The chief cause of misunderstanding is the issue of trust. The White House thought that that if they had all sorts of conservative mechanisms in the bill that conservatives would be placated. What they didn't understand is that the anti-"amnesty" wing of the Republican party simply doesn't believe any of these enforcement measures will implemented until they in fact are implemented. "Trust but verify" has simply become "verify." And until there is real enforcement — both in terms of current law and new laws — the base simply doesn't care about any other bells and whistles. "Been there done that" is the de facto official policy of the base when it comes to promises of enforcement, i.e. "No more promises, just enforcement. Then we'll talk"...
Over the weekend, National Review's David Frum had a really smart political analysis of the effect the immigration compromise will have on the GOP. Frum predicts a wipe-out at the polls next year over this deal. These Frum points struck me as particularly apt:
1) The typical (median) American worker has seen his income stagnate under George W. Bush. Immigration is not the only reason for this wage stagnation, but it is certainly one of the reasons. With this immigration bill, the GOP is telling hard-pressed workers: Go look to somebody else to help you.
2) As complicated as this immigration deal is, it rests on a simple compromise: The Democrats get the amnesty they want - in exchange for the Republicans getting the guest-worker program they want. By identifying the guestworker program as the GOP's highest immigration priority, the deal also identifies the GOP as a party that in the crunch puts employers' interests first.
Frankly, I don't trust the government when it says it's going to make the border secure -- I say, "Show me first, then I'll believe you" -- and I believe that the Republican Party by and large cares about the interests of corporations in this matter, not the grassroots. As I think Mark Krikorian has pointed out, if Bush had spent his presidency till now getting tough on enforcing the actual immigration laws we have now, he'd probably have the credibility to sell this thing to conservatives. But he didn't, and so he doesn't.
Andrew Sullivan has a reader who spent the weekend visiting a couple of California farmers, and wrote to say the following:
One held up a fancy white peach to me and said: "Today, you can buy this for about 35 cents in the Safeway. If I were paying my fieldworkers a regular minimum wage and benefits to care for and harvest that peach, it would cost you about $1.50. These people ought to think about that before they start raging against the immigration bill."
The reader makes a good point. Americans are going to have to decide if keeping consumer goods relatively cheap is worth all these hidden costs, socially and morally. Do we really want to support a system that guarantees us cheap produce but does so at the expense of exploiting these workers, driving down US wages, and causing all kinds of social disruption? There's plenty around this issue to challenge the assumptions of the left and the right.
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What baloney on the price of that peach. If a worker only picked one peach every minute, an extra 30 cents a peach would provide $18 for hourly wage, benefits and tax. Pickers pick far more than one peach a minute. If we paid an extra five cents a peach or ten cents for a head of lettuce AND all that went to the pickers, they'd be doing pretty well.
You can babble and guess all you want to, but the main issue is that Mexicans have come to America in the millions and have set up Mexico in America. That pisses off Americans in more shades than just white. Many calls are going to Senators and Congressman in the negative because Mexicans are unwilling to assimilate into America. Mexicans have newspapers called:
La Raza (The Race)
and
El Conquistador (The Conqueror) These are people we want in America???? Remember that civil servants swear an oath to protect OUR country FROM ENEMIES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC. Now Mexicans are for the large part very decent and fine people, but they have made no friends of Americans by establishing Mexico IN America. A little appreciation and assimilation would be nice to see. You know like every single one us non-native Americans that came to America FOR A BETTER LIFE! If you want to be proud of Mexico's falg (which doesn't seem worth it) the LIVE IN MEXICO. Or become an American THE RIGHT WAY!
What a completely bizarre rant, Ed. There have always been places in America like Little Italy, Chinatown, Southie, Little Havana, the International District, where immigrants have "set up" their home country here in America (gasp!). Some of these places also have their own, non-English, community newspapers. Why do you single out the Mexicans, Ed? What makes the Mexicans different from other immigrant groups who came here to the same cries of "they're taking over America!", "They're enemies of America!". Your accusations are old and empty and they do smack of racism. Just as they were when the Know-Nothings made them a century and a half before you did.
Anne, What makes the Mexicans different is that they have an historic claim to very large parts of it. Nobody talks about the medieval Little Italy of the Doges. The O'Rourkes were never Kings in Brookline. "West Germany" never, EVER, meant Pennsylvania. Mexico also has a huge border with with the US. Mexican irredentists can walk in. "Manifest Destiny" Irishman can't. I've seen the graffiti maps of Aztlan in San Diego. Some of them have been there for more than twenty five years. Aztlan is the US south of Oregon and west of Louisiana. Now, I don't think most Mexican immigrants are thinking that way. Only enough to make a lot of trouble.
Back to the peach for a moment. Let's revisit the original argument (assuming, of course, that the reader who reported it did so accurately):
"Today, you can buy this for about 35 cents in the Safeway. If I were paying my fieldworkers a regular minimum wage and benefits to care for and harvest that peach, it would cost you about $1.50. " OK, for the sake of simplicity, we'll pretend that EVERY SINGLE CENT of the retail price is ENTIRELY composed of the farmer's field labor costs - that is, all the other factors that go into the retail price of the peach (land, irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides, equipment maintenance, distribution, marketing, all of the salaries of the other workers in the chain, plus ALL of the profits for everyone, including the Safeway where you buy the peach) add nothing to the price you pay. In other words, when you buy that peach, 35 cents are magically transferred into the pocket of the worker who grew it and picked it.
Under that circumstance, in order for the price of the peach to rise to $1.50, the peach farmer's labor costs would have to increase by 428%.
So, either the farmer is lying through his teeth to protect his profit margin, or he is criminally exploiting his fieldworkers. My guess is, both.
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