[Mb-civic] Molly Ivins and Thom Hartmann on Immigration

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

This issue dates back long before our lifetimes, but sure is a hot topic right 
now.  To expand and/or air out our thinking, here are two more interesting 
takes....

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0331-25.htm

      Published on Friday, March 31, 2006 by TruthDig
      Immigration 101 for Beginners and Non-Texans
      by Molly Ivins

      In 1983, I was a judge at the Terlingua Chili Cookoff, and my memory
of the events may not be perfect—for example, for years I’ve been claiming
Jimmy Carter was president at the time, but that’s the kind of detail one
often loses track of in Terlingua.

      Anyway, it was ’83 or some year right around there when we held The
Fence climbing contest. See, people talked about building The Fence back
then, too. The Fence along the Mexican border. To keep Them out.

      At the time, the proposal was quite specific—a 17-foot cyclone fence
with bob wire at the top. So a test fence was built at Terlingua, and the
First-Ever Terlingua Memorial Over, Under or Through Mexican Fence
Climbing Contest took place. Prize: a case of Lone Star beer. Winning
time: 30 seconds.

      I tell this story to make the one single point about the border and
immigration we know to be true: The Fence will not work. No fence will
work. The Great darn Wall of China will not work. Do not build a fence. It
will not work. They will come anyway. Over, under or through.

      Some of you think a fence will work because Israel has one. Israel
      is
a very small country. Anyone who says a fence can fix this problem is a
demagogue and an ass.

      Numero Two-o, should you actually want to stop Mexicans and OTMs
(other than Mexicans) from coming to the United States, here is how to do
it: Find an illegal worker at a large corporation. This is not
difficult—brooms and mops are big tipoffs. Then put the CEO of that
corporation in prison for two or more years for violating the law against
hiring illegal workers.

      Got it? You can also imprison the corporate official who actually
hired the illegal and, just to make sure, put some Betty Sue
Billups—housewife, preferably one with blond hair in a flip—in the joint
for a two-year stretch for hiring a Mexican gardener. Thus Americans are
reminded that the law says it is illegal to hire illegal workers and that
anyone who hires one is responsible for verifying whether or not his or
her papers are in order. If you get fooled and one slips by you, too bad,
you go to jail anyway. When there are no jobs for illegal workers, they do
not come. Got it?

      Of course, this has been proposed before, because there is nothing
      new
in the immigration debate. As the current issue of Texas Monthly reminds
us, the old bracero program dating from World War II was actually amended
in 1952 to pass the “Texas proviso,” shielding employers of illegal
workers from criminal penalties. They got the exemption because Texas
growers flat refused to pay the required bracero wage of 30 cents an hour.
Instead of punishing Texas growers for breaking the law, Congress rewarded
them.

      In 1986, the Reagan administration took a shot at immigration reform
and reinstated penalties on employers. They weren’t enforced worth a darn,
of course. In 2004, only three American companies were threatened with
fines for hiring illegal workers. Doesn’t work if you don’t enforce it.

      This brings us to the great Republican divide on the issue.
Conservatives, in general, are anti-immigrant for the same reasons they
have always been anti-immigrant—a proud tradition in our nation of
immigrants going back to the days of the Founders, when Ben Franklin
thought we were going to be overrun by Germans. But Business likes illegal
workers. The Chamber of Commerce lobbies for them. It’s lobbying now for a
new bracero program. What a bonanza for Bidness.

      Old-fashioned anti-immigrant prejudice always brings out some
old-fashioned racists. This time around, they have started claiming that
Mexicans can’t assimilate. A sillier idea I’ve never heard. Why don’t they
come to Texas and meet up with Lars Gonzales, Erin Rodriguez and Bubba at
the bowling alley. They can drink some Lone Star, listen to some conjunto
and chill.

      Racists seem obsessed by the idea that illegal workers—the
hardest-working, poorest people in America—are somehow getting away with
something, sneaking goodies that should be for Americans. You can always
avoid this problem by having no social services. This is the refreshing
Texas model, and it works a treat.

      Aren’t y’all grateful that we’re down here doing exactly nothing for
the people of our state, legal or illegal? Think what a terrible message
it would send if you swapped Texas with Vermont, and they all got
healthcare. In Texas, we never worry about illegals taking advantage of
social benefits provided by our taxpayers. Incredibly clever, no?

      One nice thing about the benefit of long experience with la frontera
is that we in Texas don’t have to run around getting all hysterical about
immigrants. The border is porous. When you want cheap labor, you open it
up; when you don’t, you shut it down. It works to our benefit—it always
has.

      Molly Ivins is the former editor of the liberal monthly The Texas
Observer. She is the bestselling author of several books including Who Let
the Dogs In?

      © 2006 Creators Syndicate


***

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0329-21.htm

Published on Wednesday, March 29, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Today's Immigration Battle - Corporatists vs. Racists (and 
Labor is Left Behind)
by Thom Hartmann
 

The corporatist Republicans ("amnesty!") are fighting with the racist 
Republicans ("fence!"), and it provides an opportunity for progressives to step 
forward with a clear solution to the immigration problem facing America.

Both the corporatists and the racists are fond of the mantra, "There are some 
jobs Americans won't do." It's a lie.

Americans will do virtually any job if they're paid a decent wage. This isn't 
about immigration - it's about economics. Industry and agriculture won't 
collapse without illegal labor, but the middle class is being crushed by it.

The reason why thirty years ago United Farm Workers' Union (UFW) founder 
Caesar Chávez fought against illegal immigration, and the UFW turned in 
illegals during his tenure as president, was because Chávez, like progressives 
since the 1870s, understood the simple reality that labor rises and falls in 
price as a function of availability.

As Wikipedia notes: "In 1969, Chávez and members of the UFW marched 
through the Imperial and Coachella Valley to the border of Mexico to protest 
growers' use of illegal aliens as temporary replacement workers during a 
strike. Joining him on the march were both the Reverend Ralph Abernathy 
and U.S. Senator Walter Mondale. Chávez and the UFW would often report 
suspected illegal aliens who served as temporary replacement workers as well 
as who refused to unionize to the INS."

Working Americans have always known this simple equation: More workers, 
lower wages. Fewer workers, higher wages.

Progressives fought - and many lost their lives in the battle - to limit the pool 
of "labor hours" available to the Robber Barons from the 1870s through the 
1930s and thus created the modern middle class. They limited labor-hours by 
pushing for the 50-hour week and the 10-hour day (and then later the 40-hour 
week and the 8-hour day). They limited labor-hours by pushing for laws 
against child labor (which competed with adult labor). They limited labor-
hours by working for passage of the 1935 Wagner Act that provided for union 
shops.

And they limited labor-hours by supporting laws that would regulate 
immigration into the United States to a small enough flow that it wouldn't 
dilute the unionized labor pool. As Wikipedia notes: "The first laws creating a 
quota for immigrants were passed in the 1920s, in response to a sense that the 
country could no longer absorb large numbers of unskilled workers, despite 
pleas by big business that it wanted the new workers."

Do a little math. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says there are 7.6 million 
unemployed Americans right now. Another 1.5 million Americans are no 
longer counted because they've become "long term" or "discouraged" 
unemployed workers. And although various groups have different ways of 
measuring it, most agree that at least another five to ten million Americans are 
either working part-time when they want to work full-time, or are 
"underemployed," doing jobs below their level of training, education, or 
experience. That's between eight and twenty million un- and under-employed 
Americans, many unable to find above-poverty-level work.

At the same time, there are between seven and fifteen million working illegal 
immigrants diluting our labor pool.

If illegal immigrants could no longer work, unions would flourish, the 
minimum wage would rise, and oligarchic nations to our south would have to 
confront and fix their corrupt ways.

Between the Reagan years - when there were only around 1 to 2 million 
illegal aliens in our workforce - and today, we've gone from about 25 percent 
of our private workforce being unionized to around seven percent. Much of 
this is the direct result - as Caesar Chávez predicted - of illegal immigrants 
competing directly with unionized and legal labor. Although it's most obvious 
in the construction trades over the past 30 years, it's hit all sectors of our 
economy.

Democratic Party strategist Ann Lewis just sent out a mass email on behalf of 
former Wal-Mart Board of Directors member and now US Senator Hillary 
Rodham Clinton. In it, Lewis noted that Clinton suggests we should have: "An 
earned path to citizenship for those already here working hard, paying taxes, 
respecting the law, and willing to meet a high bar for becoming a citizen." 
Sounds nice. The same day, on his radio program, Rush Limbaugh told a 
woman whose husband is an illegal immigrant that she had nothing to worry 
about with regard to deportation of him or their children because all he'd have 
to do - under the new law under consideration - is pay a small fine and learn 
English.

The current Directors of Wal-Mart are smiling.

Meanwhile, the millions of American citizens who came to this nation as legal 
immigrants, who waited in line for years, who did the hard work to become 
citizens, are feeling insulted, humiliated, and conned.

Shouldn't we be compassionate? Of course.

But there is nothing compassionate about driving down the wages of any 
nation's middle class. It's the most cynical, self-serving, greedy, and 
sociopathic behavior you'll see from our "conservatives."

There is nothing compassionate about being the national enabler of a 
dysfunctional oligarchy like Mexico. An illegal workforce in the US sending 
an estimated $17 billion to Mexico every year - second only in national 
income to that country's oil revenues - supports an antidemocratic, anti-
worker, hyperconservative administration there that gleefully ships out of that 
nation the "troublesome" Mexican citizens - those lowest on the economic 
food-chain and thus most likely to present "labor unrest" - to the USA. 
Mexico (and other "sending nations") need not deal with their own social and 
economic problems so long as we're willing to solve them for them - at the 
expense of our middle class. Democracy in Central and South America be 
damned - there are profits to be made for Wal-Mart!

Similarly, there is nothing compassionate about handing higher profits 
(through a larger and thus cheaper work force) to the CEOs of America's 
largest corporations and our now-experiencing-record-profits construction and 
agriculture industries.

What about caring for people in need? Isn't that the universal religious/ethical 
value? Of course.

A few years ago, when my family and I were visiting Europe, one of our 
children fell sick. A doctor came to the home of the people we were staying 
with, visited our child at 11 pm on a weeknight, left behind a course of 
antibiotics, and charged nothing. It was paid for by that nation's universal 
health care system. We should offer the same to any human being in need of 
medical care - a universal human right - in the United States.

But if I'd applied to that nation I was visiting for a monthly unemployment or 
retirement check, I would have been laughed out of the local government 
office. And if I'd been caught working there, I would have been deported 
within a week. Caring for people in crisis/need is very different from giving a 
job or a monthly welfare check to non-citizens. No nation - even those in 
Central and South America - will do that. And neither should the United 
States.

But if illegal immigrants won't pick our produce or bus our tables won't our 
prices go up? (The most recent mass-emailed conservative variation of this 
argument, targeting paranoid middle-class Americans says: "Do you want to 
pay an extra $10,000 for your next house?") The answer is simple: Yes.

But wages would also go up, and even faster than housing or food prices. And 
CEO salaries, and corporate profits, might moderate back to the levels they 
were during the "golden age of the American middle class" between the 1940s 
and Reagan's declaration of war on the middle class in the 1980s.

We saw exactly this scenario played out in the US fifty years ago, when 
unions helped regulate entry into the workforce, 35 percent of American 
workers had a union job, and 70 percent of Americans could raise a family on 
a single, 40-hour-week paycheck. All working Americans would gladly pay a 
bit more for their food if their paychecks were both significantly higher and 
more secure. (This would even allow for an increase in the minimum wage - 
as it did from the 1930s to the 1980s.)

But what about repressive régimes? Aren't we denying entrance to this 
generation's equivalent of the Jews fleeing Germany? This is the most tragic 
of all the arguments put forward by conservatives in the hopes compassionate 
progressives will bite. Our immigration policies already allow for refugees - 
and should be expanded. It's an issue that needs more national discussion and 
action. But giving a free pass to former Coca-Cola executive Vincente Fox to 
send workers to the US - and thus avoid having to deal with his own corrupt 
oligarchy - and to equate this to the Holocaust is an insult to the memory of 
those who died in Hitler's death camps - and to those suffering in places like 
Darfur under truly repressive regimes. There is no equivalence.

It's frankly astonishing to hear "progressives" reciting 
corporatist/racist/conservative talking points, recycled through "conservative 
Democratic" politicians trying to pander to the relatively small percentage of 
recently-legal (mostly through recent amnesties or birth) immigrants who are 
trying to get their relatives into this country by means of Bush's proposed 
guest worker program or the many variations thereof being proposed.

It's equally astonishing to hear the few unions going along with this (in the 
sad/desperate hope of picking up new members) turn their backs on Caesar 
Chávez and the traditions and history of America's Progressive and Union 
movements by embracing illegal immigration.

Every nation has an obligation to limit immigration to a number that will not 
dilute its workforce, but will maintain a stable middle class - if it wants to 
have a stable democracy. This has nothing to do with race, national origin, or 
language (visit Switzerland with it's ethnic- and language-dived areas!), and 
everything to do with economics.

Without a middle class, any democracy is doomed. And without labor having 
- through control of labor availability - power in relative balance to 
capital/management, no middle class can emerge. America's early labor 
leaders did not die to increase the labor pool for the Robber Barons or the 
Walton family - they died fighting to give control of it to the workers of their 
era and in the hopes that we would continue to hold it - and infect other 
nations with the same idea of democracy and a stable middle class.

The simple way to do this today is to require that all non-refugee immigrants 
go through the same process to become American citizens or legal workers in 
this country (no amnesties, no "guest workers," no "legalizations") regardless 
of how they got here; to confront employers who hire illegals with draconian 
financial and criminal penalties; and to affirm that while health care (and the 
right to provide humanitarian care to all humans) is an absolute right for all 
people within our boundaries regardless of status, a paycheck, education, or 
subsidy is not.

The Republican (and Democratic) corporatists who want a cheap labor force, 
and the Republican (and Democratic) racists who want to build a fence and 
punish humanitarian aid workers, are equally corrupt and anti-progressive. As 
long as employers are willing and able (without severe penalties) to hire 
illegal workers, people will risk life and limb to grab at the America Dream. 
When we stop hiring and paying them, most will leave of their own volition 
over a few years, and the remaining few who are committed to the US will 
obtain citizenship through normal channels.

This is, after all, the middle-class "American Dream." And how much better 
this hemisphere would be if Central and South Americans were motivated to 
stay in their own nations (because no employer in the US would dare hire 
them) and fight there for a Mexican Dream and a Salvadoran Dream and a 
Guatemalan Dream (and so on).

This is the historic Progressive vision for all of the Americas...

Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and 
host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show carried on the Air 
America Radio network and Sirius. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent 
books include "What Would Jefferson Do?" and "Ultimate Sacrifice" (co-
authored with Lamar Waldron). His next book, due out this autumn, is 
"Screwed: The Undeclared War on the Middle Class and What We Can Do 
About It."

###



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