Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for July 30, 2010
O.K., America, are we done yet? Embarrassing. That’s what it’s getting to be – Embarrassing. Throwing our little tantrums right there in the middle of the world with all the neighbors watching. It’s alright. Mother Calhoun understands. We fell asleep at the wheel, fell in love with a false Wall Street siren song of trickle down wealth when what was really going on was a wholesale 20-year trickle up national asset-stripping and generalized looting. Some made out like bandits; the rest got the shaft. It was a repeat of an old familiar, boom and bust American tale.
Then there was Osama bin Laden. He understood how easy it would be to ju-jitsu America into destroying ourselves. 9/11 scared us silly and in that fearful state it was so easy to lose our bearings and get buffaloed and conned and demagogued into disastrous decisions. And then the whole house of cards crumbled. And our usual default, knee-jerk reaction showed up right on schedule: xenophobic, race-baiting idiocy fueled by self-serving politicians and special interests that benefit from divide and conquer.
In flush times, nobody complained about the illegal Mexican in the kitchen washing up the pots and pans. Or picking carrots. Or minding the baby. But come hard times, the Mexican in the kitchen serves as a useful political tool for pandering politicians. And so we see Arizona pilloried and praised for trying to solve a problem that nobody wanted to deal with, in part because it was thick-laden with an ugly subtext: How do you track down and get rid of illegal Mexicans without looking like you’re tracking down and getting rid of all Mexicans? That racial profiling subtext was simply too toxic to deal with in a sensible way.
Especially a racial subtext that had already been stirred up by the election of a black man, followed by the astro-turf, corporate-lobbyist-created “Tea Party,” with tea partiers showing up wearing guns and carrying posters of President Obama with a wooly Afro and a bone through his nose. Racist? Who, us?
And once again history repeated: a fearful, economically hammered populace out of which oozes the dark ugly stuff of our history. Aided and abetted by a corporate media that has utterly failed to understand even basic Journalism 101, bat-shit crazy right-wing punditry, and the changing demographics of this country. Notes Cesar Perales, president of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, “Large numbers of Latinos, particularly darker-skinned Latinos, [are] coming into the country . . . [And] having a black president makes it worse because that is evidence to [many] Americans that their world has changed.”
Toss in wholly owned corporate politicians who get political mileage from stirring that dark divide-and-conquer pool of racial fear with one hand while denying its existence with a straight face and you have the set-up for the latest drive-by shooting du jour: Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart (already on record as wanting to destroy “liberals,” whatever that means), took comments made by Shirley Sherrod totally out of context, the bat-shit-crazy right wing ran with the fake narrative, the White House administration, apparently terrified of bat-shit-crazy Glen Beck, fired her without question, the mainstream media ran with that story until the truth finally came out but by then it was too late. Poor Shirley was already road-kill in an ugly, but historically familiar American narrative: In hard times, the dark, night spirit of the KKK rides free while we cower in fear and nightmare anger until our better natures wake up and we come out of our houses and into the light of day to send the uglier parts of our natures and history back into the darkness.
And ask ourselves and one another: Jeesh! What were we thinking?
And so the Question: Are we done yet, America? Do we understand that we’ve finally lost our marbles and have jumped the shark? Are we now ready to take a deep breath and get a grip and get down to work with clearer eyes? Good.
Meantime, this snippet from the L.A. Times: “The Republican National Committee has invited conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart to participate in a private GOP fundraiser in Beverly Hills with party Chairman Michael Steele next month.”
Ah, well. Lay down with dawgs, git up with fleas. The only question here is, Will this bunch once again end up in that weird S&M whip-kitty Hollywood night club stuffing hundred dollar bills into the dancers’ butt-thongs while swilling down champagne and then send the bill to the RNC? Oh, Mother Calhoun hopes so.
Showing posts with label Arizona illegal alien laws. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arizona illegal alien laws. Show all posts
Friday, July 30, 2010
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Wait, Come back, I was only Kidding
While people are having a wonderful time boycotting Arizona to protest their “Ask & Tell” policy on people who look like illegal immigrants, there’s an interesting story in the June 7 Newsweek by Arian Campos-Flores.
Seems that the fertility rate in Mexico is in decline due to an aggressive government policy on family planning, increased education for women, etc. So the demographics in Mexico are changing and their “excess” young baby-bulge population will soon wane and instead of excess workers looking for work, Mexico will end up in equilibrium and if the birth rate continues to drop, will end up in the same pickle America is now: overrun with aging baby boomers.
According to Gordon Hanson, and economics professor at the University of California, San Diego, in the 1960’s “the baby boom ended in the U.S., but it continued for another two decades in Mexico. So in the 1980s and 1990s, there were fewer new U.S. workers looking for jobs but more Mexicans. On top of that, in 1982 the Mexican economy suffered a debt crisis followed by nearly two decades of sluggish growth. The American economy, on the other hand, performed far better, especially in the mid-to late 1990s, when it was humming at full throttle and hungry for foreign labor. “If you look back at the last two to three decades, it was really an exceptional period,” says Hanson.
“In the coming years, the politics of immigration could be completely scrambled: Mexican migration will taper off further just as baby boomers begin retiring, in 2012. USC’s [Dowell] Meyers predicts that the American labor force will start shrinking in some parts of the country by 2015, and that as boomers reach old age they’ll create even more demand for workers: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Arizona starts pleading for Mexican workers who can help them in their retirement homes,” he says. “The potential here is to totally reverse our attitudes toward Mexican immigration.” It’s hard to imagine right now, but if the numbers hold up, the crisis on our borders may end up abating on its own.”
Well, isn’t that the way? You get what you wish for and suddenly it isn’t what you want or need. Dang! So instead of hollering about Mexicans, maybe all us American Baby Boomers might start re-thinking job pools and just who’s gonna mow their lawn or change their diapers in a few years.
Take a left at the huge pothole and don’t’ call me in the morning.
This story is simply too delicious to miss: Lauren Rosenberg downloaded a Google map then followed the map to a busy four-lane boulevard without any sidewalks that wasn’t safe for pedestrians but our Dear Ms. Rosenberg continued blithely onto the busy road “on a pitch black night and received multiple bone fractures that required six weeks of rehabilitation” after getting hit by a car. And now she’s suing Google. Her lawyer said that Google’s map “created a trap with walking instructions that people rely on. She relied on it and thought she should cross the street.”
A busy boulevard, in pitch dark, filled with rushing cars. And apparently she didn’t stop and say, like most people do using Google maps, “THIS MAP SUCKS! WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE THINKING? I’M GONNA FIND A BETTER ROUTE SINCE THIS CROSSING IS LIKE TOTALLY UNSAFE!”
But no. Cross the street then call the lawyer.
Google claims they have a disclaimer on their website to the effect that circumstances can change and the maps may not be up to date. And if you’ve used Google maps, you already know that the maps are often goofy and will send you the wrong way or the long way around so the people you’re visiting always ask, “Why the heck did you take that rout?” and you reply, “Google,” and they say, “Ah, yes, of course, Google.” And, of course, no Google map can’t possibly be up to date vis a vis road repairs, washed out bridges, and other such unsafe areas.
In short, maps are marks on a piece of paper. They’re abstract symbolic representations of a reality that may no longer exist. Mental constructs, really. And for most of us, they only act as a vague outline. But not to our young Ms. Rosenberg. Apparently, the map was concrete gospel and now she has a lawyer and a lawsuit.
Ya gotta laugh. And wonder how her attorney would have framed a legal case if she’d been walking down the street with her Google map clutched in front of her nose and fell into a pothole.
Seems that the fertility rate in Mexico is in decline due to an aggressive government policy on family planning, increased education for women, etc. So the demographics in Mexico are changing and their “excess” young baby-bulge population will soon wane and instead of excess workers looking for work, Mexico will end up in equilibrium and if the birth rate continues to drop, will end up in the same pickle America is now: overrun with aging baby boomers.
According to Gordon Hanson, and economics professor at the University of California, San Diego, in the 1960’s “the baby boom ended in the U.S., but it continued for another two decades in Mexico. So in the 1980s and 1990s, there were fewer new U.S. workers looking for jobs but more Mexicans. On top of that, in 1982 the Mexican economy suffered a debt crisis followed by nearly two decades of sluggish growth. The American economy, on the other hand, performed far better, especially in the mid-to late 1990s, when it was humming at full throttle and hungry for foreign labor. “If you look back at the last two to three decades, it was really an exceptional period,” says Hanson.
“In the coming years, the politics of immigration could be completely scrambled: Mexican migration will taper off further just as baby boomers begin retiring, in 2012. USC’s [Dowell] Meyers predicts that the American labor force will start shrinking in some parts of the country by 2015, and that as boomers reach old age they’ll create even more demand for workers: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Arizona starts pleading for Mexican workers who can help them in their retirement homes,” he says. “The potential here is to totally reverse our attitudes toward Mexican immigration.” It’s hard to imagine right now, but if the numbers hold up, the crisis on our borders may end up abating on its own.”
Well, isn’t that the way? You get what you wish for and suddenly it isn’t what you want or need. Dang! So instead of hollering about Mexicans, maybe all us American Baby Boomers might start re-thinking job pools and just who’s gonna mow their lawn or change their diapers in a few years.
Take a left at the huge pothole and don’t’ call me in the morning.
This story is simply too delicious to miss: Lauren Rosenberg downloaded a Google map then followed the map to a busy four-lane boulevard without any sidewalks that wasn’t safe for pedestrians but our Dear Ms. Rosenberg continued blithely onto the busy road “on a pitch black night and received multiple bone fractures that required six weeks of rehabilitation” after getting hit by a car. And now she’s suing Google. Her lawyer said that Google’s map “created a trap with walking instructions that people rely on. She relied on it and thought she should cross the street.”
A busy boulevard, in pitch dark, filled with rushing cars. And apparently she didn’t stop and say, like most people do using Google maps, “THIS MAP SUCKS! WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE THINKING? I’M GONNA FIND A BETTER ROUTE SINCE THIS CROSSING IS LIKE TOTALLY UNSAFE!”
But no. Cross the street then call the lawyer.
Google claims they have a disclaimer on their website to the effect that circumstances can change and the maps may not be up to date. And if you’ve used Google maps, you already know that the maps are often goofy and will send you the wrong way or the long way around so the people you’re visiting always ask, “Why the heck did you take that rout?” and you reply, “Google,” and they say, “Ah, yes, of course, Google.” And, of course, no Google map can’t possibly be up to date vis a vis road repairs, washed out bridges, and other such unsafe areas.
In short, maps are marks on a piece of paper. They’re abstract symbolic representations of a reality that may no longer exist. Mental constructs, really. And for most of us, they only act as a vague outline. But not to our young Ms. Rosenberg. Apparently, the map was concrete gospel and now she has a lawyer and a lawsuit.
Ya gotta laugh. And wonder how her attorney would have framed a legal case if she’d been walking down the street with her Google map clutched in front of her nose and fell into a pothole.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Well, Ya Gotta Laugh
Yesterday’s L.A. Times story on Republican Senate candidate Tom Campbell said it all: “Three outside groups are stepping into the GOP race to try to drive home the message that the former congressman’s view on same-sex marriage and abortion rights – he favors both – and on gun rights, where he favors some restrictions, are at odds with the voters who will decide the party’s nominee June 8.
“Campbell’s argument has been that as a fiscal conservative and social moderate he is more in line with California voters than his two opponents, former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fioina and Orange County Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. His positions make him the stronger candidate against Sen. Barbara Boxer, he argues.
“Conservative groups disagree, saying that the strongest candidate for Republicans will be one who can mobilize the party’s rank and file.”
In other words, for Republicans extreme batshit crazy trumps views that are “more in line with California voters.” that is “mainstream, middle of road, majority.” Which, of course, explains a lot of what’s all going wrong with our system – batshit crazy extreme is taking the place of a more traditional middle way of pragmatism and compromise and actually fixing things.
And so we have a candidate like Rand Paul, named after his daddy’s God, Ayn Rand, who can be fairly called a Randian but in his case, he’s a Randian who obviously hasn’t read or understood Rand’s opus magnum, “Atlas Shrugged,” since it is singularly un-Galtian to stand for an office that is based on “service to others.” That’s so anti-Galtian that Ayn must be rolling over in her grave in a Russian fury! Anti-Galtian, anti-Randian and totally oxymoronic.
If you think this country’s going to hell in a hand basket (again, something it keeps doing every generation or so) then Rand Paul would be the poster child of political disconnect. Ditto Tom Campbell. An oxymoron running for elected office and a middle of the roader deemed to be unelectable. Nuts. We’ve all gone nuts.
Oh, Shut Up!
Today we may know whether the “top kill” on the gulf oil blow-out will work or not. In the meantime, will any and all Americans wringing their hands and pounding the table in outrage, please, please shut up. This blow-out is simply the natural, physical manifestation of The Reagan Revolution – government is the problem, we don’t need regulations, the market will take care of all things and tax breaks for the rich (corporate and private) will cause money and benefits to trickle down over us all.
And so, often in the dead of night, oil lobbyists and vast sums of money trickled – flooded – into Washington resulting in back-room-written laws and softened rules, lax oversight, and federal support and tax breaks and subsidies and exceptions from royalty payments, and waivers and more subsidies that encouraged deep-water drilling that otherwise would have been economically prohibitive. Translation: If the oil companies had to take on the deep-water risk all on their own, they wouldn’t have done it. But they were being supported by all those dead of night sweet deals made in Congress that was constantly prodded by an electorate that demanded cheap gas, no matter what the price to the environment.
And so, according to the L.A. Times story, “If it wasn’t profitable for them to do it, then that’s a good argument for leaving the oil in the ground,” said Robert Gramling, who studies the history of the oil industry at the University of Lousiana, Lafayette. The government-subsidized rush to deep-water exploration led to a situation where the industry was doing ‘things that were technically possible but were beyond our ability to undo them if we find out we have a problem.’”
And this, “At the industry-funded American Petroleum Institute, policy advisor Allison Nyhold disputes Gramling’s conclusions and points out that the incentives yielded an enormous jump in energy resources. In addition, she said, the expansion of drilling in the gulf created tens of thousands of jobs.”
The result is what we’re seeing now. Instead of waking up years ago, removing all the subsidies from oil, thereby keeping the price nearer to the “real” price for that form of energy, we allowed (demanded!) the back room deals, swallowed whole the free-market mantra (privatize profits, put the liabilities onto the public) and now we’re seeing the logical outcome and we’ll pay for it all.
But in the meantime, please hold all the whining. We can change all this, shift gears on our whole energy program, remove the price-distorting subsidies on “dirty” energy, make sure the price of our energy actually reflects its real cost, but we won’t do that. We like cheap, subsidized gas and we don’t want to know how much we’re actually paying for that gallon. Appearance trumps reality.
Plus, in order to shift energy gears, we’ll have to change our election laws so as to remove the money that’s absolutely turning Washington into a wholly owned corporate subsidiary. And we don’t want to do that, either. Too much work.
So we’ll continue to see oil spills, our energy policy will continue to be a pastiche of special interests that will make sure that any tweaks only be minor ones so that the quo will remain status. And we’ll continue to pay through the nose for a system that’s dooming us and the environment. But that’s the way we like it, so no whining.
But That’s O.K. Because The World May End In A Few Days
Which is when Congress is supposed to vote (or not) to change the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law which will go into effect after the military finishes their “study” on the matter sometime next year, maybe. If the vote passes, then gays, like their straight bretheren and sisteren, can legally serve and die for their country, which they have been doing (illegally) all along, but we don’t want to talk about that.
So, when that comes to pass, if it does – I’m not counting out the Party of NO blocking it so as to pander to their truly base base – that will mean the world will end.
So, we won’t have to worry about oil spills.
And Anyway, It’s Much Easier To Holler About Mexicans
Yes, it’s the American Way. Instead of rolling up our sleeves when times get tough and getting to work first taking a hard look up-line at the structures we’ve allowed to go into place, ask whether they’re still working or have been corrupted and are now corrupting us, then doing the heavy lifting of actually fixing our broken system, it’s much easier and much more fun to look down-line and just holler about Mexicans.
“Campbell’s argument has been that as a fiscal conservative and social moderate he is more in line with California voters than his two opponents, former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fioina and Orange County Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. His positions make him the stronger candidate against Sen. Barbara Boxer, he argues.
“Conservative groups disagree, saying that the strongest candidate for Republicans will be one who can mobilize the party’s rank and file.”
In other words, for Republicans extreme batshit crazy trumps views that are “more in line with California voters.” that is “mainstream, middle of road, majority.” Which, of course, explains a lot of what’s all going wrong with our system – batshit crazy extreme is taking the place of a more traditional middle way of pragmatism and compromise and actually fixing things.
And so we have a candidate like Rand Paul, named after his daddy’s God, Ayn Rand, who can be fairly called a Randian but in his case, he’s a Randian who obviously hasn’t read or understood Rand’s opus magnum, “Atlas Shrugged,” since it is singularly un-Galtian to stand for an office that is based on “service to others.” That’s so anti-Galtian that Ayn must be rolling over in her grave in a Russian fury! Anti-Galtian, anti-Randian and totally oxymoronic.
If you think this country’s going to hell in a hand basket (again, something it keeps doing every generation or so) then Rand Paul would be the poster child of political disconnect. Ditto Tom Campbell. An oxymoron running for elected office and a middle of the roader deemed to be unelectable. Nuts. We’ve all gone nuts.
Oh, Shut Up!
Today we may know whether the “top kill” on the gulf oil blow-out will work or not. In the meantime, will any and all Americans wringing their hands and pounding the table in outrage, please, please shut up. This blow-out is simply the natural, physical manifestation of The Reagan Revolution – government is the problem, we don’t need regulations, the market will take care of all things and tax breaks for the rich (corporate and private) will cause money and benefits to trickle down over us all.
And so, often in the dead of night, oil lobbyists and vast sums of money trickled – flooded – into Washington resulting in back-room-written laws and softened rules, lax oversight, and federal support and tax breaks and subsidies and exceptions from royalty payments, and waivers and more subsidies that encouraged deep-water drilling that otherwise would have been economically prohibitive. Translation: If the oil companies had to take on the deep-water risk all on their own, they wouldn’t have done it. But they were being supported by all those dead of night sweet deals made in Congress that was constantly prodded by an electorate that demanded cheap gas, no matter what the price to the environment.
And so, according to the L.A. Times story, “If it wasn’t profitable for them to do it, then that’s a good argument for leaving the oil in the ground,” said Robert Gramling, who studies the history of the oil industry at the University of Lousiana, Lafayette. The government-subsidized rush to deep-water exploration led to a situation where the industry was doing ‘things that were technically possible but were beyond our ability to undo them if we find out we have a problem.’”
And this, “At the industry-funded American Petroleum Institute, policy advisor Allison Nyhold disputes Gramling’s conclusions and points out that the incentives yielded an enormous jump in energy resources. In addition, she said, the expansion of drilling in the gulf created tens of thousands of jobs.”
The result is what we’re seeing now. Instead of waking up years ago, removing all the subsidies from oil, thereby keeping the price nearer to the “real” price for that form of energy, we allowed (demanded!) the back room deals, swallowed whole the free-market mantra (privatize profits, put the liabilities onto the public) and now we’re seeing the logical outcome and we’ll pay for it all.
But in the meantime, please hold all the whining. We can change all this, shift gears on our whole energy program, remove the price-distorting subsidies on “dirty” energy, make sure the price of our energy actually reflects its real cost, but we won’t do that. We like cheap, subsidized gas and we don’t want to know how much we’re actually paying for that gallon. Appearance trumps reality.
Plus, in order to shift energy gears, we’ll have to change our election laws so as to remove the money that’s absolutely turning Washington into a wholly owned corporate subsidiary. And we don’t want to do that, either. Too much work.
So we’ll continue to see oil spills, our energy policy will continue to be a pastiche of special interests that will make sure that any tweaks only be minor ones so that the quo will remain status. And we’ll continue to pay through the nose for a system that’s dooming us and the environment. But that’s the way we like it, so no whining.
But That’s O.K. Because The World May End In A Few Days
Which is when Congress is supposed to vote (or not) to change the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law which will go into effect after the military finishes their “study” on the matter sometime next year, maybe. If the vote passes, then gays, like their straight bretheren and sisteren, can legally serve and die for their country, which they have been doing (illegally) all along, but we don’t want to talk about that.
So, when that comes to pass, if it does – I’m not counting out the Party of NO blocking it so as to pander to their truly base base – that will mean the world will end.
So, we won’t have to worry about oil spills.
And Anyway, It’s Much Easier To Holler About Mexicans
Yes, it’s the American Way. Instead of rolling up our sleeves when times get tough and getting to work first taking a hard look up-line at the structures we’ve allowed to go into place, ask whether they’re still working or have been corrupted and are now corrupting us, then doing the heavy lifting of actually fixing our broken system, it’s much easier and much more fun to look down-line and just holler about Mexicans.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Border Wars
Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for April 30, 2010
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.
Thomas Pynchon
Well, it’s now official. Arizona has lost its marbles. First, due to budget considerations, they closed highway rest stops so if you’re driving through Arizona and you have to pee, you’d better bring a can. Then they passed a new law that could effectively result in making it illegal to Walk While Mexican. So, Mexico – Mexico? – yes, Mexico, the same travel destination that is regularly the target of American travel advisories due to drug war shootouts and kidnappings and murders – has issued its own travel advisory warning Mexican tourists heading for Arizona that they may well get stopped and harassed, so they’d better keep their passports handy. Especially if they actually look, er, “illegal.”
Then other American organizations, city councils and various other politicos piled on, calling for a boycott of Arizona, which could cause real damage in a state whose current shaky economic health relies heavily on tourist dollars. (And all those “illegals” working in the tourist hotel/restaurant industry.) All of which was accompanied by the usual Maximum Righteous Outrage, which plays so well on TV and talk radio. And, naturally, the whole insane mess will head directly for the courts since it appears to violate some of our most cherished myths and mixes up state and federal authority concerning immigration laws.
All of which came about because this country refuses to get honest about what it’s been doing for years – which is running businesses on the backs of illegal immigrants because its cheaper to do so – no union wages, no health insurance, no pesky disability insurance, no income tax – just work “off the books” with unverified workers as much as possible. Higher profits for the business, cheaper products for the consumer, and the well-to-do get a Don’t Ask/ Don’t Tell gardener and nanny without having to worry about paying SSI taxes. So, everybody’s happy, right?
Well, no. When you live a lie, it’s impossible not to keep running into problems. Unless you reinstate a system of slavery or keep your illegal, off-the-books workers hooked into chain gangs housed in guarded compounds, each illegal worker will be joined by family. Now, instead of one single employee, your community suddenly has a wife and children. And children need educating, paid for by taxpayers. And families need health care which, if not covered by the employer, has to come from the taxpayers as well.
Multiply that a few million times and concentrate the numbers into a small geographical area (like Arizona) and you’ve got problems. It’s no coincidence that it was Arizona that passed this law, not North Dakota. North Dakota does not have a large influx of “illegal Canadians” putting a strain on public coffers and social services.
Toss in good old basic racism, which only complicates the issue further by making it an issue nearly impossible to discuss honestly without an ugly subtext, and you end up with a mess. And there’s nothing politicos love more than a mess they can demagogue.
Over the years our congresspeople have earnestly asserted that “Something Must Be Done,” while quickly tabling the “Something” because our dirty little secret is this: Our economy needs and wants and hires and relies on the very people we scapegoat and demagogue when times get tough or when politicians need an “issue” to stir up voters.
So, before any of this can be fixed, this country has to get honest about the role “illegal immigrants” play in keeping this country’s economy afloat. We could certainly try some version of the funny movie, “A Day Without Mexicans,” and see what happens. In an aging country filled with Baby Boomers who are rapidly losing the ability to pick their own lettuce, slaughter and dress their own chickens, mow their lawns, bus their own dishes or get services in a nursing home, the results of such a boycott would be interesting.
Or we could pass a federal law making it mandatory for every citizen to carry tamper-proof “papers” at all times. Then spend gazillions to beef up INS agents and start raiding businesses all over the country to frog march all the CEO’s who are employing these illegals right to prison and all the illegals right to the border. That’d solve the problem, but would empty out our farms and factories and slaughterhouses and hotels and restaurants and nursing homes and hospitals and gardens and construction sites.
Or we can get honest and admit that we need and like the benefits “illegal” low-wage workers bring to our way of life, then sit down to honestly figure out a fair and just way to deal with the liabilities such a wink-nudge system brings with it.
Or we can all just drive to Phoenix and get out of our car and walk around wearing “illegal-looking shoes” and a big sombrero and see what happens.
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.
Thomas Pynchon
Well, it’s now official. Arizona has lost its marbles. First, due to budget considerations, they closed highway rest stops so if you’re driving through Arizona and you have to pee, you’d better bring a can. Then they passed a new law that could effectively result in making it illegal to Walk While Mexican. So, Mexico – Mexico? – yes, Mexico, the same travel destination that is regularly the target of American travel advisories due to drug war shootouts and kidnappings and murders – has issued its own travel advisory warning Mexican tourists heading for Arizona that they may well get stopped and harassed, so they’d better keep their passports handy. Especially if they actually look, er, “illegal.”
Then other American organizations, city councils and various other politicos piled on, calling for a boycott of Arizona, which could cause real damage in a state whose current shaky economic health relies heavily on tourist dollars. (And all those “illegals” working in the tourist hotel/restaurant industry.) All of which was accompanied by the usual Maximum Righteous Outrage, which plays so well on TV and talk radio. And, naturally, the whole insane mess will head directly for the courts since it appears to violate some of our most cherished myths and mixes up state and federal authority concerning immigration laws.
All of which came about because this country refuses to get honest about what it’s been doing for years – which is running businesses on the backs of illegal immigrants because its cheaper to do so – no union wages, no health insurance, no pesky disability insurance, no income tax – just work “off the books” with unverified workers as much as possible. Higher profits for the business, cheaper products for the consumer, and the well-to-do get a Don’t Ask/ Don’t Tell gardener and nanny without having to worry about paying SSI taxes. So, everybody’s happy, right?
Well, no. When you live a lie, it’s impossible not to keep running into problems. Unless you reinstate a system of slavery or keep your illegal, off-the-books workers hooked into chain gangs housed in guarded compounds, each illegal worker will be joined by family. Now, instead of one single employee, your community suddenly has a wife and children. And children need educating, paid for by taxpayers. And families need health care which, if not covered by the employer, has to come from the taxpayers as well.
Multiply that a few million times and concentrate the numbers into a small geographical area (like Arizona) and you’ve got problems. It’s no coincidence that it was Arizona that passed this law, not North Dakota. North Dakota does not have a large influx of “illegal Canadians” putting a strain on public coffers and social services.
Toss in good old basic racism, which only complicates the issue further by making it an issue nearly impossible to discuss honestly without an ugly subtext, and you end up with a mess. And there’s nothing politicos love more than a mess they can demagogue.
Over the years our congresspeople have earnestly asserted that “Something Must Be Done,” while quickly tabling the “Something” because our dirty little secret is this: Our economy needs and wants and hires and relies on the very people we scapegoat and demagogue when times get tough or when politicians need an “issue” to stir up voters.
So, before any of this can be fixed, this country has to get honest about the role “illegal immigrants” play in keeping this country’s economy afloat. We could certainly try some version of the funny movie, “A Day Without Mexicans,” and see what happens. In an aging country filled with Baby Boomers who are rapidly losing the ability to pick their own lettuce, slaughter and dress their own chickens, mow their lawns, bus their own dishes or get services in a nursing home, the results of such a boycott would be interesting.
Or we could pass a federal law making it mandatory for every citizen to carry tamper-proof “papers” at all times. Then spend gazillions to beef up INS agents and start raiding businesses all over the country to frog march all the CEO’s who are employing these illegals right to prison and all the illegals right to the border. That’d solve the problem, but would empty out our farms and factories and slaughterhouses and hotels and restaurants and nursing homes and hospitals and gardens and construction sites.
Or we can get honest and admit that we need and like the benefits “illegal” low-wage workers bring to our way of life, then sit down to honestly figure out a fair and just way to deal with the liabilities such a wink-nudge system brings with it.
Or we can all just drive to Phoenix and get out of our car and walk around wearing “illegal-looking shoes” and a big sombrero and see what happens.
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