After reading Fixer's thoughtful post, I started to leave a comment. Then it got way too long, so I transferred it to Word. Then I ran out of steam when my path started branching uncontrollably, so there it sits for now until I get my shit together to make something coherent out of it. Here's the first part:
[I have been sitting here for 30 minutes, outwardly calm and inwardly churning furiously, to get a grip on this subject in order to say something halfway intelligent. The more I think about it, the bigger and more complicated the problem seems, but I came up with a coupla thoughts. Kindly remember there are many books, plenty of minds (for good or ill), lotsa discussion on this, and so far no workable solution.
The illegal immigrants are the merest tip of the iceberg. It's the easiest part of the problem to solve. Seal the country off, the southern border first as by "illegals" we mean Mexicans and OTM Latinos primarily. Then, from Asians, Europeans, Africans, anybody from across any of the 7 seas, because illegals come from everywhere.
Find the ones who are here and send them home. Politely. It takes a desperate person to do what they did. Tell them to apply for legal immigration, that we will welcome them back. We need low cost labor to survive. Just f'rinstance, I eat a salad nearly every day, but I wouldn't if the guy who picked the lettuce made the average wage in this country, which is about $16/hr, because I wouldn't be able to afford it. We'd eat like Mexicans: rice and beans and maybe a scrawny-ass chicken once a week. By the way, the agriworkers make probably $8. Only the kids and women will work for minimum wage, like in fast food joints. In other occupations, the men won't work for less than $10-$12, or $100 per day.
Fine the crap out of people and firms that employ illegals. If they contracted to get illegals to break our laws and come here to work, triple the fines. I think this one's the big sticking point. It's a lot easier for the pols to dump on poor voiceless people than on their friends and contributors.
That was the easy part. Now we have to deal with the real problem: Wall Street, Capitalism, Big Corpora, Politics, and Greed. AKA the American Way.]
There's a lot more to this shit than meets the eye. It's been going on for a long time and is woven into the fabric of our society. I don't really know what to do about it, but nobody else does either. I know that whenever you have a hard choice to make, the right decision is usually the hardest one.
By the time I get the rest of the shit out of my head, you'll be able to get it from Amazon. In the meantime, I'll refer you to one of my posts on the subject from long ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment