All Rights Reserved © 2006 Thomas W. Day
A lot of young, smart, hip, politically-alert United States citizens are thinking about immigration. Some are considering the effects of uncontrolled, irrational over-population of an already resource-crowded nation, some are trying to find a sane political system, some are convinced that the United States is about to go on a fascist witch-hunt and don't want to be "the last Jew looking for transportation out of Germany." Maybe more than any time since the Civil War, there are more good reasons to leave the United States than there are to stay. These are terrifying times and most of the terrorist forces are internal. The possibility of Orwell's 1984 becoming a reality have never been more likely. Vancouver is being overrun by immigrants from the United States and housing prices are reflecting the cash those immigrants are moving from this country to Canada.
The problem with Americans immigrating outward is that most of the countries we'd consider immigrating to don't want us. Our limited educations have limited our options. We only speak pidgin English with a variety of accents, only a few of which are intelligible to folks outside of our regional neighborhoods. Rarely does a US citizen offer the receiving country the advantage of competency in the local language. Many of us are not particularly talented, technically, socially, or politically. Our education system has short-circuited our natural abilities to learn complicated disciplines and techniques, which suggests to the immigrating country that we may be a liability on their carefully designed economic systems. So, those countries design restrictive immigration policies that require huge non-interest-bearing bonds (the most desirable European destinations ask for nearly a million dollars in non-interest-bearing bonds), long periods of unemployment designed to prove self-sufficiency, and have installed a huge variety of minor violations that will result in instant deportation (and loss of those security bonds)..
The simple fact is, even for the best of our best, as immigrants United States citizens are not particularly welcome anywhere outside of our own boarders. An even more discouraging fact is that most nations would rather suffer Islamic fundamentalist immigrants with no skills of any sort, no interest in fitting into the local culture, and a tendency toward violence at the hint of any perceived slight toward their native superstitions.
On the other hand, our government is particularly interested in maintaining low labor costs. You can jabber about cynical humanitarian reasons for maintaining high immigration rates until you are almost liberal, but we all know our government represents our ruling class. That group of anti-patriots doesn't want to pay a living wage for the services they fancy. Have you noticed how many wannabe high government officials have lost their jobs when someone found that they had hired undocumented house-help? This isn't a trend, it's the way of our world. Actually, it's their world; the rest of us just rent a space in an unwanted corner.
The cool thing, for the low-brow ruling crud, about wanton immigration is that they don't have to pay for . . . anything. They can de-fund education, because there is no shortage of desperate mid-tech refugees from totalitarian third world nations who will self-educate themselves, to the point necessary to fill the shrinking technical requirements of US jobs. Instead of paying a living wage to current citizens, the management class can pay a subsistence wage to a desperate immigrant. Better yet, they can pay a fraction of a living wave to an illegal immigrant under threat of deportation if the employee complains.
I want be perfectly clear about this. It is not rational to consider illegal immigrants as criminals. In a moral society, it is irrational to criminalize an effort to improve your life, to attempt to ensure a better life for your children, to leave a corrupt political system to immigrate to a more democratic place. We can only call this “illegal immigration” because it violates our laws, not because it violates natural law. The most damning thing we can say to the immigrant is, "Sorry, you'll have to go back home, fill out the correct paperwork , meet the requirements of this country for immigration, and please try again. Thanks for taking an interest in the United States. Have a nice trip back to where you came from."
The real criminals, the only immigration criminals, are the United States citizens who hire these immigrants in a blatant, intentional, and treasonous effort to violate the laws of this country. This specially protected group of traitors and terrorists can wipe out any services the government provides to anyone but them. They'll convince the uneducated masses that these basic services are "welfare" and convince the drooling middle class that anyone accepting welfare from the state (even if that "welfare" was actually an insurance program paid for by that same group of people) is un-American. Soon, the only job left for the government will be to suppress populist political movements, to invade foreign countries to obtain natural resources for corporations and their executives, and to manage the distribution of national wealth and resources to the ruling class. Which, if you honestly analyze the former Soviet Union or the current communist Chinese state, is exactly the practical result of communism. This class of criminals are our ruling elites; best represented by the current President and his pack of inbred hillbillies.
For the rest of us, the question of immigration should be very simple. Immigration drives down wages, reduces the opportunities for our children, overpopulates our cities and nation, strains the capacity of social systems, damages democracy by diluting the acumen of the electorate, and increases the power of the elite.
While monkey-boy Bush chatters about "jobs that Americans won't do," it's pretty obvious that he won't work for a pittance. Our elitist spoiled rich kid President seems to think that his government income barely pays for part-time employment, based on the dozens of extended vacations he takes every year. The number of jobs that Americans won't do is rapidly on the rise, because jobs that used to be middle class occupations are quickly being shipped to China and India or handed over to third world immigrants at minimum pay or less. We "won't do" those jobs because they don't pay a living wage. Americans seem to be doing multiple jobs a lot more often these days.
Even more obvious, Cheney, the hand that turns the hurdy-gurdy crank for incurious George's dance, won't even work for the hundreds of thousands in salary and perks the Vice President receives. Cheney still has his fingers and wallet stuck in Halliburton and other corporate and political income sources. He practically laughed at the suggestion that part of volunteering for public service meant that you have to stop draining the public cash register until your stint of "service" was finished. Cheney has always had and eaten his cake, from years of employment in corrupt political regimes from Nixon to the Bush family. If he didn't have to work for only a few hundred thousand in 1972, why should he suffer now?
The rest of us do the suffering for him. Under the guise of keeping waves "reasonable," Cheney and Bush and the Republican part drag wages below the poverty line and suppress both the economy and our political system. Hard times are a conservative's wet dream. When people are scratching for survival and worrying about hanging on to their marginal jobs, they don't worry about fine points like justice, racial equality, the social net, public education, or their children's future.
When times are bad enough, humans commonly bash in the heads of their youngest children to conserve resources for adults and older, more independent and productive children. Conservatives seem to put a real premium on the ability to rampantly use capital punishment as long as the criminals are poor people. Maybe that's the conservative ideal. Actions always speak louder than words.
January 2006
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