Sunday, June 10, 2007
So says the Washington Post in today's editorial decrying the fact that immigration reform was killed this year. Yes. Most Americans had weighed through all 350 pages of the document, discussed it amongst themselves. Some had a concern with the third clause of sub section H on page 282, but the footnote did assuage their fears after they researched the documentation on that part. Can the Washington Post write an honest editorial? I have no idea what bill would be the best, but suggesting that the American people "want this bill" is intellectual hackery. Most members of congress let alone the people had any idea about everything in this monster.
But what I would like to mostly address is the usual red herring pro-corporate interests like the Washington Post toss out every time immigration is discussed.
Given current trends, that means 800,000 to 1 million additional immigrants will enter the country illegally or overstay their visas, drawn by the great magnet of the American economy to fill jobs that most Americans won't do.
This is a lie, a damned lie, and nothing but a lie. John McCain tried to pull this canard out of his rear saying that Americans didn't want to be out in the Arizona desert picking cabbage for even $50 an hour. He shut up when thousands of people emailed him to take him up on that offer.
That is the whole point. Management would like workers to take a fistful of salt and a cracker jack prize as salary. Workers like things like electricity and a place to live that has four walls, a roof, and a floor. They are greedy that way. To increase profits, corporations hire illegal immigrants who are willing to sleep 15 to a room for peanuts in wages because peanuts beats the wages they could get back home. I am not here to bash them. They are taking care of their families. The villian in this mess are the people who hire at wages that can not support a family.
If you are a strawberry picker, and you can pick 200 pints an hour, each dollar you make is only one half of one cent of the price of those berries. At $16 an hour, that is 8 cents in total labor costs per unit. Labor is not what makes your produce expensive. But every shaved penny in labor costs adds up to more profits in the macro sense, and that is why we have an undocumented worker problem. Wal-Mart's lessons are not going unheeded.
If the Washington Post would quit picking on Americans frustrated with the problem, insulting them for being lazy, perhaps we can have an honest debate on this issue, and get a bill passed that the American people would genuinely rally behind.
Subscribe to:
Comment Feed (RSS)
|