The undocumented immigrants (or illegal aliens if you are a Republican) are doing the jobs that Americans will not do.
This is another half truth.
The full truth is that undocumented immigrants are doing the jobs that Americans will not do for wages that are unfairly negotiated by the employers.
I have to remind my Republican friends about this quite often and yes, sometimes I have to remind my Democratic friends.
Last summer, my wife and I were visiting some Republican friends and the topic of illegal immigration came up. Their initial message was that these people are coming here for all the free stuff (that’s another half truth for another time) and when I brought up the fact that most of them are working and not here just for free stuff, their reply was that those people are doing the jobs that Americans will not do and are therefore, a necessary evil. I asked for an example and they mentioned their housekeeper, an undocumented immigrant who cleaned their house twice a week. When I asked why they could not find any local folks to take the job, they said that no one wanted to work. Now these are smart people who run businesses and are quite successful, successful enough to afford a housekeeper. So I asked this question, “If you offered higher wages for your housekeeper, don’t you think that a local citizen would take the job?” They answered, “Why would we do that when we can get an illegal to do it for less?”
I replied, “Well, that would be keeping it legal, and that’s got to count for something?”
They went on to say that if they had to pay wages high enough for a local legal resident, they could not afford a housekeeper in the first place.
And there you have it, the whole truth.
Whenever I hear anyone tell me this half truth, I make the following proposal. There is no job that any undocumented immigrant is doing today that I will not do, not one. However, as a legal resident and American citizen, I will only do that job for a fairly negotiated wage between me and my employer and both of us will agree to not go outside the legal framework to gain unfair advantage over the other.
On a side note, it’s so strange to watch the Sunday news programs this morning and hear Republicans complain about low wages in America and how that is hurting the economy. Since when were Republicans in favor of higher labor costs for their corporate masters? It is going be interesting to see how they spin this cognitive dissonance with their voters
The folks that the GOP panders to with all this don’t care about the immigration status of these workers. This is, quite simply, racism. It is directed primarily at Hispanics, Latinos, and Blacks.
The buses to pick up farm workers wait every morning during planting, growing, and harvest seasons in the west. The work is hard, the pay is low, and anybody willing to do the work is welcome to climb aboard. The whites in the area don’t show up.
The language, propaganda, and stereotypes of the GOP blathering about “illegal” immigration have everything to do with racist fear-mongering, and very little to do with anything else. It is part of the same pattern as the “welfare fraud” and “EBT abuse” that we hear so much of. Finally, it is no accident that the simultaneous “Voter ID” legislation harms precisely the same populations that these dog-whistles incite attacks against.
The game is to pit exploited, fearful, and increasingly poverty-stricken whites against whichever scapegoat is most easily targeted — conveniently distracting that population from paying attention to who is actually plundering them.
I believe the largest undocumented immigration population in the Boston area is still Irish immigrants overstaying travel visas and staying with families, it certainly is in New York City . Similarly, the second highest population of undocumented immigrants in Chicago are the 70,000 Polish people living here on expired visas.
On the one hand, I am happy to see the vast majority of Latinos-legal or undocumented-making this a key civil rights and social justice issue for their entire demographic-which will be deciding elections in the near future. On the other hand, it is definitely an issue that crosses ethnic and racial lines and affects millions of undocumented immigrants across the ethnic spectrum. The thing my mother always taught me was, never forget where you came from and never pull the ladder up from behind you. That’s the value that should continue to pervade our immigration debate. We were without papers at one time too.
Standing in front of a working-class audience, he told them that Americans wouldn’t do the work that migrant workers do, even for $50 an hour. The audience disputed this, because it’s transparently bullshit,* but it’s a tenet of the Right’s classist worldview. Of course, none of the people who employ migrants have ever even considered offering $50 an hour for that work, but if the immigrant-haters got their wish and saw the borders sealed, those employers might have to offer first-world wages.
* At 40 hours per week, 50 week’s worth of $50 hours works out to $100,000.