As I read Mary Maffei's Aug. 20th letter, I found myself grow increasingly agitated. A popular argument used to support deportation is that illegal immigrants take jobs from American workers. In Ms. Maffei's letter, she claims her readers won't completely understand until "one of [their] family members is thrown out of a job because [immigrants] will work for less money." - and while I sympathize with how hard it must be to lose a job, I don't see why it's the illegal immigrants who being burdened with the full responsibility of this problem. Immigrants often replace American citizens in the workplace because they're willing to work harder for less money. If I agreed to wash dishes or pick strawberries for twelve hours a day at below minimum wage, I could probably replace you at your job too! It's called capitalism, folks, and the only thing unfair about it is how badly illegal immigrants are exploited by their employers.
As unions emerged in the early 20th century, American workers saw a fortunate shift in power from the corporations to the proletariat. Ideas like child labor laws, minimum wage, and weekends came into place, and a balance of power was created in the work environment. I do not doubt Ms. Maffei's family members were making reasonable financial demands from their employers, but if a hungry immigrant family, perhaps even unable to speak English, ignorantly offers to work extensive hours at hardly any pay, it should be the employer's responsibility to recognize hiring them as both illegal and inhumane. Instead of blaming poor families who often put their lives at stake trying to create better lives for themselves and their children here in America, the "land of opportunity", blame the corporations who allow themselves to be swindled by temptation, simultaneously leaving hard-working citizens without jobs and their "alien" replacements without the means to support themselves or become legal citizens.
Caging human beings up like animals and shipping them off to their home countries is not going to solve any problems. If business owners were simply willing to do the honorable thing and refuse employment to people willing to work below minimum wage, there would be no reason to hire illegal aliens instead of American citizens - but until that day, the employment issue will remain. It's up to us to demand fair and humane treatment of all workers, illegal or not.
As unions emerged in the early 20th century, American workers saw a fortunate shift in power from the corporations to the proletariat. Ideas like child labor laws, minimum wage, and weekends came into place, and a balance of power was created in the work environment. I do not doubt Ms. Maffei's family members were making reasonable financial demands from their employers, but if a hungry immigrant family, perhaps even unable to speak English, ignorantly offers to work extensive hours at hardly any pay, it should be the employer's responsibility to recognize hiring them as both illegal and inhumane. Instead of blaming poor families who often put their lives at stake trying to create better lives for themselves and their children here in America, the "land of opportunity", blame the corporations who allow themselves to be swindled by temptation, simultaneously leaving hard-working citizens without jobs and their "alien" replacements without the means to support themselves or become legal citizens.
Caging human beings up like animals and shipping them off to their home countries is not going to solve any problems. If business owners were simply willing to do the honorable thing and refuse employment to people willing to work below minimum wage, there would be no reason to hire illegal aliens instead of American citizens - but until that day, the employment issue will remain. It's up to us to demand fair and humane treatment of all workers, illegal or not.
I would suggest that most illegal immigrants will work for minimum wage because there are simply no real jobs for them back home - and that is a significant part of the problem. The Global Economy seems to be leaving them behind too, and there seems to be a willing labor market for them if they look northward.
Here in the United States, most folks can’t get by on minimum wage and that is most likely the reason they are not lining up to perform back breaking labor for it. It appears that undocumented immigrants will work for minimum wage and employers are more than willing to hire them, despite the fact that their workforce is continually “rounded up� and sent back from whence they came. The supply, it seems, is endless.
Perhaps if employers were held accountable and, perhaps penalized, that might mitigate the demand. In a market economy, as long as there are people willing to do the work in return for a negotiated rate of pay, the work will be done. If U.S. citizens refuse to work in the fields for $8.00 an hour (CA minimum wage) employers will either have to pay more (and offer benefits) or seek other arrangements (paying less under the table, hiring illegal immigrants, etc). The problem is that in our current political climate it is easier to get all spun up on the immigrant (illegal or otherwise) instead of examining the root cause.
In my opinion, Mary Maffei misses the point and you get a little closer. Consider this…the problem may not be “illegal immigration,� per se. Perhaps it has something to do with the mighty American economic engine demanding continuous, ever increasing profits from our corporations and small businesses and the American consumer insisting on consistently low prices and zero inflation. Perhaps it’s the failure of our lawmakers and our law enforcement officials who seem to look away when businesses continue to hire (as Mary Maffei suggests) the same “illegal� immigrants over and over. But someone has to hire the worker in this paradigm; I don’t recall reading or hearing anything lately about bands of migrants from south of our border holding a gun up to a hiring manager’s head and saying “give us the job – for minimum wage – or we will shoot you�.
In the end it’s easier to target the worker who is willing to work hard for very low wages than examine more closely the very economic and political system that allows such a travesty to continue. It is always interesting to me as I drive around the back roads of Ventura County. The biggest signs urging me to re-elect Elton Gallegy always seem to be on the farm properties that are allegedly hiring all the “illegal’ immigrants. Coincidence? Perhaps.
I imagine that Mary Maffei might start screaming bloody murder if prices for food and services increased commensurate with what it would take to pay a fair and reasonable wage to those pickers, restaurant workers, gardeners, and housekeepers – foreign or domestic. A wage that would allow them to live in dignity and comfort, access to reasonable medical care for them and their children, access to a decent education, and the leisure time that most U.S. workers believe to be a God given right. In the end, it is much easier to rant about it being the fault of the illegal immigrants – a scapegoat issue that distracts us from truly examining the economic problems facing our country today - rather than offering up solutions that are practical and perhaps painful as opposed to political and cynical. But that’s the way Elton Gallegy and the other pols in Congress like it – distract us with this nonsense and continue on with business as usual.
If groceries cost 15 or even 25% more than they do today, if it cost that much more to enjoy an occasional meal in a restaurant, if we had to find time in our own busy work schedules to clean our own houses or maintain our yards because no one would be willing to do it for minimum wage…well Elton and his cronies, from both sides of the aisle, know it would be difficult, if not impossible to get re-elected. So our ire is raised by peripheral, hot button issues that don't begin to address the real problems, the ones with truly difficult solutions.
Here here. Argument well presented and documented with local examples of the greed of businesses that depend on cheap labor for large profits. Interestingly, they are often the very Republicans who rage against undocumented workers. This is called bait and switch.
Well said Sarah. But like you said, it is capitalism after all and those big honchos are going to make the most profits. And if using illegal immigrants is going to get them there, then thats how its got to be.
Oh the fine mess that capitalism has gotten us in.