There are supposed to be massive walkouts and protests today by groups that support amnesty for illegal immigrants, proof, they say, of the country’s dependence on the 9-12 million in the underground economy.
Supposedly, all of us benefit from the subpar wages without benefits paid to illegals, whether it’s because we stay in hotels that employ chambermaids to clean up after us, or eat chicken, pork and beef processed by companies like Tyson, Cargill, Hormel, and Seaboard.
I like the Libertarian Party’s position: “The right to immigrate does not imply a right to welfare — or any other government service.”
In other words, if hard-working people think they’ll have a better life in the US than at “home”, great, let them live and work here, but don’t extend the same rights and privileges granted to citizens, including welfare and Medicaid.
I’m mystified by why this seems to be an unenforcable solution. I have friends, people born in this country who have worked here their whole adult lives, who have had to jump through hoops to get the government benefits to which they are entitled, including medical care. What makes things different in Texas or Arizona than in Massachusetts – the sheer force of numbers?
Legal immigration is an entirely different matter. Through the years, I’ve met numerous software developers and engineers who are here legally. My problem on this end of the job spectrum is that American employers have artificially inflated the number of unfilled jobs as a ruse for hiring qualified people at below the prevailing wage.
Have the developers from India, Russia and China in my acquaintance been better qualified than their American counterparts? Generally, no – “as good as”, maybe, better, no.
I worked as a chambermaid, briefly, for one summer and for years, have done my own yardwork. It’s hard work, sure, but I don’t believe for a New York second that these jobs would go begging if illegal immigrants were all deported.
The place where I work hires Cambodians in their production facility, and I imagine that not only are they are here legally, they won’t walk off the job today.
There are also a slew of long-service non-immigrants, local people who work in shipping and receiving, for example, where English language skills are a BFOQ.
As for the fruit pickers and meat plant assembly line workers: I don’t envy them their jobs. I’d rather eat fish anyway, and maybe one should buy most of their produce from foreign countries, like the Chilean fruit that local grocery chains advertise on a regular basis.
Speaking of which, bagged salad can carry life-threatening e coli, something that doesn’t surprise me a bit, given how foul-smelling the stuff is when you let it sit for more than a day in the frig.
The Kennedys, McCains and Bushes are political grandstanders currying votes and campaign contributions. Although why Kennedy thinks that Hispanics are a Democratic constituency is a mystery to me.
It was reported this weekend that Bush has personally broken some 750 laws, claiming they don’t apply to him.
Since that’s the case, one can understand why other types of criminal behavior, like living in this country illegally, wouldn’t seem like a big deal to him.
So, to conclude: based on anecdote and personal experience, I don’t believe that the nation’s economy would collapse if immigration laws were enforced. We can eat more fish, clean up after ourselves, and avoid fast-food restaurants, all of which sounds like a healthier lifestyle than the one many of us have now.
I don’t think my personal well-being would be threatened, either; in fact, if government was more vigilant about enforcing labor laws generally and stopped pandering to big business, I think everyone in the middle and working classes would be better off.