Lawbreakers deserve to the rounded up, especially when they're immigrants. Right?

March 7, 2007 9:48 AM

Yesterday in New Bedford, Mass. an immigration raid netted some 300-350 illegal immigrants who were working at a factory that made (primarily) leather goods for the U.S. military. Mostly women from Central America, they were rounded up and sent to a detention facility 60 miles away...without their children, many of whom were stranded at daycare or school and are now in limbo. Meanwhile, Congress begins debate on immigration reform this week.
posted by lazywhinerkid (61 comments total)

Full disclosure: I worked in a pillow factory right next door one summer in high school that was chocka with Guatemalan and Mayan immigrants. They were hard working and took jobs that no one in the area would have deigned to take so I am a bit biased.
posted by lazywhinerkid at 9:52 AM on March 7, 2007

What do you bet 10 years from now our sweatshops will primarily be staffed by Russians and Eastern Europeans?

For some reason, those folks never seem to get raided...
posted by yeloson at 9:57 AM on March 7, 2007

OH the ironing!!
posted by spicynuts at 9:57 AM on March 7, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

One thing I wonder about is if the next iteration of the Patriot Act is going to require US citizens to carry passports for identification purposes to make it even easier to tell the sheep from the goats.
posted by pax digita at 10:02 AM on March 7, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

This should clean New Bedford right up. It's shocking really. Next you'll tell me Fall River Knitting Mill's employees aren't all direct descendants of Mayflower passengers.
posted by yerfatma at 10:05 AM on March 7, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

Also in Indiana.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 10:10 AM on March 7, 2007

One thing I wonder about is if the next iteration of the Patriot Act is going to require US citizens to carry passports for identification purposes to make it even easier to tell the sheep from the goats.

Don't have to wait for the next iteration. They are already working on standardizing drivers licenses to be some kind of national ID type thing. I believe right now the debate is around how much the states have to pay for the overhaul and extra bureaucracy vs. how much the feds have to help.
posted by spicynuts at 10:12 AM on March 7, 2007

When they take the children too, we get crap like this. And yeah, we should enforce our immigration laws.
posted by thirteenkiller at 10:12 AM on March 7, 2007

And yeah, we should enforce our immigration laws.

We should fix our immigration laws then enforce them, in my opinion.
posted by lazywhinerkid at 10:15 AM on March 7, 2007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act
posted by rxrfrx at 10:17 AM on March 7, 2007

One arguement we always hear: they take jobs no one else will take. Right: unless you pay minimum wage etc. In fact they rounded up many illegals out west at a meat packingplace and the next day the lines were around the corner for citizens waiting for the jobs.

The real issue is this: we have some 12 million people here illegally/ If you decide top get them out, how do you round them up etc? and if you accept the fact you can not round them up and deport them, then you keep them here and allow them to apply for citizenship. Those not liking this notion counter with Then othres will sneak into the country. Possibly, but what then do you do?
Kennedy , very liberal, seems pro-amnesty, but then he knows that there are thousands of Irish here illegally and thus perhaps some self interest.

Lou Dobbs, hating amnetsy and illegals here, rants about it but offers no solution about those already here.
posted by Postroad at 10:19 AM on March 7, 2007

They were hard working and took jobs that no one in the area would have deigned to take so I am a bit biased.

You worked there, though? I don't feel good about rounding up poor people and separating them from their children, but let's look at why no one in the area would take those jobs. I'd bet money on the jobs being low-paying, benefit-lacking, health-hazardous, dehumanizing toil. The authorities should be talking to the factory's management, and the rest of us should stop demonizing the Union movement.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 10:23 AM on March 7, 2007

Looks like the people responsible for running this ghastly, exploitative operation are facing the possibility of serious jail terms. Hopefully there will be enough publicity around this that it serves to deter others from trying the same thing.
posted by teleskiving at 10:24 AM on March 7, 2007

Fixed: Next you'll tell me Fall River Knitting Mill's employees aren't all direct descendants of Mayflower passengers Portuguese.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 10:27 AM on March 7, 2007

You worked there, though?

In the shipping and receiving dept. making $8 an hour with two other non-Central American guys -- we'd sneak off and drink and smoke by the loading bay most of the time.

The people doing the actual work sewing and stuffing and packing pillows were making $5 an hour (this is in 1993) and many were not exactly full citizens of the US but had been here for a long time, contributing to society, raising families, etc. That summer woke me up a bit, actually.
posted by lazywhinerkid at 10:30 AM on March 7, 2007

The solution, Postroad, is to jail the people who employ illegals. Until now no politician seems to have had the guts to push through a bill to do this. For now it's more politically expedient to make the illegals themselves pay.
posted by SteveInMaine at 10:32 AM on March 7, 2007

I'd bet money on the jobs being low-paying, benefit-lacking, health-hazardous, dehumanizing toil.

Yes, it's awful. They'd be much better off back in Guatemala with no jobs at all.

In all seriousness, let's be clear why immigration is restricted: to keep Bad Guys out, and to keep generous welfare provisions in. It's certainly not to protect the immigrants themselves from "exploitation".
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 10:34 AM on March 7, 2007

Exploitative operation? I don't think these workers were at all relieved to be "rescued" from working here. I think they are horribly upset that they can no longer make a living here - below the minimum wage.
posted by markulus at 10:37 AM on March 7, 2007

This raid exists within a larger context, by the way. They are just 350 out of the 18,000 people swept up this past year under a campaign the feds are calling Operation Return To Sender. Launched last May, they originally declared mission accomplished last June. Except the war on immigrants somehow kept going anyway. Funny how that happens.

Towns in Indiana and California also had roundups yesterday. The ACLU and others have been raising concerns about the federal agents announcing themselves as "police" and waving around warrants while arresting masses of people not named on those warrants. Tatics like that tends to erode trust in local law enforcement, compromising criminal investigations and community stability.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 10:41 AM on March 7, 2007

In all seriousness, let's be clear on why there's a labor market for illegal aliens: company owners and managers without ethics don't like to pay a living wage, or provide health insurance, or treat their employees like human beings. When they can get away with it, they have an advantage over companies that treat their workers better.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 10:41 AM on March 7, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

And the company officials that hired them, are they in jail?
posted by fluffycreature at 10:42 AM on March 7, 2007

One of the last things former Massachusetts Governor "Flip" Romney enacted on his way-out of his "drive-by" tenure: Troopers can arrest illegal immigrants in Romney deal.

Governor Deval Patrick has recinded the order.
posted by ericb at 10:47 AM on March 7, 2007

and to keep generous welfare provisions in
ha ha ha ha ha ha
posted by Meatbomb at 10:51 AM on March 7, 2007

One arguement we always hear: they take jobs no one else will take. Right: unless you pay minimum wage etc. In fact they rounded up many illegals out west at a meat packingplace and the next day the lines were around the corner for citizens waiting for the jobs.

Ha. Wrong. For example, the new immigration laws in Colorado have caused migrant workers to flee. So you would think that the famers would try and hire citizens to do the work. Problem is that they can't - no one wants to do it for the wage and they can't charge more or else people in cities bitch about the increase in food prices. Instead, Colorado has decided to use chain gangs.
posted by Stynxno at 10:59 AM on March 7, 2007

perhaps legal russian immigrants work in the other sweatshops.

Why do I care that a criminals children are left in Daycare? Isn't that what DFACS is for?


also, Please don't use phrases like "jobs that no one in the area would have deigned to take" unless you can back that up with facts. the jobs would be filled with citizens or non criminal aliens if they paid a sufficent wage.
posted by Megafly at 11:00 AM on March 7, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Interesting that not a single comment has touched on what would seem to be the most disturbing angle to the story, which is that large numbers of children (dozens? hundreds?) have been simply left stranded. (Other than a very mean-spirited jab by "thirteenkiller" to the effect that the little whiners complain if you lock them up, producing "crap" like letters to public officials.)

Don't any of you folks have children? Or know any? Just a couple of points: it's not their fault! Regardless of how one feels about "illegals" or "exploiters", punishing innocent children is barbaric. And the fact that no one posting to this thread seems to give two shits about this illustrates well enough a social sickness that runs deep in the former "land of the free".
posted by dinsdale at 11:07 AM on March 7, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

I think it should be criminal for anyone to pay anyone less than minimum wage, illegal immigrant or not.

I also think it's very short sighted and ignorant for people in countries with large illegal immigrant populations - in Europe as well as North America - to ignore the fact that their society and economy relies on illegal labour.

I don't like illegal immigration because it leads to both the abuse of those illegal immigrants and possibly to the lowering of wages (because they can be paid illegal wages). But prohibition is not the solution; rather, we could end the majority of illegal immigration by ending these idiotic barriers to the free movement of labour. If capitol can move around the world, why can't the labour? Make illegal labour legal -- and by doing so, you will make it a hell of a lot easier to stop the real criminals from paying such low wages and keeping people in such conditions which undermine work for the rest of us.

Everyone should be given the chance to emigrate, if they can do so and work at a legal job. We should have a system where anyone is allowed to immigrant (save criminals, perhaps, though only for serious crimes) - and they have some time to find work or otherwise support themselves through legal means. If they cannot find work, they must return home; if they can, they will be allowed to stay in the country.

(this is a plan I've been thinking about for a while)

Maybe they should not have access to benefits or to citizenship/permanent residency for themselves or their children until they have resided for a certain amount of time, like 5 or 10 years. But in the meantime, why should they be kept out of legal work? They are asking and receiving nothing from the government of the host country except the legal protections afforded to all workers (and which ultimately protects the lifestyle of the native workers, by not allowing illegal labour to undermine their wages/conditions), and they are contributing a huge amount to the host economy, including paying taxes to the host country. And after 5 to 10 years of that contribution, I say they would deserve permanant residency.

There is the issue of priviledges/benefits such as healthcare or education offered to residents. I started to think maybe those benefits could be fazed in, like you have to work for two years before you can bring your children into the country, or you would only have emergency health care, not full coverage like resident people (in countries with health care). But then I realised - if they are in work and paying taxes, why are they any less deserving of these benefits than anyone who simply had the good fortune to be born in a first world country? They are already far more enterprising and hard working, having made the effort to immigrate.

All of the first world nations have falling birth rates. We need more people of working age to support our society, for the sake of all of us when we want to retire. Open immigration is much better than policies to have more children - immigrants arrive already as adults and ready and willing to work.

As for the citizens who cry "they are all taking our jobs!" They weren't your jobs to start with. Language, racism and prejudice being what it is, local people will always have advantages over any immigrant group. If someone hires an immigrant instead of a local, it's because they are just better than the local person.
posted by jb at 12:37 PM on March 7, 2007

hoverboards don't work on water writes "In all seriousness, let's be clear why immigration is restricted: to keep Bad Guys out, and to keep generous welfare provisions in. It's certainly not to protect the immigrants themselves from 'exploitation'."

Well.... There are lots of reasons for restricting immigration, and a long history of American immigration law. Part of that history is the Bracero program, a "guest worker" program in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. This program was ended largely in response to abusive treatment and poor working conditions. In this context, our immigration laws have been shaped to some extent by a desire to minimize exploitation.

And I think there is a good, progressive argument to be made for limiting immigration in the interest of minimizing exploitation: if you rely on labor laws alone to limit worker exploitation, you'll drive the formation of an underground economy that will be even worse for the workers.

Personally, I favor radically liberalized legal immigration coupled with a strong union movement. But you'd need to add to this this good border enforcement, or you will get a black market for unregulated labor. Ideally, the unions should be able to take up some of the government slack of workplace enforcement, and limit the demand for undocumented workers. If we import enough young, productive workers as the baby boomers retire, we might even be able to make up for the looming social security shortfall....
posted by mr_roboto at 12:51 PM on March 7, 2007

This (leaving children behind) Also happened during the Swift raids. Cute, huh. Right before christmas. Since this is the second time this has happened, it makes it seem as though it's their policy.

And yeah, we should enforce our immigration laws.

I say we enforce all laws! Lets put GPSes in every car and give people speeding tickets every time they go over the limit! Let's Lets put BAC detectors in everyone's car! Let's give everyone drug tests and sift through their bank accounts to make sure they're not on or selling drugs!

I mean after all, if you're not breaking any laws, these would only be minor annoyances.
posted by delmoi at 12:54 PM on March 7, 2007

Interesting that not a single comment has touched on what would seem to be the most disturbing angle to the story, which is that large numbers of children (dozens? hundreds?) have been simply left stranded.

My understanding is that of those rounded up yesterday, any who have young children will not be immediately deported, but will be (or already were) allowed to return home. They will face deportation later, however.
posted by schoolgirl report at 12:59 PM on March 7, 2007

There are a variety of plans to make hiring illegal immigrants less appealing:
1) Amnesty. Once they're legal, bosses can't get away with paying less than minimum wage and have a harder time suppressing unionization.
2) Serious punishment for the boss. Obviously, few bosses are willing to go to jail or pay fines so large that the expected savings from hiring illegal immigrants goes negative.

Some people have proposed that if these steps were taken American citizens would be able to compete for these jobs. As far as I can tell, this is false.

The jobs will go off shore.

Illegal immigrants are a major influence toward keeping American manufacturing cost competitive with Mexican, Chinese, and other foreign labor. If we remove that "competitive advantage," businesses will either move away or die.

As someone once put it, "Any job can be made so intolerable that American citizens won't take it." That's what's happening here. These jobs are deliberately made so poor that the only people who would take them are the desperate. That's how they can afford to compete with desperate people in other countries. There aren't enough truly desperate people in America to support a competitive industry, so businesses import some through illegal immigration.

If we force businesses to stop abusing their workers those businesses aren't going to treat their workers better, they're just going to stop having workers here at all.

Don't misunderstand, I hate the abusive practices American businesses use, and believe something needs to be done for illegal immigrants, and if there were less reason to police illegal immigration we could get to work on our badly neglected port security instead. I just don't think that immigration reform is going to be anything but bad for American industry and potentially the economy.

In short, I don't have any good solution, but I sure do admire the problem.
posted by Richard Daly at 1:07 PM on March 7, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

These people knew the risks. They got false documentation. They broke the law. They knew that perhaps, one day, they could conceivably be deported. They risked their own children's safety and comfort.

It's not solely on their shoulders, since someone had to hire them. Laws should reflect such infractions better.

Unfortunately, as sad as their circumstances may be in their home countries, it is their countries' responsibility to care for its citizens, not ours.

I'm not being callous here. Leaders in those countries don't reform because there is often not enough swelling demand for reform. People migrate elsewhere, transferring the problem and the responsibility.

When offices in the Mexican government are releasing documents showing people how to slip past US borders, that's a problem. That's pure laziness on the part of the government in not taking care of its own citizens.

The US has a legal immigration policy, and if someone knowingly and criminally flouts it, they are taking a risk, and if caught, deserve the consequences.

I know that if I somehow slip into France and start working illegally, they'll deport me if I'm caught.
posted by cmgonzalez at 1:10 PM on March 7, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

Nothing really is going to change unless they round up the owners of the companies, separate them from their children, and force the companies into liquidation. If there is a real need for the product then someone else will open up a company to replace it.
The Waltons should have been held accountable for the illegal immigrants working at Wal-Mart, as should any owner.
posted by edgeways at 1:23 PM on March 7, 2007

What is the real issue here? We aren't gallavanting around to arrst and deport the 50000 illegal Irish immigrants, many with children in our public schools, or as mentioned above, eastern european immigrants (god save my refugee pop). are jobs the issue or is it some zeal to preserve our perceived puritanical consumer culture? Or is it good ol' american racism and nothing else?

Where is the moral high ground in punishing people for going to where bettter pay and better working conditions are? Have you never left one job for another (undoubtably taking it from another citizen) because it promised something better? The whole crux of this debate rests on restricting people to a lesser enjoyment of life because of where they were born. or does being shat out your mom's womb on american conquered territory genetically mutate some higher form of human?

I'm not being callous here.
Callous would be putting very nicely, you're being an unsympathetic ass. God save you should fortune turn on your dead soul and turn you out to the cold to starve because you're of the wrong phenotype.
posted by sarcasman at 1:43 PM on March 7, 2007

"Michael Bianco Inc., founded in 1985, specialized in manufacturing high-end leather goods for retailers including Coach Inc. and Timberland Co. before landing a $9.4 million military contract in 2003 to make survival vests."

Jeez, this place made those damn expensive Coach handbags and was stiffing employees like this?

Wow. Your trendy fashion, made in our very own sweatshops.

Another article I saw today said this: "Authorities released 45 detainees who were sole caregivers to children. No more releases were planned, said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Eight pregnant women were also released for humanitarian reasons.
Those still in custody were given the option of letting their children stay with a guardian or putting them in state care, Raimondi said.'

So 45 of them were released because they were the sole caregiver. Others were allowed to have the kids stay with relatives.

""Could he have hired some legal workers?" Mr. Sullivan said. "I think clearly he could have. Did he try? It appears that his effort was to hire illegals for a variety of reasons, some of which was to keep them in deplorable conditions at very low wages without benefits.""

The place sounds pretty nasty. So, perhaps it's a good thing that the upper management was tossed in the clink as well. Docking someone because they spend more than 2 minutes in the bathroom (among other issues) is ridiculous.
posted by drstein at 1:56 PM on March 7, 2007

We should be helping Mexico's (and central America's) economy. That is the real source of most illegal immigration. People will follow jobs no matter the legality or location. It's absurd to have such rich and poor nations as neighbors.

On an individual level it would be nice if people could live anywhere they wanted. The current policy favors people who have enough money to pay the immigration lawyers and do it legally.
posted by bhnyc at 1:58 PM on March 7, 2007

I used to do those jobs that they say Americans won't do.
posted by doctorschlock at 2:07 PM on March 7, 2007

are you mexican?
posted by quarter waters and a bag of chips at 2:14 PM on March 7, 2007

I, too, did a job that paid me $4.00/hr. that supposedly Americans wouldn't do. It was a maintenance job and I lined up for it, sure.

Again, there are two main issues at stake here:

1) Employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants should be prosecuted and the laws surrounding the employ of illegals using illegal practices (eg: paying below minimum wage, etc.) should be strengthened.

2) Illegals who are in the country illegally working illegal jobs should be deported when caught - end of story. I think it goes back to issue #1 that they're coming because someone is employing them. The farmers and low-wage manufacturers claim it will put them out of business and make their products more expensive, but I'm tired of paying for a non-taxpaying illegal to stay in this country.

And back to the start: yes, there are plenty of legal workers who would take those jobs if they were legitimate jobs that followed legal standards and practices.

America needs immigration, it does not need our current type of open-door immigration. If we permit it to continue, the backlash will only become more draconian as the people who are directly impacted (eg: border state residents) get more pissed off.
posted by tgrundke at 2:16 PM on March 7, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

bhnyc:

I could not disagree more. We should be helping Mexico and Central America more? Have you been to New Orleans lately, or some of America's other fine ghettos?

We have plenty to take care of here, thank you.

And on preview: I know where this comment will next go on Metafilter. The inevitable comments that America is responsible for the current state of Mexico and Central America, etc.
posted by tgrundke at 2:22 PM on March 7, 2007

Richard Daly: If we force businesses to stop abusing their workers those businesses aren't going to treat their workers better, they're just going to stop having workers here at all.

Yes, that's the idea. Some businesses (labor-intensive agribusiness, unskilled factory labor, etc) are never going to be profitable here unless the workers are exploited, because the cost of living here is greater than the profits the workers generate. The solution isn't to create third-world enclaves in our cities, it's to let jobs like that leave the country. They don't benefit the citizenry anyway, because they employ few citizens and usually their workers eat more in taxes (since they tend to rely on services such as emergency rooms, public health, education) than the business produces. All those emergency room visits add up fast.

It's like the classic argument that produce prices will go up if we don't let illegals flood in. You know, there's other places in the world that produce fruit, and in many of them wages that would result in severe poverty here would be acceptable due to lower costs of living. We'll just import our fruit from there.
posted by Mitrovarr at 2:24 PM on March 7, 2007

tgrundke writes "I could not disagree more. We should be helping Mexico and Central America more? Have you been to New Orleans lately, or some of America's other fine ghettos?"

It's not a zero-sum game. For instance, let's say we open a free trade agreement with, say, Guatemala, that allows manufacturers to locate there and have cheap access to the US market. These goods need to be imported into the US: one likely candidate for a port of import would be New Orleans. As the Guatemalan economy grows, business through this port grows, and a market for American goods (software, entertainment, biomedical technology) grows in Guatemala. Both nations benefit. David Ricardo figured this out like 200 years ago. China figured it out 20 years ago.

tgrundke writes "And on preview: I know where this comment will next go on Metafilter."

This one's gonna get it worse, I guarantee.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:35 PM on March 7, 2007

I don't have that much to say except:

puritanical consumer culture

ha ha. I think you got your stereotypes mixed up. I am not a scholar on the Puritans, but I'm pretty confident they would have considered consumerism a sin, as they did pretty much everything else.

And you forgot "red states," "fundies" and a reference to how much better every single thing in the world is in Europe.
posted by drjimmy11 at 2:36 PM on March 7, 2007

America needs immigration, it does not need our current type of open-door immigration.

This doesn't really make sense - we have anything but an open door policy - it's one of the reasons situations like this exist.

The US has a legal immigration policy, and if someone knowingly and criminally flouts it, they are taking a risk, and if caught, deserve the consequences.

I ultimately can't really argue with this, which is why I'd rather see the laws change. It has always seemed to me that people willing to (in many cases literally) risk death to make a better life for themselves and their families are exactly the type of people we'd like to call Americans. And many here who show disdain for those who "break" the law would be first in line shoveling cash to a coyote if America was a land of squalor and filth for all but the elite, and there were jobs and money somewhere north.

Of course it's really hard to become a citizen, in my opinion not so much because the powers that be don't want them here, but that they want them working in unregulated conditions at substandard wages and subject to quick and easy deportation whenever PR demands dictate a showy bust (like this one) to keep the nervous suburbanites happy and remind the brown people just who runs things. I don't condone illegal activity in this case, but I'd rather see the path to citizenship eased a bit than seeing people exploited on one end then thrown out at the other.

And while I understand from a business/services standoint this increases costs in some areas, it seems to me it would be offset by bringing some of the many billions of dollars that flow out of here back to Central and South America into the state's coffers.

I guess I wonder why we punish hard work. I'm sure a few of these people would love to coast along and collect some benefits, but I get the sense that the vast majority of them want to be the entrepreneurs, want to contribute to the community, want to embrace the responsibilitites of citizenship, want to be Americans. Surely there's a better compromise than our current system? I'd think even a fairly mercenary (financial) view would see some angle where more citizens equals more revenue. For all the talk of strain on social systems, the 45 million or so American citizens without health insurance must be a far greater weight on things than 11 or 12 million aliens.

In any event, I don't claim to be "right" about this, I just think it's a more nuanced issue than "amnesty" vs. "throw them all out". I also keep in the back of my mind that my great grandparents stood shivering on that ship - with not a word of English but a burning desire to make their mark. And however different the situation is today, however stupidly sentimental it makes me, they got that chance.

Why do I care that a criminals children are left in Daycare?

It might provide evidence your heart is anything but a cold, black cinder? I don't know, wild guess....
posted by jalexei at 2:39 PM on March 7, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Why do I care that a criminals children are left in Daycare? Isn't that what DFACS is for?
posted by MegaFly


You know who else didn't care when loads of people where taken from their places of work and separated from their children?

...

Anyway...I say that as a kinda joke, but still, I can't believe someone can say something like this. Illegal immigrants are, yes, doing something illegaly...but you can't put them in the same category as all criminals so as to lose all empathy with them and their children.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 3:07 PM on March 7, 2007

Who gives a shit about some company that cannot stay in business except by exploiting people? Fuck the company. Let them move overseas. Their profits aren't helping the US economy more than their employment practices are hurting it.

(This whole situation, and some of the comments in this thread, is yet more glorification of the rich and shitting on the poor. Can't you guys jerk off to porn rather than The Donald and his sleazy small-time local contemporaries?)

Anyone who glories in busting up families--fawning over the guys with bristly little mustaches, dark glasses and guns running around in official-issue vests with authoritarian agency logos on them--should just be eliminated. We have enough fucking assholes on this planet to not miss them one whit.
posted by maxwelton at 3:43 PM on March 7, 2007

Is there a reason nobody's contemplating a return to the bracero system? It seems like we've got a de facto bracero system going now — foreigners working here for cheap to send money home, employers sponsoring them in order to get access to their labor. Why not restore legal recognition to the system so we can regulate and tax it?

I wasn't alive at the time — was there something so unspeakably horrible about the bracero system that nobody wants to go back? Was it really worse than the current situation?
posted by nebulawindphone at 3:54 PM on March 7, 2007

We should be helping Mexico and Central America more? Have you been to New Orleans lately, or some of America's other fine ghettos?

Well -- look at who are helping to rebuild NoLa and the Gulf Coast region.

Helping to Rebuild New Orleans, Illegally.

As More Immigrants Go to New Orleans to Help Rebuild the City, Laborers Say They're Making Less.

Study Sees Increase in Illegal Hispanic Workers in New Orleans.

Illegals Exploited in Katrina Cleanup, Study Says.

posted by ericb at 4:18 PM on March 7, 2007

Boy, we sure love the free market until filthy dirty foreigners start participating, eh?

What's the difference between someone born in Nogales, AZ, USA, and someone born in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico? A couple hundred feet? Yet you troglodyte subhuman racist fucks think that, because of some imaginary lines on a fucking map, that the one born in Sonora is somehow less worthy of even daring to exist on "our" soil.

We need to stop thinking about imaginary lines on maps and remember that we all have to share this planet, and that unless we can start thinking of ourselves as a united species instead of members of an arbitrary nationality, we're all doomed to die here, on this planet, and the future history of humanity will be both ignoble and short.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 5:10 PM on March 7, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

Styxno: yeah, Colorado's moving to chain gangs. I'm conflicted as a Coloradan. On one hand, they're low-flight-risk volunteers. Volunteering counts for a lot. The pay bugs me. 60 cents an hour is a lot worse than illegal immigrant wages. Apparently, farmers were willing to pony up $9.60 an hour for labor. Is that good for the job? I dunno. I've dug ditches and worked some crazy-nuts jobs to keep myself (and my family) afloat.

Nine-sixty an hour in Pueblo, though. 100° in the shade on a good day Pueblo. I would have to be exceptionally hard-up to do that.

All of the churning, unending debate points to really bad things:
As a nation, we can't harvest our own food profitably,even under heavy subsidy from the government for key crops.

We can't morally allow legal immigrants to perform these jobs, because they'd need minimum wage. Farmers can't afford this by-and-large, so that's out.

We can't legally allow illegal immigrants to perform these jobs, because it's -- ready? -- illegal.

We can't morally allow people to make less than minimum wages, convicts excepting. There are all kinds of historic reasons why convict labor should make us uncomfortable. America was built on the labor of the penuried cast-offs of England before slavery, and we excelled at keeping the poor poor even then.

Maybe we need to think of an impending "food bubble" popping. Maybe we need to quietly buy out farmers who can't produce. Maybe we need ways to figure out how to machine harvest more crops -- sugar plantations argued bitterly that cane grew in conditions that no thresher or combine could cope with. As soon as slavery was undone, though, a sugar cane harvester was invented.

There's all sorts of angles to these problems besides what we're presented with, which are typically muddled status-quo vs. not-status-quo arguments that don't go anywhere until a crisis occurs. We'll see what happens here.
posted by boo_radley at 5:45 PM on March 7, 2007

where are my generous welfare provisions?!?!
posted by baklavabaklava at 5:54 PM on March 7, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Also, real quick: Megafly, your apathetic statement about children has no logical rationale. A child is well-bound to his parent; he cannot -- especially one in day care! -- argue or act for legally sound courses of action. We care about a criminal's child because he is a child, and cannot care for or tend tend to himself.

Regarding your request to "back that up with facts. the jobs would be filled with citizens or non criminal aliens if they paid a sufficent wage." Here are your facts, as posted above. As for sufficient wages, that's entirely possible. How much are you willing to pay for a head of lettuce? Luxury, you say? That's possible. How much for a pound of cornmeal? or wheat, or rice? What about a liter of cooking oil? Is the answer "a lot more than right now?"
posted by boo_radley at 6:09 PM on March 7, 2007

We can't legally allow illegal immigrants to perform these jobs, because it's -- ready? -- illegal.

If something is illegal, it can be done legally if the laws are changed. I would think that that's fairly obvious.

"Law and Order" arguments (that something should be done simply because it's the law) are almost always deployed to support the arguments of racists. People made the same arguments, the exact same arguments about Rosa Parks and the bus boycott (which was -- ready? -- illegal). About MLK and civil disobedience and so on.
posted by delmoi at 6:43 PM on March 7, 2007

delmoi -

I understand what you are saying about using Law and Order arguments - and you make a good point. I do not, however, think that it applies directly to the case of illegal immigrants who are not citizens of the United States.
posted by tgrundke at 6:56 PM on March 7, 2007

delmoi: don't misunderstand me, I have sympathy for immigrants, and would like to see their situations change for the better. You're right -- we're not just a country of laws, but of people who can change the laws. This would be incredibly different because America -- or its politicians, at least -- has become incredibly hard and tough. Nobody risks humanity, because a humane course of action is not only illegal in a purely technical standpoint, but it is also soft. That's the death knell for politicians, being soft. Look at John McCain to see what happens to humane politicians.

It's also just as disingenuous to talk about changing immigration law as it is to say that the law must be followed simply because it is the law. State law is difficult enough to change, but to come up with a federal law that alters immigration policy seems impossible to me. Suggestions on either side will get turned into political hay for somebody.
posted by boo_radley at 7:51 PM on March 7, 2007

It's about time that they rounded up the people responsible for creating sweatshops. Is it surprising that primarily illegals work those jobs? No. Americans are a litigious culture and if you tried to fine an American for talking, or taking too long to poop...every American knows how to dial information to find a lawyer.

Everyone bitches and moans about unions, but unions were originally formed to put an end to these sorts of sweatshops.

My stand on immigration is almost as complex as the situation itself, but where it concerns workers, I firmly believe that the companies responsible for these sorts of sweatshops should be fined out the wazoo, and the executives and managers should be prosecuted until the working conditions change.

As to the jobs moving offshore...that's just not going to happen with most of these factories. You can't process meat offshore. You can't make items for sale to the Defense Department offshore. Yard services can't be performed offshore. Crops aren't going to be harvested offshore. Hotel rooms aren't going to be cleaned offshore.

What needs to happen is that a living/working wage needs to be paid to the workers who do those jobs. Employers who break the law and create sweatshops, illegal working conditions, and promote the hiring and abuse of illegals should be sent to prison.
posted by dejah420 at 8:19 PM on March 7, 2007

tgrundke writes "I could not disagree more. We should be helping Mexico and Central America more?"

If Mexico's economy improves so does the USA's. China's booming economy has kept us afloat for the last 10 years. Imagine the positive effect of a close neighbor like Mexico finding it's feet. It might not involve much money, just some agreements and sensible advice.
posted by bhnyc at 8:19 PM on March 7, 2007

"Law and Order" arguments (that something should be done simply because it's the law) are almost always deployed to support the arguments of racists. People made the same arguments, the exact same arguments about Rosa Parks and the bus boycott (which was -- ready? -- illegal). About MLK and civil disobedience and so on.

One thing is for sure -- your argument involving racism is a gross overstatement. For instance: People should not speed because it's illegal. While it could become legal if the law were changed, that statement (and many others) wouldn't be racist. It weakens your point to make such generalizations, and its unfair to those of us who - I'm pretty sure here - aren't racist. I happen to support the term "Illegal Immigrant" because that definition is most accurate given the law. "Undocumented" is also accurate, but I think its less accurate given the fact that these workers are being detained and possibly deported. "Undocumented" is a political statement used to make the status of these workers sound better, obviously, but it's not as complete.

If the law is changed and the status of these workers can be changed - including paying all workers a living wage with health benefits - that'd be a great thing.
posted by pkingdesign at 9:21 PM on March 7, 2007

I say we enforce all laws! Lets put GPSes in every car and give people speeding tickets every time they go over the limit! Let's Lets put BAC detectors in everyone's car! Let's give everyone drug tests and sift through their bank accounts to make sure they're not on or selling drugs!

This is not at all like what occurred in the linked articles, and you know it.

I'm tired of paying for a non-taxpaying illegal to stay in this country.

I'm opposed to illegal immigration, but many illegal immigrants do pay taxes, so can we drop that canard, please?

Imagine the positive effect of a close neighbor like Mexico finding it's feet.

If we could get things made in Mexico that are currently made in China, we wouldn't have to burn a lot of fuel shipping them halfway around the world.
posted by oaf at 10:43 PM on March 7, 2007

"Law and Order" arguments (that something should be done simply because it's the law) are almost always deployed to support the arguments of racists.

Oh, please.
posted by oaf at 10:43 PM on March 7, 2007

An update from the Standard Times on the humanitarian crisis in New Beige. "These people are not bothering anybody. They are just working. There is no such thing as illegal humans."
posted by lazywhinerkid at 3:05 AM on March 8, 2007