Just one comment, America's new form of slavery.
au1929 wrote:Just one comment, America's new form of slavery.
I'm not aware that millions of 19th century Africans voluntarily immigrated to the Southern US to participate in the old form of slavery. To the contrary, many Southern slaves risked their lives to escape through underground railroads. On the other hand, I'm very aware of several million immigrants, legal and illegal, who are immigrating to the US every decade, often risking their lives in the process. According to you, they are doing this to participate in America's new form of slavery. Something about your comparison doesn't seem to work.
Foxfyre wrote:That's what will happen here too Walter when they finally get a handle on this and make sure that everybody in the USA is here legally. Wages should also be tied to what is necessary to get the work done. If people won't gut chickens for $8 and hour, you simply have to pay them enough that they feel it's worth it and can afford some kind of quality of life when they do it.
If that means the rest of us have to pay $5 instead of $4 for a fryer at the grocery store, so be it. We'll easily save the other $1 in taxes that go to pay for all the illegals now.
I agree with this 100%. It's also why I am a fan of at least some protectionism over complete Free Trade.
Cycloptichorn
Thomas wrote:au1929 wrote:Just one comment, America's new form of slavery.
I'm not aware that millions of 19th century Africans voluntarily immigrated to the Southern US to participate in the old form of slavery. To the contrary, many Southern slaves risked their lives to escape through underground railroads. On the other hand, I'm very aware of several million immigrants, legal and illegal, who are immigrating to the US every decade, often risking their lives in the process. According to you, they are doing this to participate in America's new form of slavery. Something about your comparison doesn't seem to work.
I did not compare it to the slavery of the past. I said new type of slavery. Economic slavery stemming from the abundance of illegal aliens who will work for whatever they are offered.
au1929 wrote: I did not compare it to the slavery of the past. I said new type of slavery. Economic slavery stemming from the abundance of illegal aliens who will work for whatever they are offered.
Well, you must think there is
some similarity to past slavery, or else it wouldn't make sense for you to call them both by the same noun. What is that similarity?
au1929 wrote:Thomas wrote:au1929 wrote:Just one comment, America's new form of slavery.
I'm not aware that millions of 19th century Africans voluntarily immigrated to the Southern US to participate in the old form of slavery. To the contrary, many Southern slaves risked their lives to escape through underground railroads. On the other hand, I'm very aware of several million immigrants, legal and illegal, who are immigrating to the US every decade, often risking their lives in the process. According to you, they are doing this to participate in America's new form of slavery. Something about your comparison doesn't seem to work.
I did not compare it to the slavery of the past. I said new type of slavery. Economic slavery stemming from the abundance of illegal aliens who will work for whatever they are offered.
If they woudn't come here they woudn't have to work for cheap. No one forces them to work.
Cycloptichorn wrote:I agree with this 100%. It's also why I am a fan of at least some protectionism over complete Free Trade.
You're a fan of pushing foreign workers deeper into misery so that American workers (and a small elite among the foreign workers) can have wage raises? Is that a fair way of putting it?
Thomas
Main Entry: slav·ery
Function: noun
Pronunciation: 'slA-v(&-)re
1 : DRUDGERY , TOIL
2 : submission to a dominating influence
3 a : the state of a person who is a chattel of another b : the practice of slaveholding
Thomas wrote:Cycloptichorn wrote:I agree with this 100%. It's also why I am a fan of at least some protectionism over complete Free Trade.
You're a fan of pushing foreign workers deeper into misery so that American workers (and a small elite among the foreign workers) can have wage raises? Is that a fair way of putting it?
Depends on your definition of 'fair.' Sort of like the definition of 'free trade'; it means whatever the proponents want it to mean.
It isn't our responsibility to support foreign workers, not in the slightest. So I'm not too concerned about their wages. They are more than able to change things in their country so that they have a productive economy that doesn't rely on the US.
I try to only buy products made in America, and if that isn't possible, I look to Mexico and Canada. I probably pay 10-15% more on average, but I've found the quality is much higher.
In fact, I'm a big fan of Tariffs as well. But I know that conversation will get all hot and bothered with ya, Thomas.
Cycloptichorn
Cycloptichorn wrote:It isn't our responsibility to support foreign workers, not in the slightest.
Assuming this is true, then why is it your responsibility to support domestic workers? You are discriminating between two sets of total strangers based on their passports. How is that better than discriminating based on race, or religion, or gender, or any of these other obsolete categories that bigots have been basing discrimination on in the past?
Trying to institute a "fair" wage for anybody is unrealistic. In any economy, there will always be the rich and the poor. There is no solution by government control to provide for a "living" wage in any type of economy. Attempts by governments to establish minimum wage to increase income for the very poor will never bring it up to a level where it can be considered a living wage. Poverty in this world is a fact of life.
America has benefitted so much from immigration and the hard work and dedication to the preservation of freedom brought to us by immigrants from all over the world, that it is rather amazing to see this debate continue.
None of this is new, of course. More than a century ago the "Know Nothing" parties said the same things about the hordes of 'ignorant, uneducated, uneducatable people streaming into our ports from Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Norway, Russia, Ukraine, and many other places. It was said then that they brought an alien taste for authority (Germans); an unAmerican bit of Catholic Popery (Irish, Polish, & Italian) and worse (Russian Jews). It was claimed that these people were but uneducable peasants who could not add to American life. Decades later, similar things were said about Asians; the Chinese, Japanese, and later, Koreans and Vietnamese who came here.
All of these forecasts were wrong. Immigrants did work hard, and often for less than settled workers. However they stimulated a growth in economic activity that more than compensated for this, and added new elements of competition and a taste for freedom that benefitted all. Interesting the children and grandchildren of these ignorant pesants oddly seem to dominate the admissions of our best universities. What is most interesting for me is that this story has been the same for all of these groups of immigrants, and - if you will take the trouble to look seriously - it is being repeated today by those who come here from Central America.
georgeob, I agree. That's the reason I still agree with the motto on the Statue of Liberty, although some say it's only a poem.
The Russians brought us Thistle (Tumble weed) freakin' communists tried to bury us.
George means take it as you get it--you are not doing so bad.
dys, You didn't have to pick the dry south to live. LOL
Thomas wrote:Cycloptichorn wrote:It isn't our responsibility to support foreign workers, not in the slightest.
Assuming this is true, then why is it your responsibility to support domestic workers? You are discriminating between two sets of total strangers based on their passports. How is that better than discriminating based on race, or religion, or gender, or any of these other obsolete categories that bigots have been basing discrimination on in the past?
Isn't it obvious?
I need other American workers to continue paying into the system on which I rely in order to live.
People in China stop paying their taxes, it doesn't affect the quality of my life near as much. People in India starving b/c they can't get jobs, not my problem.
People in my town doing those things = problem for me.
It's a matter of practicality, not morality. I don't think Ameirca is better or worse than other countries, inherently; but we don't live in a Global Society, where we are all citizens and part of a unified economic system; therefore there is a benefit to supporting the hometown boys over the foreign ones.
Sorry, but I don't buy Free Trade. Not in the slightest.
Cycloptichorn
I would if everybody else did but seeing as they don't I'm not interested either.
There isn't much we can do about the poverty in other countries; we have enough of that kind of problem at home. That's not discrimination; it's the reality of this world. Many in developed countries are having difficulty with "making a living wage." Trying to equate the problems of other countries with our own is not only unrealistic but impossoble to impact.
From recent readings, it seems Putin is contraining democracy in Russia. Not much we can do to help the Russians; that's a problem for the Russians.
georgeob1 wrote:America has benefitted so much from immigration and the hard work and dedication to the preservation of freedom brought to us by immigrants from all over the world, that it is rather amazing to see this debate continue.
None of this is new, of course. More than a century ago the "Know Nothing" parties said the same things about the hordes of 'ignorant, uneducated, uneducatable people streaming into our ports from Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Norway, Russia, Ukraine, and many other places. It was said then that they brought an alien taste for authority (Germans); an unAmerican bit of Catholic Popery (Irish, Polish, & Italian) and worse (Russian Jews). It was claimed that these people were but uneducable peasants who could not add to American life. Decades later, similar things were said about Asians; the Chinese, Japanese, and later, Koreans and Vietnamese who came here.
All of these forecasts were wrong. Immigrants did work hard, and often for less than settled workers. However they stimulated a growth in economic activity that more than compensated for this, and added new elements of competition and a taste for freedom that benefitted all. Interesting the children and grandchildren of these ignorant pesants oddly seem to dominate the admissions of our best universities. What is most interesting for me is that this story has been the same for all of these groups of immigrants, and - if you will take the trouble to look seriously - it is being repeated today by those who come here from Central America.
The difference in the illegals we are dealing with now and the immigrants who came through Ellis Island is that those legal immigrants came here to be Americans and they were willing to do just about anything to accomplish that. They obeyed the laws, put up with the quarantine period, struggled to learn the language as quickly as they could, endured the prejudice along with intolerable working conditions, and studied for their citizenship exams. They did not expect to transplant their old country or culture in this one and, while many retained their old country ethnicity, they nevertheless blended it seamilessly into the whole uniquely American culture. And they expected nothing from their new country that they did not earn. Such people anybody would be proud to share a country with.
I haven't seen any on the anti-illegal-immigrant side express any objectons whatsoever to legal immigrants from anywhere. Most, if not all of us would favor making it easier for immigrants to come here legally and most also favor temporary work programs allowing employers to bring in work crews as needed.
This debate is not anti immigrant in any shape, form, or fashion. It is a debate on how best to deal with law enforcement re those who thumb their noses at our laws and come univited and without permission.
Quote:"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom."--John Locke
