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Edited on Mon May-15-06 09:48 AM by IanDB1
Isn't it amazing that this immigration "problem" has been going on for years, and yet it's suddenly become a crisis?
Why?
According to Bush, the economy is booming, we're creating jobs at record rates, Wallstreet is greeting us as liberators with flowers and bluechip stocks, and we're doing so well that we can afford tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of the country.
Any perceived financial or economic woes, or if you're unemployed, it can be blamed on the illegal immigrants driving down wages and taking your jobs.
Outsourcing creates jobs, which is why Bush creates tax incentives to send jobs overseas. If your middle-class skilled job is outsourced, that's good for the economy. If unskilled subsistence-wage jobs are being given to exploited illegal works, that's bad for the economy.
Our economic ills can not possibly be caused by the policies of a party that controls The Senate, The House, and The White House. That's just silly talk. What does that have to do with whether or not you can put food on your family? The real problem? Illegal workers. You know-- Brown People.
When your approval rating is at 29%, and your party has been controlling everything for the past six years, you need to blame someone.
It's like when the divorce rate among Evangelical Christians is the highest for any group, you have to ban gay marriage, because... well... because gay marriage is yucky, I guess. And when Evangelical Christians feel yucky, they get divorced.
Unemployed? Underemployed? Deeply in debt? It's all the fault of The Brown People. So, blame them if you're not better off now than you were six years ago. Blame the immigrants.
Blaming the people who actually create our corporate and economic policies is silly-- those are rich, White Republican men. How can we possibly hold them accountable when there are all these Brown People breaking the law by illegally accepting jobs from rich, White Republican men?
If the Brown People would stop coming here, then the Rich, White Republican men would stop illegally giving them jobs here.
Instead, we'd close down our factories and move them to Central America where the Brown People could work legally for ten times less money and with no human or labor rights protections!
Why are the Brown People coming to this country illegally in the first place?
Yes, I know they're coming here to find work and to make a better life for themselves.
But why do some of their countries suck so badly?
Because American corporate and foreign policy has contributed to the intolerable conditions in their countries.
We have destabilized their governments by backing coups and propped-up dictatorships.
We allow our corporations to set-up factories with unfettered and unchecked ability to pollute and contaminate foreign countries.
We allow our corporations to run sweat-shops full of non-unionized workers and their children without any protection for their rights and their safety.
When American corporations saturate foreign countries with factories full of workers making $0.30 an hour in intolerable conditions, is it any wonder that many people are willing to break the law to come to our country to make $3.00 an hour working illegally for those same corporations?
If we were to ship all the illegal workers out of the country, do you know what would happen? Our corporations would send our factories across the border right behind them!
The problem isn't that illegal workers are depressing our wages at home.
The problem is that American corporations will do anything to depress wages at home and abroad-- even resorting to the hiring of illegal aliens, and to the inhumane treatment of workers around the world.
The enemy isn't the mass of brown people fleeing the poverty and oppression that we ourselves helped to create. The enemy are the corporations that actively seek to exploit those people both inside and outside our borders.
What we need:
A Global Workers Bill of Rights.
A Global Minimum Wage.
A Global Bill of Women's Rights that includes Reproductive Freedom.
A Global Environmental Protection Agency.
We need to hold corporations and their officers responsible for human and workers' rights abuses at home and abroad
If none of this appeals to you, then consider this: I don't know if it's true, but according to the Foxperts, America will be mostly Hispanic within 25 years. If so, the Hispanic majority will remember how we've treated them today.
You'd better treat our future majority with humanity and dignity today, or I won't blame them for how they might treat us later. I'll cheer if one day President Jarrett Barrios declares America a bilingual country that speaks only Spanish and Portuguese.
If fairness and equality and humanity hold no appeal, then perhaps you should consider being kind to our future Majority voting bloc.
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