ebrown_p wrote:Finn,
You are missing the point.
There are two sides to illegal immigration. There are the illegal people themselves-- who in general are poor families who weren't born with the privileges you were born with. On the other side are wealthy companies profiting from exploiting the misfortune of others and well-off Americans who want the cheapest of everything.
Conservatives... when they see the wealthy exploiting and mistreating the vulnerable-- seem to think that attacking the vulnerable is a solution to the problem.
This is nothing less than perverse.
There are two separate issues on the immigration debate... there is the question of whether more workers are needed, and many people disagree with this.
But for God's sake... if Americans and American companies are going to be benefiting from the hard work of people in the fields... it is sick to not be willing to pay for it.
The penny a pound raise for these workers is important... and it is enforceable. It is easy to account for (in fact the industry mandates wages to the point that it will fine farmers who pay any more than the going rate). So saying that it won't get to the workers is simply incorrect (as workers and their advocates know what they are being paid).
You want it both ways.... you obviously want low prices... and will even whine about one penny.
You will coddle the Americans for hiring people desperate enough to work in these conditions. How many executives in these industries face any jail time (compared to their employees who are jailed, separated from their families, deported with long bars from reentering the country).
The system is designed to make sure there are workers who are kept vulnerable.
You keep attacking the immigrants... the companies know they will always be able to bring more in-- and as long as people like you insist that their workers have no rights, these bastards (with your support) will keep making obscene profits exploiting them.
I haven't missed your point. I've responded to it.
Your new point that I am attacking anyone (other than perhaps you) is absurd, as is another of your new points that I am coddling the exploiters of illegal alien workers. Please try and read all that I write before you fire off a salvo, or cherry pick a phrase you feel you can handle.
Let me try one last time to make my points clear to you:
Employers should not be allowed to exploit any workers, and certainly not imprison and beat them. All the laws we need to prohibit these practices are in place. I am all for enforcing them. However there is no law, nor should there be that require Burger King to pay an extra penny a pound than the market price for tomatoes.
The workers most severely abused (and your link documents very very few) are, undoubtedly, illegal aliens. The vile miscreants who have abused them, did so because they were illegal and thus vulnerable. The answer you arrive at it to wave a wand and make illegals legal so they are not vulnerable. The answer I have arrived at is that we should not allow illegal aliens to enter or remain in our country. Either way the problem of abuse is solved. Your way, however leads to a lot more problems for America. My way leads to other problems for the illegals---not as bad as the abuse, but problems none the less. Since these problems all tie to the problem that they cannot ILLEGALLY remain in the US, I am not persuaded to reconsider. I am reconciled to, and to some extent OK with, the fact that some portion of my hard earned (irrespective of your Liberal assumptions, it is hard earned) riches will be redirected to the less "fortunate." (If I believed that my money went only to the truly less fortunate, rather than the less willing to work hard, I would be content with my current contribution and willing to consider even more)
HOWEVER...I am only OK with it to the extent it supports my fellow US citizens, not people who break the laws of my country and try to claim some sanctimonious right to my largess.
I sympathize with their plights but we cannot feed all the world's hungry, nor can we employ all the world's unemployed. Oh wait, I suppose we could...for a little while at least, and then we would find ourselves begging for some other nation's alms.
I do want low prices, and so do you --- don't try and convince anyone that you have no care for managing your own wealth. I do not want low prices at any cost and your suggestion that I do is not only calumny, but willfully ignorant of what I have written. I fully understand that if we sent every illegal alien back home tomorrow, the cost of many of the products I consume will rise. I'm OK with this not only on principle but because I prefer having the choice to buy or not buy expensive products versus spending even more of my hard earned money through taxes that offer me no choice.
So much else to refute; so little time.
You glibly assume that I have had more privledges than illegal immigrants. You know nothing about my life and in the true sense of a bigot assume that because I do not agree with your sentiments, I must be some privaledged WASP in an ivory tower. I readily admit that I have had one powerful advantage over the illegals---I was born an American. This is not, however, an advantage that overwhelms my rationality. Everyone cannot become an American on their personal say-so without thoroughly diminishing what it means to be American.
Your definition of conservatives is at best specious, and at worst hysterically intolerant
Finally (yesn there is an end), your insistence that this ridiculous notion of a penny more per pound will flow to the abused workers is not only demonstrative of ignorance, but it is highly ironic.
In true Liberal fashion, you, apparently, would put into place a branch of the government to see, through enforcement, that the extra penny goes to the poor illegals. (Fair to say this is the way that might have any chance of working). And so you would not only make me pay more for my Whopper, you will take more of my money in taxes.
The irony is that you are a lion about enforcing a law we don't have, and a lamb about enforcing those we do have.
You seem to be a big hearted fellow ebrown, but you and your confreres need to stop trying to make me and mine pay for your generosity.
Render yourself a pauper to help these poor souls and then I will seriously consider your demands. Until then stop trying to salve your hyper-sensitive concious with my hard earned money.
