[GCFL-discuss] Employers on the Border

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

Jeanene, from what you are saying, it sounds like your husband is doing
all that he can be expected to do. You also imply that he is paying a
decent wage level, that anyone would expect for similar work. I had in
mind the meatpacking industry, for example, which has almost totally
destroyed the unions built by generations of second-generation German,
Irish, Syrian, Italian, Slovak immigrants, and internal northbound
immigrants from Arkansas and Mississippi, by importing Mexicans,
Guatemalans, and Somalis, then hiring enough desperate local people,
especially in job-starved areas, who won't complain because they know
there are more Guatemalans and Somalis where those came from. I don't
blame the individuals who come looking for work, they are doing what any
of us would do in their position, to live and support their families.
This kind of deliberate corporate policy produces some massive
demographic changes, which could not exist if not for large numbers of
jobs being systematically shifted and opened up, and people covertly
recruited to come fill them.

Of course many millions of native-born American citizens are descended
from people who were brought here in the same way. Mining companies faced
with unionization by Scotch-Irish mountaineers would recruit in Italy, in
Slovakia, and among unemployed sharecroppers (mostly African-American)
further south, to throw one wave of cheap semi-captive labor after
another into their mines. That's why the population of West Virginia is
now a mix of Scoth-Irish, Italian, African American, and Slovak. Ditto
for the NYC textile industry, with a somewhat different ethnic mix.

The fact that small to medium employers, in a community flooded with
undocumented immigrants coming across the border, would hire anyone who
walked in and applied, who showed reasonable documentation, is a
by-product, not the cause. I find border security a concern mostly
because residents are now having streams of people running literally
through their back yards looking for routes to get through. That's not
just immigration, it is personal security and privacy period.

Siarlys