dropdeadpolitics

Arizona is going about illegal immigration the wrong way.  The recent bill to pass the state Senate, that has already passed the House, is headed to the governor.  He should veto it.  The bill doesn’t address the actual problem.  Rather it merely addresses the symptoms.  It’s a common push by conservatives who think that tough enforcement of the law against illegal immigrants is the answer.  It’s not.

Immigration works like a flowing fluid.  When you have air in a balloon, it’s at a higher pressure than the air outside the balloon.  Let the end go and the air rushes out to fill the massive void in the room.  This is referred to as a pressure gradient.  There is an economic gradient that drives immigration, both legal and illegal, in the United States.  It’s not as simple as we have jobs and they want jobs, that’s just what’s visible on the surface.  The real issue is why are there jobs that illegal immigrants are sought after for.  This is the heart of the issue as it seems as Americans we have reached a point where we are refusing to do certain jobs.  I can’t say if it’s declining work ethic or being sold on an American dream that is all gains and no hard work, but somehow we’ve lost our willingness to do these jobs.  I know some will shout back at me that we haven’t.  But that’s frankly wrong.  If we were lining up to pick lettuce in Arizona, then there would be no illegal immigrants filling those tasks.  If we were so eager to clean houses, then why is there room in the labor market for illegal immigrants in that industry as well?

The answer isn’t a lack of work ethics a lone.  I’ve seen plenty of hard working people out there.  The other part of the answer is our culture.  We have a nasty habit of praising certain job types and looking down on others.  When someone tells you they clean houses for a living, you know it’s hard to hold back the judgment.  In fact, it’s hard not to pity people who do what many of us consider ‘menial’ jobs.  Career snobbery is part of the problem.  No one ever judges someone for being a lawyer or a vice-president of a failing bank or a doctor.  Of course the irony being that none of those professionals could function without someone to take out their garbage, clean their offices, watch their children, or pick the crops that become their food.  Without someone doing those ‘menial’ jobs, society would cease to function.  And yet we tend to think that such jobs aren’t necessary or are less important.  That’s wrong, they are vital.  More so than a lawyer.  Who cares about the law if you spend all your day growing food to last you the year?

The other part of this problem is in two parts.  One is the American Dream, and the other is the undervaluing of labor.  Our government and our corporate plutocracy is hard at work selling us on the American Dream.  Everyone should own their own home, right?  Look how well that one worked out for us.  We think America is a house in the suburbs with two kids and a dog, two cars in the garage, and never having to say no to the things we want.  Within reason of course.  We subscribe to the more is better policy, like most humans do, and our society embraces that natural instinct to horde.  Wal-Mart’s slogan is “save money, live better.”  In other words, buy a bunch of cheap crap and you’ll have a better life.  That cheap crap of course is made overseas because even labor in Mexico is too expensive for them.  How ironic is it that Wal-Mart passes itself off quite successfully as an American institution with nearly 90% of it’s products are made in China?  What’s even better is that so many of the ignorant citizens of this country actually buy into it.  And so we push a lifestyle that involves a too big house to hold our too much stuff so we can pretend to be happy.  And we all know you don’t get the too big house and too much stuff picking lettuce in Arizona.  Why?  Because the owners of those fields would rather undercut their competition anyway possible so they do it by cutting their biggest expense which is of course labor.  And in order to do that, they cut wages to the point that most Americans refuse to take the job given they can do slightly better at McDonald’s, though we have plenty of snobbery when it comes to working in fast food too.  This underpriced wage makes it that much easier for illegals to fill the void.  It’s simple economics.  If you have a job that needs doing and you offer five bucks an hour and no one applies, you aren’t paying enough.  Food tends to be a high demand item.  Not being able to sell it, especially since almost all our food comes from large industrial farms that have plenty of means to move their product, is rare.  What that means is you can offer 7 bucks an hour and raise your price of the lettuces, which would be much less than two dollars a head, and fill the job.  Assuming seven dollars is a high enough wage.  Remember, your potential American employees are looking for that too big house with too much stuff from Wal-Mart to fill it.  They might not take anything less than ten dollars an hour.  And we wonder why illegal immigrants flood the nation in spite of stricter laws designed to keep them out?

So how do we fix it?  First, we stop with the right wing, conservative clinging to an idea that doesn’t work.  They simply don’t want to address the real problem because doing so would hurt their donors, the business community.  So they attack the people who have no political clout, the illegal immigrants.  We have to realize that this is our problem too, not just theirs.  We have to start accepting that unadulterated consumerism isn’t equal to freedom and liberty.  It’s the opposite.  That’s how slaves are made.  We need to start accepting that our lettuce and other goods and services in industries that are hiring cheap illegal labor are going to get more expensive if we hire Americans to do the same work.  There’s no getting around it.  The labor market demands a certain wage and that is what it is.  We will have to live with a medium sized house that is properly furnished and outfitted.  I know, not very American of me.  We need to be willing to look at the issues actual root causes, not the ones that we see on bumper stickers or the ramblings of the likes of Tom Tancredo of Colorado.  We have to be willing to address our own faults that contribute to the problem instead of trying to blame it completely on the immigrants themselves.  Finally, we need to remove race and talk of culture from the issue.  Immigration isn’t about either.  It’s about economics.  If the culture and race aspects distract us, they will take over until we find ourselves divided over which group said what instead of unified in stopping the economic gradient that creates the influx of immigrants.