There is a mostly unspoken acceptance of illegal immigrants because of the cheap labor they provide, especially in agriculture.
If we truly wanted to stop illegal immigration, we would have to deal with skyrocketing prices for food, and most of us would rather have the cheap, plentiful food.
Illegal immigrants deserve rights in the US as long as we are relying on them for our cheap labor. Otherwise they are pretty much slaves. Labor with no rights.
I’m so sick of this canard.
It’s been discussed a couple times before, but basically the price of food would NOT skyrocket if we did without illegal immigration. It would increase, but only by around 6% or so.
6% is an awful lot in economic terms.
reads closer Especially since you linked to an article done by a biased source in 1996.
You have GOT to be shitting me. I’m not being sarcastic, I’m being serious. It was a HUGE event in El Salvadoran history.
Bricker, ask your father what he knows about it. Even if he wasn’t alive at the time, or was too young to remember, he would have heard of it. I can’t imagine NOT knowing about it, if you lived in El Salvador. Jesus Christ, all I took were too little courses in college on Latin American history, and I’ve certainly heard about it.
Unfortunately, most of the cites I found online are in Espanol, which I don’t read or speak. I was relying on my text book, Central America: A Nation Divided by Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr.
Here’s one from the Journal of Latin American Anthropology. Don’t know much about that publication, sorry.
Well, **Guinastasia ** and griffen2 provided cites, so as a Salvadorian who fled the violence I have to say that you requesting a cite for that bit of info makes me doubt that you are the real deal; or, like I see in many conservatives, you have “willfully ignore important timelines” sindrome.
Learn something every day.
I had heard the term applied to the right-wing death squads’ reign of terror in the 1980s, and never realized it was a comparison to an earlier event.
Thanks for educating me.
I was born in the U.S., GIGO - it was my father who left El Salvador. And he would have been eight years old in 1932, so probably he would have had to rely on history texts for in-depth political nuances of a 1932 event.
He died in 1985, so I can’t ask him.
Returning to the “who started it” question… the cites provided seem to indicate a peasant uprising that preceeded the massacre… so I’m still sort of leaning towards the leftists starting the violence first. But I’m not (obviously) hip to Salvadoran history that far back, so I welcome correction or clarification of that point.
“An event”?
Jesus, you presume to lecture on Salvadoran history and yet have apparently never heard of what at least one historian has called the major watershed of that nation’s twentieth century history (Thomas Anderson, Matanza: El Salvador’s Communist Revolt of 1932). Your contention that leftists were the first to “terrorize the countryside” is a convenient starting point if you’re doing nothing except seeking to justify your father’s worldview, but it is tenable only if you ignore about half a century of prior Salvadoran history. It also relies on a tacit acceptance that violence in the service of the state (whether by state troops or by right wing death squads allowed to operate with impunity) is not terrorism, but that violence against state interests automatically is.
Remember those leftist guerillas you were complaining about? Many of them, especially in the late 1970s and early 1980s, operated under the banner of an organization called the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (usually known as the FMLN). Martí was the communist leader executed during the events of 1932, and the very fact that the leftist forces of the 1970s and 1980s chose to take his name and his cause suggest that the whole question of civil strife in El Salvador is surely a little more complicated than your attempt to paint the leftist guerillas as coming out of nowhere in the 1970s to “terrorize the countryside.”
I’m not arguing that no-one in El Salvador suffered at the hands of leftists insurgents and guerillas. Plenty did and, as in so many similar cases throughout the world, the people who suffered were often those whom the guerillas claimed to be defending. I can understand that anyone who did suffer from leftist violence might not look too favorably upon the cause of his misery.
But we shouldn’t confuse this understandable reaction with a broad historical analysis, because it leaves too much out. It would be like writing Cuban history based only on interviews with the rabid anti-Castro community in Miami. Sure, it would give us one perspective on the issue, but i’ll bet it wouldn’t do much to illuminate the oppression and violence that went on under the Batista regime, and nor would it help us understand the very real advances made in Cuban society during the 1960s.
Well, this again relies on a definition of violence that focuses narrowly on organised, armed insurrection and ignores the everyday violence, the oppression, the injustices under which those people lived their lives. I guess you’d also analyse incidents in which Native Americans came into conflict with US troops by saying that the Indians started it.
OK - I admit I’ve done zero study in this area, and I further admit that my dad’s view may well have been colored by personal reactions to events, and that equally (or better) informed views may be dictated by actual historical study.
I appreciate your willingness in your post to acknowledge that there are different - yet defensible - views, and I absolutely accept the criticism that I should not offer an opinion on the issue without some solid grounding in the history.
Not only is 6% a lot in economic terms, but I question the conclusions of the study Metacom cites. Idiots have their own sources for facts as you may well know. I have met many of them who cite Fox News as if it was a reliable and balanced source (my sarcasm detector just went off the scale). Here is the “Mission” statement from the center that hosts this “study” on their website (my comments in brackets):
They also give an award for the fattest head:
2004: Lou Dobbs, Lou Dobbs Tonight (CNN)
2003: Joel Mowbray, National Review
Lou Dobbs? See my earlier post in this thread about the “fuck-wit” archetype. Someone from the National Review? Man these people must not be biased at all.
If you are interested, here is something from the other side (plenty more out there I might add):
http://www.ailf.org/ipc/policy_reports_2002_value.asp
And here is discussion of both:
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/001777.html
Needless to say Metacom’s brief and ineloquent stab at silencing us worked about as well as a Republican economy. He gives us some facts that agree with his side of a complex issue and to seemingly imply that we are bleeding heart liberals for obviously disregarding the truth so plainly stated. We could be like them and declare such studies as “junk science” as they often do but we won’t for the sake of argument.
Well, we are liberals and there is a reason why informed people unusually are: Things are rarely how they seem and more often then not the more powerful get their word out a lot more effectively than those with less power. This may or may not have anything to do with who is “right” in such matters.
Let’s just say that the study, done in 1996, is true and conditions are the same as they where back then. The economy would be booming under Bill Clinton, inflation was under control, fuel prices low, terrorists in check, etc., and we might be able to absorb a 6% increase in the cost of produce. But the economy is not booming under the current regime. Inflation is scaring the Fed into raising interest rates. We are paying $2.50 per gallon of gas. The machines that would be required to replace these workers would be more expensive to operate. I would argue, using the logic in this study (which is suspect and poorly executed) that the actual rise would be more like 7-8%. The affect on the overall economy, which is teetering as is in this high inflationary period, would be catastrophic. But please, get rid of the illegals, I want to see a Democratic congress and presidency sooner than expected.
Not only is 6% a lot in economic terms, but I question the conclusions of the study Metacom cites. Idiots have their own sources for facts as you may well know. I have met many of them who cite Fox News as if it was a reliable and balanced source (my sarcasm detector just went off the scale). Here is the “Mission” statement from the center that hosts this “study” on their website (my comments in brackets):
They also give an award for the fattest head:
2004: Lou Dobbs, Lou Dobbs Tonight (CNN)
2003: Joel Mowbray, National Review
Lou Dobbs? See my earlier post in this thread about the “fuck-wit” archetype. Someone from the National Review? Man these people must not be biased at all.
If you are interested, here is something from the other side (plenty more out there I might add):
http://www.ailf.org/ipc/policy_reports_2002_value.asp
And here is discussion of both:
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/001777.html
Needless to say Metacom’s brief and ineloquent stab at silencing us worked about as well as a Republican economy. He gives us some facts that agree with his side of a complex issue and to seemingly imply that we are bleeding heart liberals for obviously disregarding the truth so plainly stated. We could be like them and declare such studies as “junk science” as they often do but we won’t for the sake of argument.
Well, we are liberals and there is a reason why informed people unusually are: Things are rarely how they seem and more often then not the more powerful get their word out a lot more effectively than those with less power. This may or may not have anything to do with who is “right” in such matters.
Let’s just say that the study, done in 1996, is true and conditions are the same as they where back then. The economy would be booming under Bill Clinton, inflation was under control, fuel prices low, terrorists in check, etc., and we might be able to absorb a 6% increase in the cost of produce. But the economy is not booming under the current regime. Inflation is scaring the Fed into raising interest rates. We are paying $2.50 per gallon of gas. The machines that would be required to replace these workers would be more expensive to operate. I would argue, using the logic in this study (which is suspect and poorly executed) that the actual rise would be more like 7-8%. The affect on the overall economy, which is teetering as is in this high inflationary period, would be catastrophic. But please, get rid of the illegals, I want to see a Democratic congress and presidency sooner than expected.
Lets get down to brass tax. It’s easy for someone who isn’t appraised of the situation to attempt to give legitimacy to their hatred and fear by citing studies crafted to appeal to like-minded individuals and policy makers. But I live in California and I have lived amongst these people. They are as hardworking as anyone if not more. I have seen them in the fields traveling from job to job with their entire families who work as well. These people have a hard life. The callousness of those who hate them is as misdirected and utterly wrong as it is unamerican. Have you ever stopped to think about how much anger and fear have taken control of your soul?
Opps! Sorry about that double post. Read the lower portion. :smack:
Sorry for the hijack but could you (or anyone else in the know) please explain why a 7-8% price rise would be so catastrophic? Thanks.
This is just from memory because I have no time:
The truth commision proved to me what my hunch was correct then, even though I was a kid: the army and death scuads were responsible for more than 80 percent of the non-combat deaths, under those circumstances, revellion IMO is only natural or only an idiot would not consider it when one takes into account what hapened before:
Electoral fraud was rampant and in two previos elections, before the civil war, the military candidates “won”. Before the civil war, around 1977, teachers, priests and sindical leaders began to be killed by the death scuads, and after the fraudulent election of 1977, a big protest ocurred the main plaza in San Salvador to protest the current military thug that was selected. That assembly was attacked by paramilitary forces, it left as many as fifty protesters dead. Like Tlatelolco in Mexico and Tienamin square in China, you will never know the actual tally. No one was prosecuted. Then, about a dozen leaders of the opposition gathered in an open meeting to consider what to do next, not rejecting democracy yet, they met at a university and were kidnapped in broad daylight. No one believed the sorry excuses that the police in place never lifted a finger to prevent it, all of the leaders then appeared murdered on the side of a road.
I don’t blame then the guerrilas for acting (of course, the few crimes -in comparasion- to what the death scuad did, still have to be condemn), only a fool would follow democratic solutions when they are stealing elections and murdering your folks with impunity, then in 1979 a group of young military officers, repulsed by the massacres, overthrowed the right-wing government. However, the U.S. compeled the young officers to include many of the old guard in key positions in their new government, so things did go back to “Normal”. Civil war then became a reality, Duarte, a shadow of what he was before, then was elected. But I only remember that he became an apologist of the masacres of the army, and even kissed the American flag, a captive leader.
Because having to spend $3.86 on brocolli each week instead of $3.58 means there’s $0.28 less tinfoil money. That patch of foil could very well prevent Bush’s new Haliburton-constructed “Jesus Ray” conformance satellites from turning you into a sheeple! If that happened, you wouldn’t have the accumen to respond to studies by Ag. Econ. professors with accusations of bias and “6% [increase in retail fruit and vegetable prices] is a lot in economic terms” or pointing out that the study was written in 1996 (verily, anything more then a year old is obviously out-of-date in the fast-paced world of vegetable farming).
Shine on, you crazy diamonds. Shine on.
the arguement that food prices would soar without illegals keeps coming up. Does that mean you libs like it that these people bust their hump for very low pay so you can stuff your face cheaply?
What compassion!
Actually, moron, you’ll notice that some of us have argued specifically that we wouldn’t mind prices rising if it meant better pay and conditions for agricultural workers (whether they be immigrants or Americans).
The main point of raising the type of work done by illegal immigrants, and their contribution to the American economy, was to counter the unreflective dribbling of idiots like you who seem to believe that illegals constitute nothing but a burden on American society, and that Americans derive no benefit from their presence here.
Well, i’m not sure whether i’d agree with the word catastrophic, but such a rise would entail considerable readjustment in the American economy, and would be felt well beyond the 28c that Metacom rather simplistically uses as an example.
First of all, people’s weekly food bill generally includes considerably more than a single product, and while a 6 percent (or 7 or 8) increase in any particular item might not seem like much, such an increase over a range of products, especially in a non-discretionary category like food, could put a significant dent in the discretionary income of many American families. While families probably couldn’t do much to reduce the amount of food they buy, if that food cost more then they would have to pull spending from other areas, possible causing a knock-on effect in certain sectors of the economy.
Nor do these calculations apply only to the heads of fresh broccoli or the fresh tomatoes that you buy at the store. All the canned food that makes it onto supermarket shelves also has to be grown and picked before it ends up in cans, and if the price to the food canner increases, you can be sure the increase will be passed on to consumers. Similarly, restaurant chains like McDonalds and Burger King and Chilis are huge buyers of certain foodstuffs, most particularly meat and tomatoes, and we would also see a rise in those prices if the costs of food production rose.
As i said, i’m not convinced that the overall impact would necessarily be catastrophic. People, and the economy itself, would adjust. But just because 6 percent doesn’t sound like a massive number (not like, say, 30%) doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have a noticeable effect on consumer behavior and on the economy as a whole. In aggregate terms, a 6% shift in just about any aspect of an economy as large as America’s is nearly always going to have a non-negligible effect, in certain sectors at least.
The problem, also, is that small increases in the price of food are most likely to have the most detrimental effect on those with lowest incomes. If you’re on $150,000 a year, a change in your grocery bill from $200 to $216 a week might not make much difference, but if you’re down around the median income or below, such a rise in prices could have a significantly greater impact.
Catastrophic may not be the correct word but it is very close. The study cited by the other side seems over simplistic to me but then again who am I to disagree with an agriculture professor?
The main thrust of my argument in this segment is that we can sit here and cite studies for one side or the other all day long. You give me some study from a conservative institution and I’ll give you one from a more liberal one. So what is the point? Can someone give us an unbiased and detailed study that breaks down how much illegals cost our society and how much they contribute?
But here is what I’m thinking. That if you were to eliminate all the illegals from this country, that the effects on this country economically would be profound. Think for a moment what would happen. First all the agriculture illegals are gone. Prices go up. Which products were studied? Foods like strawberries are very labor intensive and would go up more than 6% I would assume. If it was just 6% I would be amazed. Now eliminate every illegal in allied industries. Yes they do more than pick fruit. Now eliminate all the maids, trash men, greens keepers, slaughterhouse workers, garment industry workers, and construction workers. Eliminate all the workers who stand on the corner waiting for the Gringo to pick them up to do any odd jobs. Illegal labor is not a recent problem either. It has been a part of the economy for the South-Western United States for at least a century. So I’m sure removing it all together wouldn’t have any effect right?
Illegals spend a lot of money here buying American products as well. Sure they send a lot of money down south but that money goes to buy more of our products. Needless to say, at this point Mexico and United States have a symbiotic relationship economically and to downplay this relationship is simple-minded.
Complicated systems like an economy do not take big change (and yes, even the highly suspect 6% is a large change) very well. Study history and look at the complex interactions on economies of the past. For example, a silver glut in the United States drastically affected the economy of Iran in the 19th century. The world economy is even further intertwined since then.
Sure our country could recover from the loss of illegals. Complex systems also have that ability. But the question is whether that would be such a good idea given our current situation? Even in a weak dollar environment (which means that our products should be selling like hotcakes) our trade deficit is wider than it has ever been. What does this say? It says that foreigners aren’t buying our products even though they are very cheap in price. Why is that? Well I would say because of our foreign policy. Now you want to piss off the only bunch of fuckers who are buying our shit? I question your reasoning and argue that it is more of the misguided “we can do whatever we want” attitude of the neo-con set. I tell you this my friends: Our actions will have repercussions on future generations of Americans and those of us who are far-sighted enough know that this attitude will be the downfall of our nation if not checked. So shine on you crazy diamonds, you are doing a great job!
Again, you’re talking about events in the 1970s and 1960s. Were there “death squads” in the 1930s? I’ve already admitted I don’t know, but in trying to learn, it seems to me you’re conflating the two periods.
We’re not talking about food in general. Fruit and vegetables. The stuff that “meat” is raised on (grain, grasses, legumes…) doesn’t need nearly as much labor as, say, strawberries. Think one guy in a combine vs. a field full of berry pickers.
The average american spends $2,245 per year on food. An 6% increase would be an extra $134.70 per year (or $11.22 per month). And that’s an upper bound, because the 6% increase would apply primarily to labor-intensive foodstuffs (like fruits and vegetables) and because that $2,245 per year includes about $800 per year of restaurant spending (restaurant prices wouldn’t increase as much as retail prices, because the cost of ingredients is only part of a restaurant’s overhead).
Is $11.22 per month a lot to some people? Sure. It would create a noticeable burden on the lowest of the lower classes; however, it would also increase the wages and working conditions of agricultural workers, which would offset the increased food prices to some degree.