View From The Left Coast

Considering its roots, amnesty is particularly apt, since there have been seven immigration amnesties in the last 20 years, and we all seem to forget that every time those in charge always promise there won’t be any others, and that steps will be taken to insure there is no more illegal immigration.
And like political reform, some action is taken that is intentionally useless.
In the current debate, the Cheney Administration has once again wrapped itself in the sheep’s clothing of the downtrodden: while catering to the wishes of the rich for ever cheaper labor, they say they’re doing it for the good of the poor undocumented workers. They also wrapped themselves in the sheep’s clothing of journalists when refusing to admit Cheney gave Valerie Plame’s name to his journalist pals to punish her husband for telling the truth. More recently they had the gall to imply the people in the torture camp at Guantanamo were there for their own protection.
Spin notwithstanding, I have some problems with amnesty and “guest worker� programs.
First, if we need these workers so badly, and they’re already here working, how does the society benefit from making them legal? Second, if they become legal, and demand better wages, won’t their scofflaw employers will fire them and hire more illegals who will work for peanuts?
But the big question is “Who is harmed?� Columnist Clarence Page wrote recently, “There’s hardly any job Americans won’t fill if you offer them decent pay. But why offer more pay when you’re seeking someone to work in your fields, baby-sit your children, tend your garden, work in your factory, bus your restaurant tables, lay your bricks, or put up your drywall when you can hire an illegal worker who will worker who will work longer hours for less money with less complaint?�
“As a result,� Page continues, “millions of undocumented immigrants have gained an economic foothold on the American dream, while millions of the sort of people who used to fill those jobs, particularly undereducated black men, languish on the street.�
And as more and more former employees of Ford, GM and Chrysler are hitting the bricks, and more and more manufacturing jobs are sent to China and Mexico, the people being harmed by these endless amnesties are legal Americans. Other than expecting to make a living wage, what crime have THEY committed?
So who really benefits? Who is really behind this continued temporary suspension of our immigration laws? The people who want cheap labor to get even cheaper. The folks who aren’t afraid of the current and future laws they have broken, are breaking and will continue to break. Those are the ones who pay “our� legislators to pass immigration amnesty laws, again and again. They paid Bush Senior, they paid Bill Clinton, and they’re paying W.
And we pay, too.