Powerful essay today on the First Things blog, about how illegal immigration corrupts all of us. Tennessee professor Michael Linton's daughter got a job at "Big Billy's," a popular local ethnic restaurant that employs Latino workers of dubious legality. Excerpt:
The Latinos whom my daughter met were hard workers. And they were in the United States because they loved their families and had the courage to go to desperate measures to try to provide for them. But with their world caged between the interior of the restaurant, the continually shuttered split-levels where they are housed, the van that shuttles them between the two, and the fear that they were criminals, they are isolated and deeply lonely. And they found comfort in those two traditional friends of the lonely and the poor: alcoholism and prostitution.Not surprisingly, Big Billy’s corrupt labor practices spilled over into other aspects of the business. The staff was encouraged to lie about the MSG content in the food—the line was that it wasn’t used; the truth was that there were ten-gallon buckets of MSG in the kitchen with handwritten English labels on them reading “corn starch.” Several of the waiters claimed to have witnessed cash being passed to health inspectors.
You might think that Big Billy’s would be an establishment of interest to local authorities. But it continues to flourish, apparently untroubled. Across the street is an older ethnic restaurant. Not being able to compete with Big Billy’s cheap prices (carried on the back of its largely undocumented laborers), the older restaurant is seriously struggling.
Linton goes on to talk about how few of us can escape the moral taint of participating in a consumer economy that depends on the exploitation of illegal aliens. The price we pay for low prices is moral, and it's taken chiefly out of the backsides of these human beings.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
If the government will not enforce the laws, create a system that opens it up it the tort lawyers.
By the world standards Mexico is not a poor country. There are about 4 Billion people with lower standard of living than Mexicans.
Mexico is rich with natural resources (oil), agricultural land, some of the best beaches in the world, hard working, albeit not educated people.
Mexico has more billionaries than Swiss and France. Carlos Slim, owner of telephone monopoly, has just became a richest man in the world, at $63B he is $4B richer than Bill Gates.
Mexicans do not need open border with US. Mexico desperately needs opening its economy and political system.
Without reforms Mexico future is in doubt. If 44% of population would like to abondon their country and move to the US, can country even survive?
Mexicans rich and white over-class is happy with current arrangement of crony capitalism. They will never change anything as long as US takes in their poor, ambitious and unemployed.
Why should they? They are fat and happy as it is.
Correction: If the government will not enforce the laws, create a system that opens up enforcement to the tort lawyers.
If there were no illegal aliens in N Texas, the following would happen:
1. Employers would compete for the remaining workers, just as they do for other resources.
2. The cost of low-skilled labor (wages) would rise a bit. Not too much, considering that the estimated percentage of the labor force that is illegal (5% nationwide, more in N Texas) produces significantly less than 5% of our GNP.
3. Those employers on the margins, those just barely getting by because of illegal alien labor, will fail and the resources they use will be better used elsewhere.
4. Many labor-intensive jobs will be mechanized. Think: one man with a hydraulic auger instead of 5 with post-holers.
5. My property taxes would be significantly less, our schools would improve, and Parkland Hospital would have more capacity to treat real Americans.
"Reasonable rate of pay?!" What sort of economics textbook did THAT come from? Was the copyright in the FIRST millennium? What is reasonable is what the market will pay. Reduce the supply of grunt-labor and grunt-labor rates will rise. "Reasonable" has nothing to do with it.
We sure do grow those 'round here. I am currently called an engineer, but I have worked and supervised landscaping, tree-removal, and irrigation jobs. Pay me enough, you could get me from behind the desk and outside, again.
----------
All,
This country has around 700,000 police officers. If each police officer arrested one illegal per month and turned them over to ICE, that would be 8.4 million illegals per year. Given that 3-10 illegals will leave on their own for each one deported, essentially all of the illegals would be gone in 3-4 months.
Not that big a deal.
Note that Eisenhower removed 1-2 million illegals back in 1953 with just over 1000 Federal agents. It wasn't even hard. Took around 90 days.
As for the economy, illegals do around 2% of the work in the US. They won't be missed. Yes, a few companies will have to start hiring other minorities (you know the ones who have been here since 1617). But that won't be the end of the world either.
As for North Dallas, wages will go up and workers will have to recruited from Ohio. Good for Ohio and Dallas too.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.