Don't Hate The Player, Hate The Game

Oh my! I agree with Jesse Jackson this time (I often agree but he just works my nerves). This whole immigrant debate is really bringing out the worst in people - of all races. My issue is that, once again, poor people are being scape goated and blamed because they are the path of least resistance. Our borders are porous and people come flooding in because they have every reason and opportunity to do so. Big business created and continues to feed this gigantic problem. But I will not participate in blaming yet another group of poor brown people.

When employers brought slaves to America, few objected as long as they were prepared to work without wages and without rights. When they began to demand equal rights, all hell broke loose. No one minded when Mexican farm workers came to pick the crops, do the lawns, clean the houses. When they started to demand the right to citizenship, to vote, to organize -- the furor started.

American workers are sensibly worried that the flood of immigrant labor will bring lower wages as part of the global race to the bottom. But their complaint is with employers who prefer undocumented workers whom they can exploit without complaint, and with federal and state authorities who turn a blind eye to that exploitation.

There is no way anyone is going to locate, arrest, detain and ship millions of undocumented workers out of America. Our choice is whether we want to maintain permanently a large underclass of undocumented workers that can be easily exploited by cynical employers, and slurred by callous politicians -- or whether we want to fulfill America's promise by providing them with a road to citizenship, benefitting from their willingness to work, pay taxes and contribute.

How do we stop our country from being overrun by impoverished immigrants if we offer them pathways to citizenship? There is only one way -- and it is not mentioned in this debate. We passed a treaty called NAFTA with Mexico and Canada that guaranteed rights to employers and investors but not to workers. The results have been catastrophic. Wages in Mexico, the United States and Canada have fallen. Mexico now exports more cars to the United States than the United States exports to the world -- all made by U.S. companies benefitting from cheap labor in Mexico. And U.S. food exports have displaced millions of poor Mexican peasants and driven them from their communities. They don't come to the United States because they want to leave their homes. They come desperate for work.

Slave labor built this country and big business never got over the bloody taste that "free money" bought. So, they have a new way to exploit human beings. No American would work for sub-standard wages and sub-human treatment. All of this outrage at illegals "breaking the law" is misdirected as they are just in the dirty game they have to play to to feed their families. I don't hate them for playing. But I do hate the game.


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