County Supervisor, Peggy West, became the laughing stock of the United States when in this video she does not know that Arizona shares a border with Mexico:
Supervisor West, according to Milwaukee.gov is the second term County Supervisor of District 12 in Milwaukee. West is of Latino/Hispanic ethnic heritage and serves on at least 14 committees and boards, mostly representative of the Hispanic community in Milwaukee
West is a protagonist of the Arizona law, advocating the boycott of Arizona.
It is estimated that there are approximately 12 million known illegal immigrants currently in the United States. Most proponents of amnesty believe these people to be mostly migrant workers trying to earn a living in a seasonal job that Americans don’t want to do.
There seems to be validity to this part of the debate–many migrant workers are indeed Mexicans here illegally as De Coster Farms has had to pay fines in excess of a million dollars due to this.
The question not being addressed by the supporters of this is, “Do Americans refuse these jobs because of the low money offered? Or is there something more sinister going on with the migrant working conditions?”
According to documents, De Coster Egg Farms–the leading brown egg provider in the United States employs 160 adult workers each year who live in sub-human conditions with unsafe drinking water, housing as many as three families with an average of 3 people each [that’s 9 people] in one trailer–children included [in addition to the 160 adults there is estimated to be 50 children at any given time ranging in age from infant to 16 years old].
De Coster has been exempt from certain State Laws in the past concerning human conditions of their workers and wage regulations because they fall under the Agriculture Act which provides certain exemptions to farmers.
However, if De Coster can pay millions in fines, are they the small town farmer that we think of as hiring the illegal workers to pick their strawberries, oranges and other farm products?
Yet they have been cited for unsanitary violations such as having too many nitrates in the drinking water where they house their workers [who they charge $30 per week to quarter] because they bury the chicken feces too close to the ground water supply.
De Coster prohibits [under threat of loss of job and deportation] their workers from celebrating birthdays, having any type of gatherings or forming any type of community organization, or even posting notices on a bulletin board within their community.
Residents of De Coster Farm have likened the conditions to a concentration camp where the living conditions include busted out windows in their trailers, safety hazards such as the un-safe drinking water and no working fire-alarms in their trailers, pest infestations, inoperable appliances and a number of other sub-human conditions. The trailer for single males houses 16 men in one trailer.
This is social tyranny and social control, but it is able to continue because these people are illegal immigrants who have no choice but to work 70-80 hours per week for less than minimum wage and no compensation for over-time or face deportation if they speak out in the community or complain.
Are we really doing these people a favor by ignoring this dirty little secret of the life of the illegal migrant worker? Is this the better life that they were seeking when they came? Wouldn’t it be better for De Coster to simply pay and treat their workers better with the same millions that they are spending on fines?
Then there is the problem of the Mexican Drug Cartel, kidnapping Americans in Arizona because it is so easy to hop over the so-called border fences, as shown in this ABC News report:
Then there are people starting to take actions into their own hands by recording and posting their findings, with little acknowledgment from any officials as of yet:
For the drug lords on the border, jumping the fence has become more like a right of passage than a crime. There are numerous videos of them throwing rocks and even firing weapons at border patrol agents–who have little recourse to fight back because of the public misinformation that these people are just ‘The little guy’ trying to get in a do a job that no one else wants to do, when the reality is that the money they are after is drug money:
Then there are the stories of people like Julian Aleman, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, who hopped on a bus to Mexico and tracked across the border illegally, moving around from town to town for 14 years washing dishes for $7 an hour or more and finally landing a job at a prestigious country club washing dishes for $16 an hour.
This raises the question of national security–undocumented people in time of war [whether we have forgotten, or choose to ignore the fact, we are indeed in time of war, and even if we were not at war, who says that only Mexicans and Hispanics can get in through the holes that they are using]? What is to keep our enemies from coming in un-documented through these same venues?
Jim Krug of the Baltimore Sun Addresses this issue calling it ‘Treason,’ and there seems to be some validity to the argument when put into that perspective.
What of stories like Julian Aleman [who did apply for and receive American citizenship in 2000]? Isn’t this the American dream in the nutshell? To come to America with little or nothing and to end up in an envious position such as his [$16 an hour to was some dishes–I’m in!].
What of the people who did do it the right way? Aside from the petty complaints that it seems that only bathrooms in stores owned by corporate America actually work, that immigrant stores don’t often offer the same courtesy or services that corporate American stores do and the most predominant complaint, “Why should I have to learn a new language in my own country to accommodate those who come here and refuse to learn my language?!!!” Isn’t it a slap in the face to the millions of people who did apply for visas and resident status when others think they can simply by-pass the process by sneaking through a hole in an unguarded fence?
I asked a Hindi friend of mine who did it the right way and was amazed at his answer: “Who will do the work?” he said. He pointed out that the problem has become so bad that our economy can’t function without the illegal labor. His position is that if we send all the illegals out, there will be too big of a hole left in the labor force if the illegals are expelled.
When I asked him how it made him feel, being that he did it the right way and these people did not, his answer was simple and to be expected, “What is it mine to think one way or the other about it?”
Then there is the patriotic issue. On the 4th of July I offered to a friend of mine from Peru, “Happy 4th of July!!!” “No!” she said, “Not happy 4th of July. Happy 28th of July. The fourth of July means nothing,” a sentiment that many of the illegals that I have talked to seem to express as well.
Many of the Mexican immigrants [legal on visas as well as illegal undocumented] that I talk to blame America for the poverty situation in Mexico. They openly admit that it is government corruption in their own country that is the root of the problem, but they fervently believe that it is America who causes this government corruption. When I ask them how America causes corruption in their own country, they have no response.
Following this notion, there does seem to be some validity to this.
Many people would say that the reason we have enjoyed such an open commute with the Canadians and such a closed border condition with Mexico is racist–the truth is that it goes back to the Cuban Castro Missile crisis.
When Cuba was receiving aid from Russia during the cold-war, and set up missiles 90 miles off the coast of Florida, America [who’d previously enjoyed nice vacation resorts, cigars and freedom of travel back and forth to Cuba] placed an embargo on Cuba and demanded that anyone who didn’t join our efforts, anyone who continued trades with Cuba would not enjoy prosperous trades with America. Mexico chose Cuba….
Any day of the week you can drive by hundreds of Mexican workers doing road-work and construction jobs on government buildings and roadways, while on every corner there is a daily labor pool where hundreds of Americans sit waiting for job tickets that never come. Would these daily laborers take the Job tickets for these jobs if they were offered?
Then there is the theory that all Americans [excepting Native Americans] are immigrants at one time or other, meaning that these people should have the right to come into America as did everyone else.
But doesn’t immigration regulations offer some sort of balance to the economy in addition to being able to track criminals and all of the other benefits that regulating immigrants offers?
In order to emigrate to Canada you have to show that you will be able to be a productive member of their society with a skill or trade and a minimum of $10 thousand in your pocket so that you can get yourself set up properly.
Do the American citizens who were born here have the right to expect that people coming into the country will be productive and loyal patriots to our nation? Does documented immigration policies help to protect those rights?
What of the billions of dollars being sent out of the country by illegal workers? I have personally witnessed hundreds of undocumented immigrants taking only the bare necessities out of their pay checks and sending the rest back to their families in Mexico–every week, via Western Union. The exchange rate is currently 6 pesos to 1 dollar. A $400 Western Union transfer in American becomes a $2,400 peso deposit, giving their families a significant increase in the quality of life that they can have. But what is that kind of out-put of circulation doing to the American economy as a whole on that large of a scale?
Is there a way effectively help the Mexicans on their home front without the illegal immigration problem?
These are just a few of the pressing issues that we must deal with concerning the immigration problem.
Then there is the Arizona solution. Admittedly the wording of this law seems a bit precarious, but leaving the duty and ability of checking immigration status exclusively to the INS seems to be inefficient. Police officers, Highway Patrol and deputies are allowed to check up on Americans to see if there is a warrant out and to check the validity of a driver’s license–and if something isn’t right, the American goes to jail. Why isn’t it within their rights and abilities to check the immigration status of a person that they have detained for probable cause of something else. This should not only include Mexicans or people of Hispanic looking features, it should be everyone every time. There are illegal Canadians, Europeans and a variety of other people in the United States as well. An illegal immigrant is illegal whether they are from Mexico or London.
Yet right here in Florida, a month ago, the police had to let an entire van full of known illegal immigrants go because the INS was 3 hours driving time away from the stop and they were told by the INS officials to let them go.
If I came up and sat down on your front porch without your permission, would you insist that I leave? And if I said that I am only taking a break, would it make a difference, or would you say that I should have asked first? What would you do if I refused to leave, saying that I have a right to be there because it is impossible for people to own property since G-d is the one who created everything for everyone? Would you see my logic and agree with me?
What if I came along and plucked the flowers from your garden that you’d planted earlier that year? Would you think I had a right to do it without asking? What if they were about to die, would that make a difference?
Aren’t these two silly examples metaphors of the problem?
