks for the U.S> military, and refuse to do the due diligence to verify the company had enough capacity of *legal* workers to do the job.
Of course, the owners of the company made bail and went right back to their factory fulfilling that DoD contract, while the illegals they had employed without documentation and without things like health insurance were shipped off to Miami and Texas.
Mexico needs to be forced to provide for her people - half of which lives in poverty, and 1/5 of which lives in what’s called “extreme poverty�. One excellent way of doing so would be to end the flow of money from workers - documented or undocumented - back across the border to families in Mexico. $26 billion last year alone. Tell me that’s not an incentive for the Mexican government to do nothing.
What that would do would be push more people to continue to work at EPZ’s, which are basically sweatshops with tariff breaks that US companies can contract out to. The people would still be exploited.
How would you propose that we end the flow of money from workers? Would you make it illegal for people to send money home at all? How would you do this?
Keep in mind that while I worked in Osaka, Japan, I sent money home every month for three and a half years. I’ve heard relatives complain about immigrants sending money back home, and they stopped dead in their tracks when I reminded them of this. I don’t care if they’re supporting families or banking the money for a house.
I don’t think the answer is hurting the people who are getting screwed. The US government and corporations have quite a history of exploiting the people of Global South. We cannot continue to ignore this.
not to mention, how exactly would you prevent American immigrants from sending their own fairly earned money back home?
I think that’s pretty clear from what Conservative Christian has already posted, isn’t it? Slavery’s in the Bible, after all. Don’t pay illegal workers at all, and then you don’t have to worry about them sending their wages home! Genius!
Umm, actually, you had better refer to a little program known as OFAC (and I don’t mean the Canadian farm animal program either…)
I can’t believe that I am agreeing with someone who calls him/ herself “Conservative Christian”, but he / she has a point. Not about not letting immigrants send remittances home, but about how these remitances are a huge incentive for Mexico, etc. to do nothing to improve the lot of its people. Why does every discussion on how to improve the lot of immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, etc., leave out the responsibility the governments have for their citizens? To dismiss this as irrelevant because the US is doing all it can to keep these countries poor is invalid. First, it is not in the US’s long term interest to keep these countries poor. Second, complaining that US companies seek out the lowest costs is like complaining about the rain. It’s inevitable that ALL companies will seek out the lowest costs. US companies usually pay MORE than national companies do, after all. Governments exist to protect and regulate their citizens and the companies that employ them. Why is noone asking the Mexican government to do this?
I lived in Latin America for 10 years. I was struck by how wealthy oligarchs often bemoaned the plight of immigrants in the US. They even had a summit about it in S America in the late nineties (I think it was in Brazil). I could scarcly believe that their countries and indeed the world let these wealthy men so obviously be hypocritical. I also worked with wealthy women who would complain about their servants one day and discuss the mistreatment of their compatriots in the US the next. They, like many posters here, like politicians north and south of the border ignore the obvious: why are the poor so desperate to leave their homelands and why isn’t anything ever done about it?
Anyone who has a college degree and a decent job can relax and feel secure that illegal immigration will never affect them excpet for positively: cheaper tomatoes and day laborers to cut your grass. But if you are a construction worker, a factory worker, a hotel maid, if you own a lawn care business and only hire people with papers, you can be excused for not looking at the long term macro-economic benefits of very cheap labor willing to work without workers comp insurance for peanuts. They DO understand a very basic economic rule, though: a higher supply of cheap labor means falling wages. Period. Politics makes strange bedfellows, but this immigration issue has liberals striving to make sure employers are assured a desperate, very low wage workforce. Jobs Americans won’t do? Well, yes, most Americans seek work paid over the table, with protection for if they are injured, and at at least minimum wage. How very unreasonable of them. And Sheezlebub- labor unions ARE working very hard to improve working conditions for all workers, even undocumented ones.
I believe what is nonsensical is the notion that it is entirely the U.S.’s responsibility to see to it that the impoverished Mexican population is taken care of, while the corrupt Mexican government gets a pass. Please understand - I’m not unsympathetic to the plight of the Mexicans. I’ve spent time with these people, and I know that what they want is a better life for themselves and their children. But don’t you agree that that better life could and should be had without risking their lives by crossing the border? And how is that “better life” going to come to fruition without holding the Mexican (and yes, the U.S) government accountable?
Let’s take that $26 billion that was Western Union’ed to Mexico and spend it creating more well-paid jobs IN Mexico.
What about more micro- loans in Mexico targeting the segment that tends to immigrate? Most immigrants would probably rather stay put given the opportunity.
Elena, I appreciate that you get what I’m saying. Thank you.
Yes, Elena, the wealthy of the undocumented immigrants’ nations of origin do benefit. The problem is, they worked in collusion with US interests to grind the people under their heels, and CC’s solution is going to hurt the people worse.
Again, I sent money home when I worked overseas. It was mine to do with what I saw fit. I worked for it. I am not comfortable with denying someone else the right to do the same with money they worked just as hard–hell, harder–for.
Mnemosyne~
I don’t appreciate the insinuation that I support slavery. Besides, you and I both know the ancient slavery system as described in the Bible bears no resemblance to the chattel system used in the United States until 1865.
Let’s take that $26 billion that was Western Union’ed to Mexico and spend it creating more well-paid jobs IN Mexico.
We’ve told ourselves we’ve done this with NAFTA, with CAFA, and with EPZ’s–all of which have exacerbated the problem.
Now, if we were to pay out, with our tax money, towards this end, and make the corporations that have contributed to the deterioration of the economies of the Global South pay out towards this, I’d get with it. I do not want to penalize the people who have already been screwed, however.
Sheelzebub: Did exactly the same thing, in the same city, for six months less.
I use lots of stories about that when “educating” people about immigration issues. “They come over here and don’t even bother to learn English!” Just like all those Americans (worst offender I met personally was actually a Kiwi, but whatever) who go to Japan and don’t learn to speak Japanese.
Oh, and of course socialize almost exclusively with other foreigners except to date Japanese women (very seldom do foreign women in Japan date Japanese men, though it does happen).
So no, most people in most countries really don’t have a leg to stand on when complaining about immigration. Second worst offender for not learning the language was a fellow Canadian who’d been there for nine years, hardly spoke a word of Japanese, despite the fact that his own daughter barely spoke English. We all do the wrong thing constantly and consistently. Kind of funny how we all have that trait in common.
“it is not in the US’s long term interest to keep these countries poor.
oh, really?
well we sure have done a great job of it over the last 200-odd years.
actually, i don’t want to be snarky. in what way is it NOT in the US’s long term interest to keep latin american countries poor? i mean, outside of the general issue of unsustainability, which clearly the government doesn’t quite have a handle on yet, so the idea that they DO have a handle on the long term picture regarding latin america, and that this somehow absolves us, is just silly.
F.Jardim–when I was in Osaka, an American friend got engaged to a Japanese man. It took forever and a day for them to get him a Visa–and that was in a country that’s looked rather favorably upon by the US. You must have gone through hell and then some.
The problem is that we cannot control what the Mexican government does: we can’t “force” another government to take care of its people.
What we CAN do is regulate those behaviors of US citizens that contribute to the problem. Someone already mentioned the issue with corn subsidies. CC mentioned regulating the wiring of money back to Mexico.
What else can we do?
End “sweetheart deals” for US companies that endanger Mexico’s industry.
Regulate transportation across the border by US standards (e.g., don’t allow Mexican companies to force their truckers to drive unsafe equipment for 20 hours at a stretch).
Why not attach additional tariffs to products made in factories that abuse human rights and worker rights (e.g., Ford calling out the federalis to fire on striking factory workers)?
What about fines or additional tarrifs for products made in factories that don’t comply with pollution contraints (we may be heading to this as states begin to enforce waste recycling and toxic components in consumer products)?
Figure out what we can do and then determine what will do the most good for the most people and the least harm to the fewest people. I am willing to bet a good deal of money that once the “people” become the center of attention rather than “the economy” or “companies” or “industries”, the answers would become strikingly obvious.
No one has yet mentioned that many Mexican jobs have been lost to China under free trade policies. Even Mexico’s exploitive factories couldn’t under price China enough to please American corporations. And, CC, Chris Clarke mentioned the corn issue. Did you check that out… Again NAFTA, American corporations and trade policies.
“Let’s take that $26 billion that was Western Union’ed to Mexico and spend it creating more well-paid jobs IN Mexico.”
unless you’re just being inadvertantly unclear, umm…
TOTALLY FUCKING FUCKED UP, MUCH?
in what way do we have the right to confiscate immigrants’ earnings and spend it as the government sees fit (even if the government had a history of right action on this course)?
oooh, i have a great idea.
before i deport you back to Germany for how much your family must have benefited from stealing jobs from the Real Americans, i’m going to confiscate all your wages (retroactively, of course) to put in some kind of fund to help Germany strengthen its economy — they’ve got a lot to get sorted after the whole East Germany fiasco…
>>Let’s take that $26 billion that was Western Union’ed to Mexico and spend it creating more well-paid jobs IN Mexico.
LOL. Because the families of Mexicans put that money in a mattress somewhere. They certainly don’t spend it locally to get consumer goods, thus propping up their local economy… It’s funny how the market is the solution to every problem except the conservatives’ problems.
The reason remittances continue without real political opposition is that it’s much cheaper for the U.S. to foist the social costs - schools, health care, all the things you need reproduce your labor force - off on the Mexican economy. For the low low price of some remittances, we wash our hands of responsibility for spouses, children, old people, and the disabled and get nothing but healthy young men who will quietly disappear across the border once they’re too old to work. If people couldn’t send money back, there would be a boom in whole-family migrations. I know whole families who have migrated, yes, but I also know a lot of people, especially those who’re illegal long-term residents, who are maintaining grandparents and children abroad and will continue to do so until they can retire home.
I want to point something out: yes, exploitation of immigrant labor is _awful_ but also, I know young men who travel to the U.S. for the same reason that U.S. kids backpack in Guatemala or WWOOF in Germany or wait tables in Argentina. It’s new, it’s different, they’re young, it’s an adventure. I’m not saying the general immigrant narrative is in any way a pretty one, but I also wonder if we lose sight of people’s humanity when we cast them as nothing but victims of circumstance.
I don’t appreciate the insinuation that I support slavery.
You seem to be advocating that we take the money that immigrants have earned away from them. How is that anything but slavery?
And actually the H2A farmworker program mandates wages substantially higher than the U.S. minimum wage specifically so that H2A workers can’t outcompete U.S. workers in wages.
Our local representative is Very Angry about how the Mexicans are entitled to higher wages. That’s probably why she has such a history of hiring undocumented workers on her tree farm.
It is hsameful that these illegal immigrant parents put their kids at risk in this manner! The should take all possible precaustions to insure that their kids are cared for if the parents are apprehended for their illegal behavior. Barring that, they should return to their native country and find work there rather than violate U.S. law!
Local officials have made it clear for years that they have “no responsibility for apprehending illegal immigrants or enforcing immigration law.” They won’t even permit their police departments to report illegal immigrants when found. Now they want ICE to take responsibility for the children of illegal immigrants? That is the responsibility of local officials. Just as the local authorities refuse to provide information about illegal immigrants to federal authorities, the federal authorities should not provide information to local officials regarding ICE raids!
What’s so hard to understand about this? Seems perfectly appropriate. We can at least be thankful that the Feds have heard the call from local officials that complain that the illegals are a drain on local resources (schools, hospitals, etc.) and are making efforts to round them up and return them to their native nations! The ICE authorities deserve our thanks!
Sheelzebub wrote: Mar 19th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
“F.Jardim–when I was in Osaka, an American friend got engaged to a Japanese man. It took forever and a day for them to get him a Visa–and that was in a country that’s looked rather favorably upon by the US. You must have gone through hell and then some.”
Let’s just say that the word “lottery” is amazingly appropriate to how the system works. Your odds of getting even considered for a visa are indeed quite close to playing the lotto or getting a royal straight flush in a hand of 5-card-stud poker. And that’s considering I’m passably white, with a degree and an adequate command of the language. No wonder even non-mexicans go through great peril and even expense to slip into the country ilelgally. The other entrances have so many roadblocks they might as well be walled shut.
Blackbloc~
“LOL. Because the families of Mexicans put that money in a mattress somewhere. They certainly don’t spend it locally to get consumer goods, thus propping up their local economy…”
I’m sure a lot of them do. Which makes the Mexican gov’t happy - that was $26 billion less they had to spend last year to create better jobs and provide more and better healthcare for Mexicans IN Mexico.
And bear this in mind: neither of us can prove or disprove that much of that $26 billion last year wasn’t spent hiring “coyotes” to bring more workers across the border into the U.S. illegally. But this is a large part of the reason why the money is sent back.
opoponax~
Most of my family came from Ireland and England. Legally.
ah, well you all look pretty much the same to me. fuckin’ nazi. go back to germany.
And bear this in mind: neither of us can prove or disprove that much of that $26 billion last year wasn’t spent hiring “coyotes� to bring more workers across the border into the U.S. illegally. But this is a large part of the reason why the money is sent back.
Which then means that your solution is moot–they would not be able to send this money home. Coyotes are paid upfront or via loans back home and take the money out in installments stateside. In that case, it does not go “over the border” and the little that does is not propping up Mexico.
Again, penalizing the exploited is not helping.
“ah, well you all look pretty much the same to me. fuckin’ nazi. go back to germany.”
ad hominem. Pointless to the discussion at hand.
I’m not going to apologize for my views - I certainly don’t expect anyone else to apologize for theirs. This is how political debate is supposed to work.
yeah, i know.
i didn’t mean that to be germane to the discussion at hand. clearly. more to illustrate the kind of behavior the average conservative tends to constantly project at immigrants, especially non-white immigrants.
besides which, you haven’t answered my question about exactly how we would prevent Mexican immigrants from sending money back home?
oh, and i forgot to ask you. do you have some sort of papers proving that your family immigrated legally, or for that matter, that you yourself are in the country legally?
because if you can’t show me some kind of documentation, i’m afraid i’m going to have to requisition your last 10 years’ wages to be put into a fund to help stabilize eastern european economies.
Speedbudget wrote:
Well, I can’t speak about every area in the country, but in the Philadelphia area, almost all of the residential concrete construction work is done by Mexican and Portugese crews. They aren’t making minimum wage, but are between $13 and $17 an hour. The concrete companies simply can’t get Americans to do the work: it’s boiling hot in July and freezing cold in January, and it’s nasty, dirty work. (And yes, I’ve done it myself.)
There are a whole lot of men in Philly with poor educational backgrounds who have either no jobs or near jobs that pay maybe $7 an hour — but you can’t get them to set and pour concrete walls for twice that amount; they simply won’t do the work.
The mental image we have of illegal immigrants is that they come here and pick the lettuce for $2.50 an hour, and I’m sure that’s true in a lot of cases. But in the northeast you also find them pouring concrete, doing roofing, landscaping, frame carpentry, sheetrocking, exterior siding, painting and practically every construction trade except electrical, HVAC, plumbing and finish carpentry — and I figure that they’ll be moving into those areas soon enough.
Those aren’t minimum wage jobs.
What I’ve been trying to figure out is: how can Mexico, which is blessed with the hardest working people on earth, be such an economic basket case?
One point on which I differ from most of my conservative brethren is illegal immigration. I believe that we have illegal immigration because we want illegal immigration.
Oh, we say that we don’t, and every couple of years we vote for people who say that they’ll “do something” about the problem, but we vote for illegal immigration every single day, vote with our wallets, by buying the goods and services produce by illegals.
The real truth is that we want them here to do the work that they do, and then quietly disappear from every other aspect of life and culture.
“besides which, you haven’t answered my question about exactly how we would prevent Mexican immigrants from sending money back home?”
I didn’t see this question. I did, however, see this one:
“in what way do we have the right to confiscate immigrants’ earnings and spend it as the government sees fit (even if the government had a history of right action on this course)?”
I admit I did segueway into suggesting the monies be taken and used to bolster the Mexican economy as a designated U.S. agency sees fit. But I think my original argument has more merit - disallow all private funds to be electronically transferred from the U.S. to Mexico. At the very least, that’s $26 billion more being spent inside the U.S.
Yeah, you English and Irish immigrants (among others) “legally” came here and stole the land from MY (Native American) people. Whatever.
Dana said:
“One point on which I differ from most of my conservative brethren is illegal immigration. I believe that we have illegal immigration because we want illegal immigration.”
Dana, you are absolutely right. And every U.S. administration at least since Teddy Roosevelt’s has supported that - usually very quietly.
“oh, and i forgot to ask you. do you have some sort of papers proving that your family immigrated legally, or for that matter, that you yourself are in the country legally?”
Opoponax, you’ll never know.
“Yeah, you English and Irish immigrants (among others) “legallyâ€? came here and stole the land from MY (Native American) people. Whatever.”
Jodie, don’t be silly. We bought the land with beads and mirrors and whiskey.
Look, bad joke - but the fact of the matter is, unless we’re willing to give California, New Mexico, Nevada, and Texas BACK to Mexico, we have to find a better solution!
CC–I’m curious if you could comment on *how* to prevent remittences, without massive invasive freedom reducing government intervention. What, are they going to open all envelopes? Monitor all bank accounts? Shut down Western Union?
(I don’t agree with the idea at all–they are a far more effective form of foreign aid than actual foreign aid, b/c corrupt oligarchs can’t take a huge cut and the money actually reaches the poor).
“Look, bad joke”
So you think that has the potential to be funny?
“CC–I’m curious if you could comment on *how* to prevent remittences, without massive invasive freedom reducing government intervention. What, are they going to open all envelopes? Monitor all bank accounts? Shut down Western Union?”
Shut down Western Union to Mexico. It could be as simple as that.
“(I don’t agree with the idea at all–they are a far more effective form of foreign aid than actual foreign aid, b/c corrupt oligarchs can’t take a huge cut and the money actually reaches the poor).”
I understand your point - but bear in mind, that was $26 billion last year that those same corrupt oligarchs in Mexico did not have to spend for better jobs, schools, and hospitals.
““Look, bad jokeâ€?
So you think that has the potential to be funny?”
Actually, only if Ted Kennedy said it.
“Shut down Western Union to Mexico. It could be as simple as that.”
but Western Union is a for profit corporation. every precedent in corporate law, economic law, finance law, etc. etc. etc. for generations now protects its right to do business with Mexico. how on earth would you justify such a thing?
we would have to abrogate every trade agreement we have with Mexico and initiate some kind of embargo for this to be justifiable at all.
yeah, what Black Bloc said earlier. i love how the conservatives use the free market as their talisman, until, of course, it doesn’t work for them.
You seem to be advocating that we take the money that immigrants have earned away from them. How is that anything but slavery?
Which begs the question - where is that money going?
Sure, some of it is supporting family members. However, a fair pile of it is going into savings or into land or other capital purchases which ensure employment for the worker AND for a fair number of family members in the future. There are towns in Mexico where all of the 20somethings are gone and the 35year plus crowd is busy building family houses and setting up businesses with money earned in the US.
Sounds like a bit of the American Dream to me.
Not unlike those who worked indenture contracts in the new world, or worked contracts aboard ships to develop capital to invest in future holdings.
But I think my original argument has more merit - disallow all private funds to be electronically transferred from the U.S. to Mexico.
I know naturalized citizens who send money back to their relatives in Mexico. Are you suggesting that we not allow U.S. citizens to send money to their families?
Not to mention that a lot of the problems in Mexico are due to their own illegal immigrants who were trying to escape civil war in places like Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. So you’ll need to cut off remittances to those countries as well.
Oh, and don’t forget to tell all of the Cuban exiles in Florida that they can no longer send money or packages to their relatives. Castro is 10 times worse than the Mexican government, so why are we allowing Cuban exiles to prop up his government by sending their relatives gifts?
One is, perhaps, coming to this discussion a bit late, but one cannot help but notice that the illegal immigrants in question are all mainly of a brown hue, and those that are doing the most bitterest complaining are of a pinkish-white hue. Oh, and surely one could point to the treatment of Irish immigrants earlier in our glorious nation’s glorious history, but those who bewail the slowness by which the brown-skinned Spanish-speaking immigrants are melting themselves into our storied pot seem to have little trouble with the cretinous display of all things stereotypically Irish — which is to say, drinking copiously in public — that litters our streets and byways with green detritus at the Ides of March.
Multiculturalism is all just fine and dandy as long as all the cultures are white and speak English.
CC wrote:
Actually, with the exception of a restriction on Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century, all immigration was legal until the 1920s.
One point on which I differ from most of my conservative brethren is illegal immigration. I believe that we have illegal immigration because we want illegal immigration.
ITA. We want cheap prices for a lot of stuff, and would rather not think about how it gets so cheap. Short of having the stuff fairy come and will it into existence, we have to have people make it, and this means exploited labor either in the Global South or here in the US.
Dana: >>What I’ve been trying to figure out is: how can Mexico, which is blessed with the hardest working people on earth, be such an economic basket case?
It’s not that hard to figure out, when you don’t suffer from delusions.
The response is as it has always been in the history of the world, and capitalism in particular. Those who work are poor. Those who don’t are rich.
Dana, I absolutely guarantee you that in any town in any state of the US, a construction company paying $13-15/ and hour will have no problem finding American citizens willing to work, in whatever temperature. No offense, but the very idea that Americans would turn up their noses at those wages seems like ivory towerism, if I may coin a phrase. Do you have any idea how much money a person with only a high school degree can make in this country, citizen or no? When my husband, a legal immigrant, was first looking for work here, we would have killed for such wages.
I work with illegal immigrants every day. Part of what I do is being present while they fill out financial affidavits revealing their income and assets. It is very rare for any of them to make more then $8.50 or so an hour. They tell tales of how in other states they make less, especially border states. When I worked with Cuban refugees, they reported that they chose to be settled in Michigan rather than Florida or New Mexico (they were goven a choice) because in Michigan they could make $7-8.00 an hours whereas in the other states they could only make $5.00/hour. This was widely believed to be due to illegal immigration.
In the year 2001, my husband was fortunate enough to become a member of the Laborer’s International Union. While the union-only companies struggled to get contracts, they would often see sub-contractors (on state contracts no less) cash their undocumented laborers paychecks, take a huge cut, and give the difference to the workers in cash. Obviously this was a problem of regulation and law-breaking on the part of employers. Yet I see people who genuinely are concerned with exploitation of illegal immigrants somehow extending their concern to opportunistic employers who want to undo a century of labor law because they have these desperate immigrants available. The worst part is, intelligent people are really buying that Americans aren’t willing to work hard for a reasonable wage.
PS. Don’t forget that illegals making 14-15 an hour under the table are probably costing their employers nothing in payroll taxes and workers comp insurance. Ar eyou really in favor of that?
The US didn’t buy my tribe’s land — they were forcibly removed by the government, probably because they were too much competition for the white shopkeepers.
One is, perhaps, coming to this discussion a bit late, but one cannot help but notice that the illegal immigrants in question are all mainly of a brown hue, and those that are doing the most bitterest complaining are of a pinkish-white hue.
It’s especially amusing given that those pinkish-white hued ones in places like Boston or Chicago see nothing wrong with their compatriots from places like Poland or Ireland making a few bucks under the table as landscapers or nannies. All of those horrible brown people should be sent back to where they came from, but what’s wrong with having Stash and his crew come by to mow the lawn?
Multiculturalism is all just fine and dandy as long as all the cultures are white and speak English.
One reason Boston is getting considerably less Irish is the emergence of the Celtic Tiger Economy, luring people back to raise their kids where healthcare and family support is a right.
Another reason is that immigration officials have ceased a form of largesse to illegals that I call Irish Privilege.
It used to be that the cops and officials and even the INS looked the other way - until it came down to threats of lawsuits against the INS and others due to unequal treatment of ethnic groups when it came to roundup and deportation.
As for certain immigrant groups being “well behaved”, think again. Zog had students last year whose uncles and fathers were doing hard time for running guns and money to extreme terrorist factions in Northern Ireland. I know that is a handful of people funneling funds and goods to people who like their bombs and dead bodies, but the Arab-American community was under far more scrutiny for far fewer dollars funneled into such organizations.
Yeah, for all the foofaraw over the cease-fire between the Irish Republican Army and the UK armed forces — which is a very, very good thing — there was astonishingly little acknowledgement of how much those of us here in the US contributed to the conflict by sending money and weapons. What, us deal with terrorists? Perish the thought.
Moira and Ms. Kate–yep, but point this out on the Irish Riveria, and it’s an unpardonable sin. But this is the same place where Ray Flynn decried stop and searches of Irish Catholic men in Belfast, but turned a blind eye to the same treatment of Black men in Boston.
I mean, yeah, the stop and searches of Catholics in Belfast were awful and should have been condemned. I just wish my Black friends could drive and walk through certain neighborhoods without getting stopped and searched. This happened to them almost weekly.
Visitors and residents of our MIT Independent Living Group in the Back Bay were frequently afforded similar security by the BU Police if they were sufficiently Black or Arab/Israeli.
Nevermind that the worst security issue in the area was carloads of drunken suburban fuckards descending on the Kenmore Square discoclubs of yore (and, no, I don’t mean Teh Rat).
But drivin’ while black is actually a crime! They’re probably drug dealers or something. It’s not the same thing at all.
Sheelzebub,
One of my black male students has been stopped for driving while black in the Medford area twice during the past year.
Nobody should even waste much time thinking about illegal immigration. It’s an entirely secondary (if not outright illusory) issue. What conservative Americans are actually scared about is American’s overall economic decline. Of course, there may be some racism in that mix, but the bulk of the concern comes from the mediocre performance of the American economy in terms of economic equality.
That’s precisely the major opening us on the Left have, if we ever get any actual power. We say that we have (generally) superior economic policy (which I agree that we generally do). We need to get power and vigorously execute on our policies. If it works, we propose a bargain to the conservatives below the country club set: they can have the pleasure of sucking CEO dick while being poor, or they can follow us. Sure, lots will eagerly prefer to get on their knees, but we might peel away enough to get us permanent victory.
One of my black male students has been stopped for driving while black in the Medford area twice during the past year.
Sigh. My tax dollars at work.
(hmmm … but Mefuh is actually far less white than most towns it borders … were they MDC cops?)
That must be what they are doing when they should be ticketing those who don’t shovel.
Moira and Ms. Kate–yep, but point this out on the Irish Riveria, and it’s an unpardonable sin.
You mean like the day I referred to the IRA as “terrorists” in front of my half-Irish grandmother, only to see her eyes bug out and hear her hiss, “The IRA are not terrorists!!!”
Uh, yeah, okay, Grandma.
(hmmm … but Mefuh is actually far less white than most towns it borders … were they MDC cops?)
He didn’t mention which cops…I just know he and a friend we’re heading to the movies…could have been Somerville cops, Cambridge cops…
I have to remind my students who get all “racism is a sourthern thing” that while Little Rock rioted in the 1950s over school de-segregation, Boston rioted in the 1970s. And how dare Bulger declare Jimmy Kelly right about that issue. Jimmy Kelly was an old-school Southie Bigot and Boston is better off without him. The sooner Ray Flynn joins him, the better.
I have to laugh sometimes about how the jobs have migrated over the years. New England is filled with old mills along the rivers in most every city (thinking Manchester, NH through Lowell, Lawsrence, etc).
All these factories (often unionized) were shut down when the owners realized they could send the jobs to North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, and other areas through the South and pay the local workers less AND keep out the unions.
Then they realized that they could send the jobs overseas and make that much more and pay the workers that much less. So the Jockey underwear, fruit of the loom, hanes, and all the other clothing manufacturers went first to the Caribbean then to Asia (China, et al) for even less. Of course, they pay lip service to paying “prevailing wage” and “liveable wage” but the reality is, they squeeze the workers who have even fewer rights than the worst treated US workers, immigrant or native.
I for one am willing to pay higher prices for products to get something good that will last. I realize I am an exception but the good products treat workers correctly and build customer loyalty. Unfortunately, even firms like Bass Shoes have had to send their production overseas in order to compete.
while Little Rock rioted in the 1950s over school de-segregation, Boston rioted in the 1970s.
I believe it was Bill Russell who coined the term “Deep East”.
It didn’t end with the 70s and the schools - the best maintained housing projects were in white areas and people were preferentially assigned to these places according to race and ethnicity well into the late 1980s. If you were white your wait was much less and your assigned spot was far nicer. It took a lawsuit to correct that bullshit and then there were lots of nasty incidents for the first hispanics in Charlestown and the first blacks sent to the North End.
Now the housing in Charlestown seems predominantly mixed southeast Asian, Dominican, and Chinese from looks, sounds, and food smells.
Of course it was in the best interests of the power structure to pitt the interests of bottom-rung whites against blacks rather than provide adequate educational infrastructure and housing for all. Desegregation was a cheap and easy way to pit one group against another without actually fixing anything in ways that would cost any rich landholders any money.
The irony here is that the company has an on-line store, and a website which boasts that it has manufactured quality products for famous brand name companies such as Coach, Fossil, G.H. Bass, Mark Cross, Rockport, and Timberland to name a few. . I’m not going to buy another Coach bag.
I took a look at personal product line and it isn’t cheap: 199.00 per bag. Coach and Fossil are pricier still. I think this is a question of the company figuring out that they can fire the legal employees, fill the factory with paperless aliens who will work for half the wages, no pensions, overtime or safety restrictions, and make a bomb more money.
This issue has little to do with illegal immigration: it has everything to do with workers rights. The company should be screwed to the wall, absolutely: it’s not that Americans or won’t take factory jobs — it’s that they won’t work 12 hour days for 3.50 an hour, and they won’t put up with, for example, being locked in a workplace. Legal or not legal, workers have rights.
Ms Kate says: “Of course it was in the best interests of the power structure to pitt the interests of bottom-rung whites against blacks rather than provide adequate educational infrastructure and housing for all. Desegregation was a cheap and easy way to pit one group against another without actually fixing anything in ways that would cost any rich landholders any money.”
That’s the way it has always been. Throughout the South, it was most always the power structure using race to pull a bait and switch on the poor, uneducated whites rather than on the real evil, i.e., themselves (the power structure/patriarchy or whatever you desire to call it).
Nobody should even waste much time thinking about illegal immigration. It’s an entirely secondary (if not outright illusory) issue.
When I bike by Foss Park in Somerville where the day laborers congregate, I am reminded daily of why it matters.
Vans and trucks drive up, the occupants sizing up the men and the men wearing work clothes that make them look bigger and stronger than they probably are. They lean into rolled down windows, negotiate, and then hop in alone or with a group.
If it were night I’d expect them to be wearing scanty clothing to look more fit for the driver’s purposes.
If nothing else, illegal immigration is a humanitarian issue. Personally, I’d like to see those who want to come be able to fill out a form and then get a tracking number. If they couldn’t find a job, they would have to leave. If they got in trouble, they would have to leave. Once here a while, they could be eligible for residency programs that require continuous progress with english fluency, cultural understanding and legal understanding, education, etc. culminating in permanent residency and citizenship. Take them all and let escalating requirements reward the worthy and sift out those with no long-term interest or ability to make it here.
I used to live about 5 blocks from there. I know the scene well.
The humanitarian side of it hit me hard after the immigration protests last spring. I knew that my neighborhood had a lot of immigrants (both legal and illegal), but it nailed me after the protests when everyone got off at the Sullivan T-station with me. These were my neighbors being talked about.
Now I live adjacent to the Mission Park housing project. I’d guess a similar thing would happen at my T-stop here. These are people first and foremost.
Ah yes, Mission Park. I used to get off at that stop when I worked for Harvard in one of the Huntington Ave storefront offices.
One summer day I walked over to Brookline Village and was followed through a store by a hyper clerk. A good tan plus henna’d hair plus stocky curves and ambiguous features and viola! a lesson in tolerance.
Elena wrote:
Elena, I’m in construction, specifically concrete, and I have been for a quarter of a century. I’ve had to try to hire people for construction and concrete production jobs. I’ve had to do this in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, in Wilmington, Delaware, and in the suburbs of Philadelphia. What I wrote, I wrote from a quarter century of experience in the field.
Philadephia is a city with an unfortunately large number of young men who declined to finish high school. That used to mean that they would have to find jobs working with their hands and their sinews. But I’ll be damned if I could find many who were would take such jobs, or if they did take such jobs, lasted more than a week or so.
Personally, I am surprised at the outrage directed at illegal immigrants considering they come here and work hard. My time working for a RE development company led me to believe Mexican immigrants were generally hard working and honest.
I have far more of an issue with all the American citizens who don’t do jack but collect a welfare check. They do this country a bigger disservice than any working immigrant, legal or not.
do you guys all live in Boston?
who knew?
So can the whole anchor baby myth be put to rest now?
dana, not to derail, but as far as i know, there are no “American citizens who don’t do jack but collect a welfare check.” welfare exists for two purposes — for people who are disabled, and single mothers. people who are on disability are generally unable to work. and if you think single mothers aren’t working 24/7, you have a hell of a lot to learn.
Sorry. I realize my original statement was inflammatory. I’ll rephrase it as: By my experience Illegal Immigrants are hard working and honest. I’m surprised the anger is directed personally at them instead of the people who take advantage of some of them and the system that allows it to happen.
It’s really too bad the label’s “Mexican” and “American” need apply, because there are many Mexicans who are more hard working than a large group of Americans.
MAJeff wrote:
I grew up in the South, in a small town in Kentucky, then lived in Lexington, Kentucky and Hampton, Virginia, before moving north, and I can tell you that the most segregated place I have ever lived was Wilmington, Delaware.
Well, more precisely, I worked in Wilmington; I actually lived in Hockessin, a suburb. I don’t know the precise racial makeup of Wilmington, but the local paper, the News-Journal, once wrote that if the city were a separate school district, it would be 78% black, 13% Hispanic, and 9% white and Asian. Meanwhile, in Hockessin, just six miles from the Wilmington city limits, if you saw a black person, you knew he was just there to work, ‘cause he sure wasn’t allowed to actually live there. (Hockessin did have a substantial Asian, primarily Chinese, population. The borders were actually a little bit fuzzy, something I never understood, and maybe there were parts far from me where there were blacks, but there sure weren’t any near where I lived.)
The Wilmington/New Castle County public schools were absolutely destroyed by forced integration and busing in the 1970s. The result was, by the time I moved there (2000), no one who could in any way afford to send their kids to private school sent them to the public schools. There were four diocesian Catholic high schools, with tuition (when I left) running around $7,000 a year; there were at least three non-diocesian Catholic high schools with tuition running about $12,000 a year — and these schools were so full that they had waiting lists! Beyond that, there were several (don’t remember how many) non-Catholic schools.
Yet, where I went to school, in the South, when integration came, it just came. In the small town in which I went to school, integration came in the usual manner for small Southern towns: the black school mysteriously burned to the ground during the summer. There was no place else for the black students but the white school, so that’s where they went, and there really wasn’t a big fuss about it. (This was about the fourth grade for me.)
whoops, sorrry. i meant grilltacular, not dana.
Opo wrote:
Don’t know who you were quoting, but I didn’t write that. I did write that I had a very difficult time finding Americans to do some hard construction and concrete producer jobs. How the people who won’t work, or won’t work hard, survive is a mystery to me.
Oh, OK, now I see it.
Dana,
Was it the integration or the racist reaction of whites (white flight, etc.) that destroyed the schools. Everyone wants to blame busing. No one ever wants to lay the blame at the feet of white people who were so racist they simply couldn’t allow their little dearies to sit in the same classrooms as African-Americans so they fled to the suburbs where they could set up their own lilly white school districts.
We see this consistently with such things as housing segregation as well. Whites tend to view a neighborhood a integrated when it’s around 80/20 white/black, while African Americans tend to see it as integrated at 50/50. Once it gets past the 20% black figure, whites can’t get out fast enough and sell their property at lower values.
Boston’s public schools ain’t the greatest. And a large reason for that is the racist whites who fled, drawing resources and finances out of the city, in order to keep their kids from having to interact with blacks.
And as a reminder, that white flight has produced schools that are more segregated today than they were in 1968. And the types of housing segregation that have resulted have produced pockets of more intense poverty in those urban areas, so those segregated schools tend to be even worse. I’m laying this at the feet of structural and cultural white supremacy, not attempts to alleviate it.
Dana, have you tried actively finding American workers? High schools tend to steer kids to college; have you asked if you can offer summer apprentice programs to train students for construction careers? Do you have any kind of outreach program? Where do you advertise for workers? Or… do you just pick up day workers who stand outside Home Depot?
Americans WILL do the work they can find. I know this because my father, an accountant by training, learned construction from my uncles who did it professionally and took to doing work for them as an alternative to stressing out at a desk. My brother worked in a cannery summers while he was in college; 12 hour days in steam and smelling of tomatoes. I took blue collar temp work during the summers– lifted garage door panels after riveting them. Didn’t pay more than minimum, that; but it was *available*.
The United States is not the only country facing a large influx of unskilled immigration. Most of the Western industrial countries are facing similar problems. In Western Europe the immigrants are coming from North Africa and Eastern Europe. In the United States the influx is from Latin America. Immigration in Europe is causing problems and concerns similar to those in the US.
The problem is not unrelated to the problem of outsourcing jobs from the Western Countries, where labor is expensive, to poorer countries, were Labor (and Lives) are cheap.
Since the Wobblies imploded 60 years ago the solutions will need to come from the Western Governments.
This is also a supply and demand issue. People are leaving Latin America and North Africa because life there is abominable. If the living conditions in those countries improve then immigration will slow.
The solutions will require multi-national efforts on the part of the Western countries and real leadership by politicians.
It would help if they followed Colorado Dave’s 11 step solution plan:
1) All steps must be enacted simultaneously by all Western Industrial Democracies (the US, Canada, the EU).
2) Raise the Minimum Wage to a true living wage and enforce it in all industries and among businesses of all sizes.
3) Create a legitimate Visa process for unskilled workers to move to the North and West for employment legally.
4) The US, Canada and EU countries may impose language proficiency requirements for citizenship but not for a work permit. (You can work in Berlin speaking Arabic but must master German for citizenship.)
5) Any company wishing to import goods or services into the United States or Western Europe must ensure that all offshore sites and subsidiaries meet Western Labor and Environmental practices. The burden of proof for this shall lie with the company. (In other words if Nike wants to import sneakers from China it will be up to Nike to prove that all workers are paid the US minimum as well as that all other labor and environmental standards are met not only by their own companies but by all suppliers and contractors.
6) Require any Western Company relocating facilities or employees offshore to meet all conditions outlined in Point Number 4. In other words if RCA wants to set up a maquiladora in Juarez they of course can but they will still need to meet US labor and environmental standards.
7) The low-tariff benefits of Free Trade shall exist for companies which comply with steps 4 and 5 above.
8) Any company which cannot prove compliance with 4 and 5 above shall be subject to prohibitive tariffs.
9) Any company which cannot prove compliance with 4 and 5 above shall also be bared from receiving government contracts in the US, Canada or the EU.
10) Large scale economic aid (using the Marshall Plan as a template) shall flow from the US, Canada and the EU towards Latin America, North Africa and other undeveloped parts of the world. (It is in the security and national interests of the United States to have Mexico have a stable industrial democracy with a viable economy.)
11) Aid shall only flow to countries which guarantee their citizens representative government, and human rights.
Simple isn’t it?
A few things for the right and a few things for the left.
All we need is the leadership.
I did write that I had a very difficult time finding Americans to do some hard construction and concrete producer jobs.
Good gravy, whatever happened to the Free Market? If you pay enough and offer good enough working conditions, people will take the jobs you offer. If you’re not getting enough applicants, you’re simply not making offers as good as those of your competitors (or, at least, of people competing for jobs).
But no, when it’s useful to wag fingers at those layabouts (who so often just happen to be minorities), suddenly market theory goes out the window. They’re just, y’know, lazy, not like Kids In Our Day, who would happily risk life and limb for twenty cents an hour.
Ok, you want the Mexican people to take control of their government? Stop having the US fund the Mexican Government’s dessication of the Zapatistas in Chiapas. A home-grown people’s fight to overthrow their corrupt government in order to install a government that will take care of the people, provide a better infastructure, and redistribute the wealth so that everyone has something and they don’t have a ruling class.
Oh, wait. What now? You mean the US has declared the Zapatistas as “terrorists”? And are actually funneling money to bring them down through the “corrupt” government of Pres. Fox? Oh, my bad. I thought “banana republic” was only the name of a store!
The truth is, and this might hurt some of your guys’ feeling, capitalism thrives only in instances where the most profit can be made. When your bottom line is NOT feeding people and providing for your community, but it is making as much money as humanly possible in the shortest amount of time possible, you are NOT looking out for your workers. You are looking out for numero uno, and that means yourself.
Capitalism is an inherently selfish system. It does not have a moral code, it does not have anything but a profit bottom-line. This is what feeds the personal greed of individuals (libertarians), and it is what feeds the corporate greed that allows for government intrusion into foreign governments. Banana republics were created, in the absence of actual colonialism, to create colonies whereby rich american corporations could get even richer, while keeping the costs of their labor way way down. This encouraged all the messing with governments, because the US government’s responsibility has always been to make sure their business cronies make fucking fat cash. The CIA is responsible for upholding and funding the most right-wing, totalitarian, feudalistic regimes in the southern countries for DECADES. We found out about a few of those missions during Iran-Contra. I wasn’t even cognizant of Iran-Contra when it happened (I’m fairly young), but even I still know about Iran-Contra.
If you don’t think that this kind of thing is still happening, I suggest you take a look at the history of the Zapatistas and other homegrown labor and freedom movements in our border countries (I include all of Central and South American counties because we are so very close), that were routinely held in check due to covert funding – using our tax dollars!- of the right-wing dictatorships by our government.
The reason why we uphold totalitarian dictatorships in these countries? Because one of the big things local workers movements want to do is END THE CORPORATE SUBSIDY of american corporations in these countries. They want to outlaw any corporations having any factories on their land. Even if they allow these corporations to stand, they want workers to have actual pay, actual health care, living conditions that aren’t major sanitation and safety issues, they want their women to choose when to give birth, they want their people to ownthe profits, not the american corporations. And what do we Americans call this, if we are “goodâ€? “patrioticâ€? americans? COMMUNISM.
So, there you go. The fucking of the world continues in the interest of the corporations thanks to the red scare. Does anyone stop to think WHY the people are swayed by socialism and communism? Could it maybe be, oh I dunno, because they are sick of being ruled by the same rich ruling class that has always slaved them (wage or otherwise) since we can remember history? Maybe because socialism and communism actually address workers’ conerns, and provide them a place that is more MORAL than being a wage slave for pennies a day? Perhaps because they are sick of puppet governments, like Fox’s, that claim to work for the people and instead work for foreign interests?
Heck, I’m a socialist for the same reason! I’m sick of my government caring more aobut corporate profit then it does about its own fucking people. I’m all for us getting the hell out of other countries, imposing real workers-rights based trade tarrifs, fuck it would be great if everyone in this country were unionized so we could all fight for economic equality, instead of fighting each other for the scraps thrown to us from our Corporate Overlords.
The first step? Deny corporate citizenry. The second? Impose working conditions sanctions, trade tarrifs with known human rights violators. The third? Dissolve the corporations due to workers abuse practices, put all the rich fuckers in jail for life (without parole), and redistribute the wealthe so we can start local non-profit businesses. Then? Oh, how about rewriting the constitution to provide workers rights in it, as well as the right of all people to actually live a life worth living?
But me, I’m just one-a-those Feminazi Communist Heathen Destroyers of the American Way! Cod forbid I actually point out that the reality is more like the American Right to Fuck Over Everyone but Me.
Excuse my rant. This topic really gets me going, as both a worker and a know-er of actual illegal immigrants. Just so happens I’ve been a union unofficial organizer too.
You want to know the cause of human suffering? Follow the money trail, stupid.
Jeff asked me:
I wasn’t in Wilmington at the time they destroyed the public schools; I only got there in the aftermath. When I was living there, there was not a single public high school in the city: all of the city high schoolers were bused out to high schools in the county. (New Castle County was divided into four or five roughly pie-shaped districts.) There were public elementary (and middle?) schools in the city, and students from the county were bused in to those. (My daughters were in parochial school, so I’m not 100% certain of the details.)
We didn’t have problems with people protesting forced busing in small towns, because everyone went to the same school; larger cities, with multiple public schools did have some problems, though I think that Wilmington’s might have been worse than anyone else’s. Maybe it was the inevitability of white kids sitting next to black students in small towns that made it go more smoothly, but there really are concerns among parents when their own children are being moved around for social engineering purposes. It’s a little bit easier to support forced busing when it’s someone else’s kids being bused.
but there really are concerns among parents when their own children are being moved around for social engineering purposes.
And those concerns are almost always about race. Let’s be honest about this.
Not always, Jeff. My niece was being sent, as a first grader, from Dorchester/Mattapan line to Charlestown. This assignment came after she had been sent to Brighton for kindergarten. Her mother pulled her out and homeschooled her.
In 1980s Boston, there was an entrenched attitude among those who were too poor to leave that Whites Should Be Punished Starting With Your Small Kid. A gifted children program sat half empty because the director refused to let in white kids who were actually more economiically disadvantaged. Payback time? She copped to it, and declared that all white kids were rich in the process.
Understandable? Maybe. Acceptable? Professional? No. Permitted to happen because it served the purposes of corrupt urban power structure? You bet.
Whites left out of racism, sure, but they also left because the “solution” to segregation in piss-poor underfunded schools was to use bussing to divide the pie even thinner. Racism figures in MUCH LARGER in the differential opportunities for whites to migrate to the extremely racist suburbs (Dee Brown?) rather than in the choice to leave shitty schools that were only getting shittier behind. Blacks had little choice but to stay behind while the situation imploded.
The REAL SOLUTION all along came in the 1990s when Brockton and Somerville successfully sued the state for equitable funding of schools and minimal requirements for support when local tax bases were inadequate. Painting it as “I don’t want my kids living with blacks” is not just simplistic, it is historically only partly correct in the same way that the Civil War freed the slaves, but was never simply the War TO free the slaves.
I stand partially corrected then, Ms. Kate.
There’s just one thing I cannot stand about these conversations, and that’s the constant blaming of busing for destroying urban public schools, esp. by conservatives, without any willingness on their part to accept responsibility for things like fleeing the cities for racist reasons. Race continues to be at the center of so many of these disputes, and yet conservatives are all about blaming the black folks and/or liberals who try to take on racism. Look at the housing segregation issues I mentioned above. The reason property values fall when neighborhoods become blacker isn’t because blacks are moving in, but because whites are fleeing and willing to sell at lower prices. It’s white racism that lowers the property values. But nooooooo, it can’t be that, After all, it’s been 40 years since we conquered racism with the Voting and Civil Rights Acts. It’s not a problem any more.
Jeff wrote:
No, I don’t think so. It’s pretty obvious that some parents would have concerns about race, but there are plenty whose concerns were about other things. Children having to get up an hour earlier, and getting home an hour later, due only to a long bus ride, the separation of siblings into different schools, a feeling of too much distance between the parents and the children while they are in school.
I don’t know if you are a parent, Jeff, but I am, and parents tend to be protective, maybe even over-protective, of their children, and are more concerned about their children than they are of social or political or cultural goals,
could we please drop the phrase “social engineering.” Hell, public education itself, with curricular requirements, is social engineering. We’re trying to create a particular type of citizenry. All the guidelines we keep coming up with around creating a more scientific and mathematically literate populace–that’s social engineering, attempting to create a particular outcome. Conservatives are dishonest in their use of it…they just use it to criticize things they dislike, a socially integrated, non-discriminatory society.
Jeff wrote:
You are right: housing segregation has produced schools that are more segregated today than was the case during the forced busing era.
But people choose their housing based on a lot of individual factors: whether they can afford it, how safe and friendly are the neighborhoods, are the schools good, what are the commutes to work, is the housing good or marginal, do home values look like they will increase or stagnate, and do they just plain like the house or not.
And some of it could be described as racially motivated: in the City of Brotherly Love, people are being murdered at a rate of more than one every day, and those murders are, for the most part, young black men killing other young black men. And, unfortunately, the media around here are very full of the stories of innocents caught in the crossfire.
One of the big local stories has been the large numbers of assaults by students on teachers in Philadelphia, especially West Philadelphia High School. One teacher (in Germantown) had his neck broken in an ambush by two students (after school, if I remember the story correctly) because he confiscated an ipod from one of them during a class. Naturally WPVI and The Philadelphia Inquirer don’t make a big issue of the race of the teachers and students involved, but when you see the pictures are shown, you see that it was a white teacher who got his neck broken, and black students who were arrested. The stories of West Philadelphia High students being hauled off in paddy wagons don’t say that the students were black, but the television pictures provide that information.
The result? You have white flight to the suburbs from those who can afford it, and even within Philly there is a lot of white gentrification into Center City (which is mostly safe,) which makes the white flight numbers not look so bad, but belies the real resegregation that has occurred.
But, what do you expect? Are you suggesting that whites ought to stay in Philadelphia, to meet some sort of political goal of a more integrated city, at the cost of increasing the risk that they will wind up assaulted or dead?
could we please drop the phrase “social engineering.� Hell, public education itself, with curricular requirements, is social engineering.
Hear hear! Not only is Jeff right about public schools being “social engineering”, much of the use of bussing to address segregation was an attemt to AVOID social engineering that would have resulted in equitable funding of educational opportunity at the expense of wealthier families who had already left.
By the time desegregation hit the Boston system, middle-class flight was already well in progress and had been since the late 1940s and the housing crunches of the postwar era. Zog’s family headed to the South Shore en mass in 1955. Many of our neighbors in other suburbs took suburban jobs and moved their extended families to the inner ring areas or out to the further-flung ranch zones.
But, what do you expect? Are you suggesting that whites ought to stay in Philadelphia, to meet some sort of political goal of a more integrated city, at the cost of increasing the risk that they will wind up assaulted or dead?
I’d suggest 2 things:
1)Neighborhoods become dangerous and impoverished due to neglect. Fix that.
OR
2)Greatly enhance the opportunities for those “left behind” to leave.
Even Bill Russell, a very highly paid basketball player, could not find a place to live in the Boston suburbs because he was black. While descrimination may not be so blatant now, there are still “opportunity disparities” in the ability to move out and find better places to live. Some of these are economic, some of them are simply racist and speak to harassment and quality of life. Like teachers in the Wellesley system repeatedly telling Black parents things like “well, you know it isn’t like little kid is exactly college material”. Like when the Town of Milton,MA had an incident where black doctor waiting for his daughter in a Mercedes refused to move along - BOOM, he was assaulted by cops for “resisting arrest” and then forced to sign a “no suit” release before he is let go - he sued their arses off, successfully, of course, but who wants to live like that?
Kate, I’d suggest that the greatest thing that could be done is to find some way to persuade the students in Philadelphia to stay in school.
Philly has a horrendous drop out rate, primarily among black males, and once they’ve dropped out, that’s it, they have limited their futures in innumerable ways. You can add to the drop out rate the city’s high truancy rate, which is used by the school system to mask part of the drop out rate; they have numerous “students” listed who aren’t drop outs, but “non-attenders.”
Money has been lavished on the school system, but they still have a huge deficit. Of course, they are addressing the deficit by laying off two of the three chauffuers that the school board used, and cutting back on catered meals for school board meetings; I guess that’ll help!
Philadelphia has a lot of problems, not only the education system (though that’s pretty awful). The city government is so corrupt, and has such a hard time getting support from the state legislature, and…
It just makes me so sad, because it’s a wonderful city and I love it. And I’m so far awaaaaaay now…
(This message brought to you by Sparrow’s longing for a real cheesesteak and some wooderice.)
Sparrow: The City Council is taking care of the big issues: they outlawed transfat in restaurant food preparation, but ignored the artery-clogging cheesesteak altogether.
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