Illegal Workers: the Con's Secret Weapon

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0308-20.htm

~SNIP~

Offshoring, union-busting, and nurturing a huge population of illegal workers (while pretending to be frantic about it and bleating about building fences, fielding vigilantes, or offering "amnesty") are the core ways to destroy an economic middle class, thus ensuring the ongoing political power of the conservative elite takeover that began with the so-called "Reagan revolution" and continues to this day.

This is why conservatives who complain about illegal immigration in front of the cameras won't lift a finger in the halls of congress to pass legislation that would put employers of illegals into jail. (They may support "tough fines," just so long as they're high enough to sound like a lot of money to the average working stiff but low enough to be a "cost of business" for a corporation that gets caught.)

If Congress were to pass a law that said, quite simply, that the CEO of any business that was caught employing illegal immigrants went to jail for a year - no exceptions - then within a month there would be ten million (more or less) people lined up at the Mexican border trying to get out of the United States. The US unemployment rate would drop close to zero, and wages would begin to rise. The American middle class would begin to return to viability, as would the union movement in this nation.

Legal immigration is a good and healthy thing for a nation, because it is done at a rate and in a way that allows a country to collectively decide what sort of labor/jobs ratios it wants to maintain. Limitless illegal immigration, however, leads to the modern-day equivalent of slavery, benefiting only the conservative corporate elites.

Thus, progressives need to begin a new dialogue about immigration in the United States. (Similar discussions are already underway in many of the countries of Western Europe.) Issues include:

* To what extent should the United States bleed its middle class because Mexico is a corrupt oligarchy run by a corrupt former Coca-Cola executive?
* How do we work out fair and reasonable options for illegal families living and working here who have birthed "anchor children" in the US, now citizens of this nation?
* How can we ensure "security" along our southern border in an "age of terrorism"? (A good start may be to stop promulgating policies that cause the world to hate us, but that's another article.)
* How do we recalibrate our business and tax laws so businesses - particularly small and middle-sized businesses - can adjust away from depending on a terrified "working-poor-competing-with-even-more-terrified-illegal-labor" workforce and move toward being able to pay a more robust, domestic, unionized workforce?
* How can progressives join with the few remaining populist Republicans (like Lou Dobbs and Patrick Buchanan) to forge an alliance to make this an all-American effort and not have it further split the nation?
* And how can we all collectively work to prevent Bush and Specter from re-instituting the brutal Bracero "guest worker" program of the last century?

~SNIP~

What poverty? But once you have poverty, the solution of fining employers is simply
foolish and out-of-touch. The employer is you, did you triple-check the paperwork
on the workers at all the service businesses you frequent? The lawnmower, housekeeper,
dishwasher of your restaurant fine meal? Fining the employer is absurd as well.
Embracing mexico and uplifting the whole continent's standard of living be a more
noble task for a nation with a surplus.