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Mexican immigrants doomed by alliance of forces

Contributed by: Francis Miller on 7/12/2006

You don't have to be Omar Khayan to see the handwriting on the wall and predict where the Mexican immigration issue is headed, legislatively. Up to this point conventional wisdom has it that profit-hungry employers, seeking dirt-cheap labor, lured poverty-stricken peasants from Mexico and created this whole problem. This influx of "illegals" has created a burden for law-abiding taxpayors who end-up footing the bill for non-citizens tapping into entitlement programs. Legislators, we are assured, are merely responding to public opinion, doing what they were hired to do, in the name of enforcing the law and the war against terrorism.

Now, I have a tendency to be a contrarian whenever I see the herd stampeding in any given direction. It is my take that from the very beginning there has been an array of deeply rooted social and economic forces that are creating the political maelstrom we are presently witnessing. Furthermore, the solution, drying up jobs, is tantamount to military siege tactics of "starving them out". It's not much different than 19th century tactics of exterminating the buffalo to solve the "Indian problem".

Labor Unions
First, let's consider organized labor. Big companies have been outsourcing and eliminating manufacturing jobs using robotics and computers. Big box retailers have avoided unionization. The combination of all these actions has plummeted the labor union movement into a death spiral at just about the time Mexican immigrants came streaming into the U.S. in large numbers.

Existing Minority Groups
Then there are the deeply entrenched minority groups who are threatened. It is not surprising that African-Americans who experience discrimination and have trouble getting an education and jobs would resent the schools and job market being torqued to welcome Mexicans.

Shift to a Global Service Economy
The globalization of markets has demanded that all companies achieve cost parity with Asia/Indian competitors. The profound shift to a service-based economy has put intense pressure on companies in the agriculture, hotel, restaurant, land-scaping, roofing and janitorial sectors. Low rates of unemployment combined with lower costs achieved by hiring immigrants has led small business to turn to immigrant labor.

Religious Discrimination
Although it is uncomfortable to bring it up, I feel religion is also playing a part in this sorrid affair. Denver has a Swedish, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Rose(Jewish) and St. Joseph (Catholic) hospitals. Mexican immigrants are primarily Catholic and it does not surprise me the least that the most rabid opponents against their presence is the conservative continent from Colorado Springs which 'focuses on the family,' but primarily evangelical and protestant-Christian families. They can deny it all day long but it is bred in their bones. They may no longer cross the street so they don't have to tip their hat to a Catholic, but they will not grant them health care or food stamps if they can get away with it. It was the same story with the Italians and Irish immigrants, but then they were needed to mine minerals and build railroads.

Tax-Hungry Government
The biggest force aligned against Mexican immigrants, though, is state and local government. After 9/11 government's sales tax revenue took a dip and they couldn't increase jobs, salaries and pensions. Local and state government became motivated to root out the cause.

History has shown that immigrants are poor and uneducated throughout the first generation of their arrival. It is the children of immigrants who begin to rise toward the middle class and use the leverage of the American credit system to buy mini-vans, houses and luxury items. First generation immigrants are frugal, cash-only and they send an inordinate amount of their earnings back to the family in the 'old-country'. That "leakage" just doesn't generate sales tax and property tax revenues for local government to the same degree that if traditional workers, already inculcated into the leveraged way of life, held the job. The feds have overlooked the problem as long as federal taxes were paid at zero withholding. But the states see this group of people as a threat to their revenue stream and are now set out to put a stop to it.

The combination of these five forces are powerful and they cannot be countered with a moral argument about the natural rights of all people to pursue life, liberty and happiness. That seemingly applies only to the citizens who arrived first on boats from Europe.

Each of the five forces, in its own way, has also failed to adapt to a changing society and is now defensive and threatened. Government has failed the greatest in assuring national security and the borders and in efficiently and effectively administering health, education and welfare programs.

In this climate of failure we now seem to be rushing hell-bent to use the blunt instrument of criminalizing small businesses who hire immigrants. Drying up the nutrients to the algae bloom will force a rapid contraction, but it will also harm the economy and drive immigration further underground. You would think that a nation that paid such a dear price for lessons about slavery, war, genocide and discrimination would have learned by now. The pious hypocrisy emanating from policy-makers that rests on a fulcrum of a dysfunctional immigration system where payola is required to get a green card is shifting from declaring immigrants illegal to declaring that their employers are illegal.

Now, that is really "thinking outside of the box"!!!


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Francis Miller

Parker , CO

Francis Miller has posted 699 stories and 9 comments since joining on 11/17/2005. Francis Miller's average story rating is 4.2.
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