I saw a program on tv about the immigrant labor. One of the commentators, a newspaper guy, asked if people were willing to pay $5.00 per head for a head of cabbage if we made the pay go up from $5.00 per hour to 15.00 per hour for domestic labor.
Now, that statement to me seemed a little ridiculous. Let us say for argument's sake that a head of cabbage is $1.00 per head. For a head of cabbage to go up to $5.00 per head from that $1.00 per head based on an increase from 5 to 15 per hour, the migrant laboror would have to only harvest a total of 2.5 heads of cabbage per hour, if I did my math right this late at night. That just doesn't make sense.
Immigrant labor has provided cheap labor that the U.S. can exploit. They probably work harder than the average U.S. citizen in that manual labor, are younger, have less benefits, show up at work more consistently, and make less per hour. The only reason we have immigrant labor is because it is the cheapest form of labor to use.
If we didn't have them, prices would not go up but not nearly as much as the talking heads portray.
Now I don't have anything against Mexicans. From what I have seen they have a harder life in Mexico with no Social Security and low wages or they would not be coming to America. Nafta was supposed to help with the differences in incomes in the Nafta countries. It hasn't done that. All I can see that it has done is ship jobs overseas and make the oligarchs of Mexico and maybe a few corporations a little richer. So much for the kind of free trade that was sold as. We have more Mexican immigrants here after Nafta than before and old Mexico hasn't changed much at all.
My parents used to live in Harlingen (sp?), Tx on the Mexican border and I had a roommate who lived in Nuevo Laredo. They both say the same thing.
I think it is time we stopped being hoodwinked by trade agreements that are sold as one thing and are really something else.
I don't have a lot of problem with trade with Canada because they are so similar to the U.S. as far as the social and economic system go. We should have required Mexico to share its wealth with its people better instead of Mexicanizing the U.S. political system in respect to poltical donations, grease, or to put it a little more blatently: political bribes.
I have just read an article on the Scanlon, Abramhoff, Delay republican scandal and it just makes you sick how pathetic our politicians have become. I am a staunch republican on their platform but I don't think they are following their platform at all. We have huge budget deficits, corruption in many segments (don't forget the SEC, FDA, USDA, and other regulatory problems of the last 5 yrs.). Politicians are representing their party before their constituents. It seems to me we have a president who is masquerading as an ethical religious conservative but the facts seem contrary to the illusion he is trying to portray.
I know some of this doesn't belong on ranchers bull session, but sometimes you have to look at the bigger picture and see how you fit in the scheme of things. It just seems to me that something stinks in the state of Denmark and we are being told it is the smell of good cheese. I don't buy it anymore.
I have been trapped in the loylaty over integrity thing before in my life and I came to the conclusion a long time ago that integrity has to come first, then loyalty. That goes for the politial party, religion, friends, enemies, and everything else in life including self interest. Why can't our politicians come to the same conclusion? It is the basic conclusion to the analogy I used with Tam and MRJ on child abuse. Heck, they even passed a law on reporting child abuse to help people with that moral delima.
These seasonal workers are people too. Our national policy of free trade and globalization should not be just about how it benefits our corporations or foreign corporations, but how it also benefits the people of those countries. It does no good to allow China to sell to the U.S. when the chinese don't allow the populace to obtain those profits of trade and buy something back from us. And I am not talking about my children's debt and tax burden.
There are a lot of things wrapped up in this immigrant debate. I just hope we don't get it wrong for the wrong reasons.