When my dad, who immigrated from Italy, legally, made me walk the streets with him during election time, ringing doorbells for Truman and Stevenson, he repeated a mantra I never forgot and eventually believed in: "The Repubicans are the party of the rich, the Democrats are the party of the working man."
That thought served me and the country well until recently. Money and wealth are now as much a part of Democrat party life as they are that of Republicans. And in this global 24/7 age of communication, the idea of money and wealth are joined by the power of media, academic and cultural influences.
Then came the stimulus bill in which the House had inserted the E-verify stipulation. From Federal Computer Week:
"E-Verify is an Internet-based program promoted by the Bush administration to allow employers to submit Social Security numbers for new hires and existing employees. If there is a match, the employee is eligible to work. If not, there are procedures for further assessments."
The provision means that any company receiving stimulus money to build a road, fix a bridge, weatherinze your house or otherwise improve the infrastructure has to verify whether the jobs, jobs, jobs promised by the stimulus package are given to -- hold on to your seats, now -- an American worker.
An American worker. Not an illegal immigrant. An American worker.
What a concept!
However, in the dead of night, in the twenty-four hours of an Obama promised five days of transparancy, the Senate, I believe at the insistence of Senator Dodd, removed the E-verify provision.
Therefore, companies receiving the stimulus money our government is stealing from your kids and grandkids do not have to verify the legal status of the workers they hire for the jobs, job, jobs Obama promised to Americans who are deperately out of work.
To be fair, the E-verify system has glitches, but it's a solid start. What new government program is perfect from the get-go? As Voltaire famously said, "The perfect is the enemy of the good."
Here's an informative link: http://immigrationcounters.com/To further screw the country, the collateral damage of hiring illegals means that portions of their pay goes to their families in their home comtries. It does NOT stay here to help stimulate our economy.
Thank you Senate Democrats. My father is no doubt turning over in his grave, as are the millions upon millions of hard-working Democrat blue-collar guys who helped make this country great.
The party of the working man, indeed. Shame!
Oh, and coming to a worker near you -- be on the lookout for The Employee Free Choice Act, a rousing attack on workers, who'll lose their right to private-ballot elections to determine whether or not they want a union.
Another Democrat Party production.
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Comments
You're a better man than I, Dunga Din. I would have deleted BB's racist comment faster than you can say BB Brain. But you're probably right. Let it stand, like an unrefrigerated fish, and charm the audience it deserves.
Great post. Rated, of course. When it eventually comes out just how grossly the likes of Dodd, Frank, Pelosi, and Reid took advantage of the Big Rush for the Big Pig, I think even the likes of BB will be embarrassed by the process. But I'm probably hoping for too much.
Totzaon Kim Hawley
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodwinsLaw
As Jimgalt mentioned below, not only did BB invoke Godwin's law, he did it in the first four words. That has to be a record.
Thanks for your responses. The illegal situation is truly a torturous and complicated one, overwrought more with emotion than common sense. I don't know the answers, but it's not an issue of insiders vs. outsiders.
This particular issue to me is elementally simple -- Americans are out of jobs. They need jobs. The Senate allows a provision in the stimulus bill (presumably) designed to create jobs that could deny Americans some jobs and give them instead to people who are here illegally, i.e., NON-Americans.
Is that fair or just?
An issue doesn't get any neater than that. I would really like to hear those on the left defend that. That they're staying away in droves suggests they can't, or won't.
The more you use political processes, i.e. the government, to allocate resources, instead of the market, which granted is an oligarchy in many ways, the more directly and visibly political the allocation of resources becomes. It must. And politics is more close to open war, domestically and internationally by its nature.
In terms of this, it seems reasonable to say in terms of government intervention that he who has the gold makes the rules, on the surface.
So, AIG, you want tax money, don't pay people so much. Sounds fair, but note the increase in class tension that implies right off the bat.
Not a good sign, if repeated enough, even if the people at the top can be greedy snobs, sometimes, sometimes not, lots of times not from my experience, although they tend to be control freaks in comparison to other parts of the social order because they are used to having more say, but returning to the main theme this increase in class tension is not a good sign long run because it seems to point to the evolution of a socialist or fascist state, and is seeming hauntingly familiar to me like the run-up to WWII, changing what needs to be changed for the times for the sense of the argument to go through.
So, to repeat, once the government allocates more and more economic resources, life becomes more overtly political, and then what happens is that gradually, and unconsciously, nationalism creeps in on a global basis when all the governments of the world increase their level of intervention in the global economy on a correlated basis.
For example, we have Buy America provisions in the stimulus as proposed, I lost track frankly if they stayed, we have assistance to the auto makers that is bound to trigger responses abroad, we have a nationalization of the banks coming down the pike in which each country will feel compelled to match the next step, trade restrictions are rising globally, and before we know it, then we ARE fascists or socialists, and we are settling our international economic disputes with force, i.e. war, not because of racism or xenophobia per se, as Bill Beck was saying, but because it is where the logic of the situation drives us in terms of government intervention, however well-intentioned or not. Yes, it is bad when people are out of work. It is worse when they are cannon fodder, if one can avoid it.
In this context, the situation with immigration is where the Libertarian approach has a problem, and it is not going to be easy to solve. Here are my thoughts.
The problem is that immigration is not just about money, but it is about identity/culture. No one is honest about that, or very few.
Immigration anywhere and everywhere raises the question, whose country is this?
Is this Mexico?
Is this WASP land?
Is this a giant smorgashborg of something we have never seen in history?
That is the question immigration always raises, and what the Right has been dishonest about is that the capitalist classes have not taken into account the cultural assimilation issues in their rush to use cheap, especially Latin American ,labor here and there, nor have the capitalist classes considered the impact that this has on the distribution of wages within the United States, nor especially the burden of assimilation on social cohesion at current labor import and capital export levels.
The Left has not taken into account of the fact that the idea that the United States will be able to alter it's cultural forms without bound would seem, when you look at the cross-national evidence, likely to engender an eventual, and potentially quite savage, backlash among the WASP population and whites in general, which in inimical to the interests of minorities. The evidence is overwhelming cross nationally, that, like it or not, when a population in power feels it is losing control, it rarely is met passively in the end, whether it is Bosnian Serbs or Sunni Muslims in Iraq, or Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka, or Ibo in Nigeria, and South Africa and Zimbabwe are too early too tell, just as Archie Bunker was a warning, and what we really need to ask is, if Archie is now in the exubrbs and suburbs after fleeing the city, and he has nowhere else to go, and he don't wanna anyway, what do the capitalist classes and the Left think that the logical conclusion of the current level of immigration will be in the long run given the cross national evidence on ethnic conflict, and to rather consider immigration as having an optimal level in terms of not just the economics of the United States in terms of the distribution of wages, but especially the impact of immigration on its social cohesion, and especially the impact of its political relationships with Latin America, with Mexico number one on that list by defintion. rated.
There are several funny things involved here.
One is that only a segment of the GOP gets excited about illegal immigration, the rest is fully behind business groups that oppose efforts to curtail it. The GOP intelligentsia, such as it is, cried their eyes out while the xenophobe wing of the GOP trashed their chances at gaining among the Hispanic voters, the fastest growing segment in America.
E-Verify itself has problems, but it is already mandated for Federal contractors.
Personally, I'm all for enforcing the existing laws on immigration.
The GOP DID finally manage to find a free market way to get rid of illegal workers...they destroyed the economy. While it was much like the old Chinese tale of burning down the house to roast a pig, the GOP efforts at wrecking commerce have worked, and illegal, as well as legal workers have been discouraged.
Of course, this verify provision was stripped at the urging of BigBiz, the ultimate leader of both parties on issues like this.
In a related display of love for the American workers, here's a news tidbit :
At a Capitol Hill news conference to discuss Republican concerns about the stimulus legislation, the GOP leader urged lawmakers to remove the Buy American clause.
"I don't think we ought to use a measure that is supposed to be timely, temporary and targeted to set off trade wars, when the entire world is experiencing a downturn in the economy. I think it's a very bad idea," Mr. McConnell said.
"I think it's a bad idea to put it in a bill like this, which is supposed to be about jump-starting the economy."
No illegal immigrant workers, but jobs for the Chinese, Mexicans (who stay home) Taiwanese, Dominicans, et al...
Pinning this on "the Dems" alone is funny. Implying the GOP is for American workers is even funnier.
But it can make a decent little neener-neener argument, as we see above.
The two biggest lies in politics are that the Dems are for the working man, and that the GOP is for small government.
Now, if everyone would quit making noise, we can all lay back in bipartisan submission and enjoy being screwed.
Notice: My comments above were written in Mumbai for the American equivalent of 1.5 cents. If you also want to outsource your opinions, PM me for my contact.
Too much good stuff there. As I said before, these comments are too informative to be buried at the end of long threads. Make them posts of your own so they can stand out.
There are elements of what I guess you mean by the "left" who are pro labor, anti-illegal immigrant, just as there are of the "right."
My statement about the GOP intelligentsia and the Hispanic voters is spot-on.
There are elements from both ends, if you want to think of it as that, who would seek protectionism.
It's not a simple left/right issue, despite who makes the loudest noise.
Democracts and Republicans are under what little pressure it takes "BigBiz" to get their way.
You're setting up your straw dog and ripping it down.
The Dems voted whole heartedly for the bill, a bill that didn't include the E-Verify provision. So how are the Republicans responsible for that.
Meanwhile, the Buy American provision had many people of all parties and all ideologies concerned because of fears of protectionism.
People ship jobs overseas because it's cheaper to do business there. Period. To attribute it to Bush's friends or anybody's friends is empty headed.
Interesting post. I see where you are coming from, but I'm not sure I fully agree. For one thing I believe that the employment of undocumented workers is a bit more complicated than you make it sound. What would happen if there were an entire underclass of people living here with no prospect for employment? I wrote a little about this last month when there was the whole "English Only" thing going on in Nashville. Feel free to check out my post which goes into more detail about why I think it's a mistake to discriminate against undocumented workers. http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=90661
MJ
It passed the House without any Republican votes. I was being facetious, as they didn't vote for it regardless. That some GOPers pick this issue to wail about is nothing unusual.
The truth is the Repubs are like those psycho serial killers who stay at the scene of the crime, and offer their assistance to the detectives to "catch that bastard killer." If'n we're to play two-sidesies here - it's y'all's governing incompetence that can't escape shopworn ideology that killed this economy.
So THERE!
Actually, the part of the GOP that is auto-bitching is only the e-verify part, and not using the clunky system doesn't mean illegals can be employed. The Republican media needs a new "outrage o' the week" every week. So much for this week.
Anyway, there are many who advise against protectionism, but they aren't the majority of American citizens. The fact is we can't continue huge trade deficits and have a healthy economy. What has been protected isn't Free Trade, it's labor arbitrage, and it's killing us. Call it whatever you want, but we need "Smart Trade."
America has become a slacker, living off the good will of our creditors. That gig is all but over. America needs to go out and get a job,
Now, let's nominate an issue for next week's outrage.....Enjoyed this one.
I'd be glad to check out your post. And thanks for keeping me out the Third Reich's army.
Let's just take this particular, unique situation. We are Americans. Americans are losing jobs. A bill is passed to provide jobs for Americans and yet a provision in the bill could prevent Americans from getting some of those jobs.
I don't see how wanting Americans to be put to work is discrimination against those who aren't Americans, moreover, to find a way to give jobs to non-Americans who've broken American law by being here in the first place.
On what basis would you make that argument? Thanks.
Well in the truest sense of the word you are indeed advocating for discrimination. You are for discriminating between American workers and undocumented workers. Now, I’m not calling you a bigot, but you are essentially calling for the government to discriminate between workers. This is the very definition of discrimination.
The bottom line is that undocumented immigrants are not going anywhere. It is not as though they will just decide to go home en masse if jobs become harder to come by. The hard reality is that any immigration reform will have to take into account large numbers of undocumented immigrants.
Your assertion that all undocumented worker money is flowing out of the country is a bit overstated. It is true that a large amount of money is leaving, but I’m not convinced that the amount of money leaving is impacting local economies drastically.
Essentially I believe the implications of a large unemployed underclass would be catastrophic for everyone, especially the American worker.
What don't you understand about what constitutes breaking the law? If I robbed your house of food and money so I could seek a better life, would you want me caught and jailed?
Or not?
American workers get jobs.
Non-American workers, who have broken the law, and who are not here legally, do NOT get jobs.
I think your definition of discrimination is such a distortion and your willingness to accept lawbreaking as a non-factor in determining hiring kind of makes this discussion pointless to continue.
But thanks for contributing.
Given the definition of the word "discrimination" it is clear that it is what you are advocating for. There is no distortion. I think we can agree to disagree, but I refuse to believe that you don't understand that words often have broad menaings. I refuse to believe that you don't know the definition of the word "discrimination." It's not my problem if you don't like the way it sounds or you are sensitive to any cultural connotation the word may have taken on. If you are going to espouse a point of view, at least have the guts to be honest with yourself and your readers about what that point of view means.
Look, I understand the frustration folks like you are feeling, but your simplistic way of viewing the situation does no one any good.
Well, like I said, agree to disagree I guess.
I quote myself, from above:
Personally, I'm all for enforcing the existing laws on immigration.
Back in 97, I HAD to hire a few illegal immigrants, because during the boom - the biggest of our lifetimes- you could find nobody else to work. I always witheld SS, so they contributed without benefit. I also paid the same wage anyone legal would get, and technically....gee, I dinna know! (chuckle)
When hiring, if a 32 year old fellow walked in looking for a job...and had a crap car and shaky work history...he was looking for a place to file a worker's comp claim. At least I got honest work for honest pay out of the Mexicans.
Waaaaay back, early 80s, I was raided by Immigration due to a complaint that one worker filed against another...personal reasons. I was sitting at my desk after closing, and a van and a few cars pulled in. They asked about this guy, who turned out being from Central America. Where was he and why did I hire him? I pulled out the paperwork showing the State Unemployment office had sent him to me. Done deal, but funny how many showed up for the Big Bust.
I remember some arguing in 97-98 that these workers should have to become citizens. I asked them what happened, then, when the economy went south...and they didn't?
And here we are..........
Given reality, and the boom we'd have never had without 'em, we should be saying "gracias," even if also "adios."
First of all a human being is not "illegal." It is not against the law to be a human being. Their status may be illegal, and they may be undocumented, but they themselves are not "illegal." This is a little semantic game we played in the Army to de-personalize the enemy (gook, raghead, etc). I think you are better than this.
Now as to your question about being okay with immigrants breaking the law. Well, the reason people typically refuse to address this is because it is a moot point, and furthermore, you are overplaying your "law and order" shtick on this point. We are not talking about people robbing banks. We're not talking about criminal masterminds, bud. By a large margin we are talking about extremely poor folks who are in dire straits. Folks who often risk their lives so that they may eat. This is the reality. The reality is that there are millions of undocumented immigrants here. In what world are we going to round up everyone and send them back? How could we even achieve that? Or do you propose jail time? Don't you think our prisons are crowded enough without jamming them with millions of people? It doesn't matter if I am okay with this or not. It doesn't matter whether YOU are okay or not with this. It is happening, and will continue to happen.
What we need to concern ourselves with is sanely addressing the problems without turning it into an "us or them" conflict.
Let me give you a clear unequivical answer, since these folks are mere illegal "things" to you, and not real people:
If my family was starving in Mexico, I would break your fucking border laws so god-damned fast you wouldn't know what hit you. I'd work for whatever I could, for as many hours as I could so that my children and wife could eat. Hell yes, I'd break your fucking laws. And hell yes I'd be okay with it. I'm sure your wife and kids would love to hear about how expendable they are in the face of a foreign country's immigration law. Jesus man. Only someone from a perch of privilege and comfort would conflate desperate immigrants with seedy criminals. Only someone with who's worldview extends only as far as his local mall would be so callous.
In the end you are right technically they are breaking the law. You succeed at interpreting the law. You fail at humanity.
My condolences to the wife and kids.
MJ
YO SOY BORICUA!
I expect nothing less from stupid, bleeding heart weenies who can't balance mind and heart for themselves or others. People like you traffic in the demonizing those who disagree with you while placing yourself at the right hand of God, on the side of the angels.
It's pathetic, were it not so tragic. A mind is terrible to waste and I can only look on helplessly as I watch yours gobbled up by the disposal.
I never once called you an enemy, and never once called you stupid. I answered your questions unequivically, and the best that you can come up with is that I am stupid? That I am a weenie? How old are you?
Look I even conceded that you make valid points; I see where you are coming from, and I will be the first to say that I don't have all the answers. But you've already made your mind up about me haven't you? You are more concerned with bloviating than in debate.
Again I addressed your concerns, I pointed out that they were absurd, and your recourse is to go into a defensive crouch and cry foul.