Rot in Hell, Micheal Savage, you aardwolf raping waste of wombat semen! Calling for the impeachment of Bush because he dares give amnesty to hardworking illegal immigrants? WTF? Aren’t YOU a child of immigrants, as you are so often spouting on that joke of a radio show you run? It’s not like Bush is going to amnestize the immigrants that run here, have babies, and sit on welfare or something. These people are vital parts of the economy, and much of the reasons prices are so low on the food you shove in your piehole. In fact, American companies actively recruit in Mexico to bring workers here illegally, but i don’t hear you crying about that, only whining about how illegals are “destroying this country” without any specific details. Is the concept that you might here someone speaking in Spanish at Wal-Mart so scary to you that you have to recommend the overthrow of the government of this country? There are “enemies within”, Mr. Savage, and one is hosting a radio program.
(Yuck, now i have to take a shower for defending that chickenhawk Bush)
C’mon! Pitting Michael Savage? If we did that every time he says something ridiculous, the hamsters would have a heart attack.
Seriously, though, he is a dick.
I said in a thread about Bush recently that i really was hard-pressed to think of a single decent thing that he’s done since becoming president, but this new visiting worker program for illegal aliens might cause me to rethink that position.
You hit on what has always been, for me, one of the most troubling aspects of the whole illegal immigration issue–the way that it’s enforced. When a workplace is raided and all the illegal immigrants shipped out, the only people to suffer are the immigrants themselves; the companies generally get off with nothing except maybe a warning, and then can just go out and hire another bunch of illegal workers the next day. This system actively encourages inhumane working conditions, because if the workers agitiate for better pay or better working conditions or acceptable health and safety standards, the company can have them all shipped off by the INS.
If you want to enforce immigration laws, fine. But hold the companies who hire these workers accountable, too, because without the demand they create, there would be much less incentive for the illegals to come in the first place. As Tars points out, many of these companies actively recruit in Mexico. IANAL, but it seems to me that this constitutes an incitement to commit a crime, something that the law generally frowns upon.
I wouldn’t be too quick to give Bush any propers on this one. Who really benefits from this? I believe the answer is Bush’s corporate buddies. By legalizing these workers, he would be legitimizing corporate practices of hiring illegals and would set a dangerous legal precedent.
Should the newly legalized workers decide to organize or protest working conditions and pay, they wouldn’t be shipped back to Mexico, they would simply be fired and a new crop hired illegally, or threatened with same.
It’s really a pointless discussion, because I believe it to be purely an election year ploy that has no chance of passing congressional scrutiny. Bush would never have dared to propose this with a Democratic majority in Congress, but knows that the right will never entertain this notion seriously. It gains him unearned points with the Hispanic voters with no real political expenditure.
As much as I dislike Bush, this is one of the only good things he’s done as POTUS. To call it impeachable is ridiculous. I can’t believe Michael Savage even has a following any more.
I have no doubt that this is all true; in fact, it was one of the first things i thought when i heard the news of the amnesty.
But given that the system as it stands already makes life easy for the law-breaking corporations anyway, i’m in favour of anything that might give the workers a little more leverage in the relationship. While you’re probably right that workers who make a fuss will be fired–hell, that happens to American workers too–at least a worker would be able to call the authorities to report OSHA, EPA, FDA etc. violations without worrying that the INS would come to drag her off in the process. Presumably, it would also be easier to ensure that the companies were paying minimum wage.
As far as this being an election year stunt goes, i guess time will tell. If the current polls are any indication, the move is likely to cost Bush more support than it gains him. If he sticks with the policy in the face of this opposition, then we’ll know he was really serious.
If the opposition continues, my bet is that he’ll back down, and then say to the Hispanic community “Hey, i tried to do something for you, but they wouldn’t let me.” This might have the effect of picking up some Hispanic voters while keeping his core constituency happy. Just a WAG, however.
My thoughts exactly. Bush has some very savvy and unscrupulous people running his show, who have zero problems with mind-fucking an entire ethnic group to attain the political endgame. This is a calculated risk on his handlers’ part; while the idea will enrage the lunatic fringe of Pat Buchanans and the like, they are a minority in the Republican party, so the fallout will be minimal (they hope). With any luck, it will backfire on him completely.
Here’s the problem for people like Savage and other Nativists (can you say Pat Buchanan?), come the election they can either vote for Bush, or they can vote for some random Green Party or Natural Law candidate, or they can vote for the Democrat candidate or they can stay home. A vote for a Green or a Natural Law type or a Democrat is too much for them to bear. Not voting is the same as voting for the Democrat. They won’t do that. Ever one of them will hold their nose and vote for Bush. So will some voting Latinos. There will be no revolt in the GOP and it will rebound to the President’s advantage–even though the whole scheme reeks of political expedience and guest worker peonage.
Peonage? Come on. What we have NOW is peonage. And does anyone really believe that Bush proposed this plan hoping it would fail? Isn’t it more likely that he proposed it because he (OK, his advisors) thought it made sense?
There are millions of illegal workers already in this country. They are providing valuable services. There is a huge demand for their labor. They are not stealing jobs from Americans, and even if they were, why do Americans deserve jobs more than Mexicans?
The workers are here. They aren’t going away. We aren’t shipping them all back home, we aren’t putting land mines on the border, we aren’t going to round them up and put them in camps.
So given the fact that the workers are here, the work is here, the demand is here, the supply is here, what is the benefit of illegalizing it? Sure, you may or may not like the specific plan Bush or whoever puts out. But driving the labor market underground is surely pernicious. No matter how silly or onerous the rules turn out to be, they are surely going to be better than our current system of illegalized labor. And if not, then the people who are hiring illegal workers are just going to turn their back on the legal market and continue the current illegal market.
I grant that this is an extremely small sample, but my girlfriend is a Honduran immigrant (legal) and she is not at all impressed with Bush’s proposal. She sees it as a cheap election year ploy to try to win the votes of Latinos after three years of indifference. According to her, this view is held by nearly all other members of her very large extended family. FWIW.
As I understand it, if they (foolishly) choose to enter the system, Mexicans would have to be sponsored by an employer to stay in the country legally. Contrast this to the current situation, in which you don’t have to have a job at all in order to stay, due to lax enforcement of the immigration laws. Bush’s plan is closer to peonage than the current situation, because it places in the employer’s hands the power to take away the worker’s job and hence legal status. A subclass of laborers with reduced rights! That, I submit, is a capitalist’s wet dream.
Lemur866, you seem to be justifying an exploitative system on the grounds that society gets an economic benefit. I won’t infer your politics, but this is a pro-immigration argument I hear all the time from liberals. It’s unbelievably inconsistent with any respect for human rights.
First of all, the “economic benefit” argument is false. Every time someone does a study of the economic impact of illegal immigrants, the only question is whether it’s a small drain on the economy or a big drain on the economy. If you want cites, I can give them. Illegal immigrants are very poorly educated (actually illiterate in surprising proportions) and therefore not very productive, and use public services like schools and health care at high rates.
Second, if you go to places like North Dakota where there are relatively few illegal immigrants, somehow the crops still get harvested and the lawns still get mowed, and the economy does not seem to suffer. So the notion that our economy somehow “needs” illegal immigrants as a necessary input is unsupportable.
On the question of whether immigrants should have equal rights to American jobs as citizens, if you open it up to Mexicans, how do you justify not opening it up to the whole rest of the world? I hope you have a lot of money in the bank, because you’ll need it when you lose your job. It’s almost a lock that somewhere in the world, there’s someone who will do your job for much less than you are making now.
I was pro-immigration for a long time, and I find much to admire in the work ethic of immigrants. But, having come from a long line of immigrants and economic migrants myself, I have to say that everyone would be happier if the home countries of immigrants could be reformed so that people wouldn’t have to leave their homelands to seek economic opportunities. There is some evidence that illegal immigrants tend to be harder working and more ambitious than natives, which leads to the question of why they can’t succeed economically in their home country. As long as Mexico can send its poor to the U.S., the Mexican system will never change. Is this really the long-term solution we want?
Of course, that just might be because a “migrant farm worker” in North Dakota generally owns a small fleet of quarter million dollar reapers and combines–which few illegal aliens do–as opposed to the farming locations outside the high plains where the typical migrant farm worker needs (and generally has) nothing more than two hands and a willing attitude to get out among the pesticides and harvest tomatoes, peaches, grapes, etc.
