I realized the other day that, with all of the talk of building a wall to keep people from illegally crossing the US border from Mexico, we are not really having much of a discussion about what it means to be an illegal immigrant in the United States and what it does to our economy. I really don't think that the wall proposed (and slowly being built) by President Trump is the right thing to do.
I think that we should perhaps watch what China is doing to build roads and rail lines through Asia, Europe and Africa to link these continents together economically. Instead of building walls to hide behind we need to do more to unite North ans South America. We should be leaders in this respect instead of hiding behind walls hoarding our wealth and dreaming of our past success,
I can understand why people come to America illegally. Legal immigration opportunities are limited and without those opportunities the chance to go on to being a full citizen are very limited. While those who do come illegally are probably doing better here at sub minimum wage jobs with poor working conditions than they would be in Mexico but at the same time they are doing worse than American Citizens. They will probably always be illegal since there is no easy way for illegals to become legal once here.
If you look at the reality of it this situation creates something of a modern sort of indentured servitude class. It is obviously not slavery since the illegal workers are free to come and go as they please and yet their options to advance and build a prosperous life in this country are severely limited.
I think that the commonly advanced argument that "no American will do these jobs" is inherently bullshit. The reason that no American will do these jobs is that illegals work cheaper and without benefits. This is a way to cheat the natural forces of a regulated system of capitalism. If you could get away with walking into a bank and withdrawing all the money you wanted whenever you wanted to, you should be able to be much more successful than any of your peers if they cannot do the same thing. You would be cheating the system.
Continue reading: https://s0ciali5t.com/illegal-immigrants-just-modern-slave-class-us/
I've heard that argument that raising wages would cause American citizens to take up these jobs.
While it sounds logical, there's nothing in American history that says this will happen, that citizens would take these jobs.
What was America founded upon? Slavery. They wanted to enslave the indigenous people, but when that didn't work out, they enslaved Africans.
They always wanted an underclass.
When African Americans were freed, did they raise wages so white citizens would take the jobs? No. They imported coolie labor from Ireland and China. These men were under debt bondage, if not by law, then by the fact they faced racism.
Then the Irish spearheaded attacks on Chinese, and eventually got a law to prohibit Chinese immigration. But, Asian contract labor continued, from Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, at different times, and each eventually excluded from immigration.
Then, when the economy went bad in the Depression, they deported Mexicans and Mexican Americans who were citizens.
When the demand for labor came back, they created a guest worker program called the Braceros, which was a virtual kind of slavery. They even got ripped off. Japanese Americans who had been imprisoned in concentration camps were also "allowed" to work on farms, for a fraction of what free people earned.
Then, after that, we had the "illegal immigrant" period, which, compared to the previous periods of labor importation that resembled slavery, was a period of relative freedom.
We also changed the economy a bit to use more imported goods.
Now, we're headed back into an exclusionary period, and it feels like fascism.
There were short periods during this history, when wages went up, and people could get some money doing farm labor, cleaning houses, doing handyperson work, killing animals for food, and so forth, doing exactly the same jobs that slaves did in the early days of the US. Those periods didn't last.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit