Great American Boycott -aka- day without Illegals.

[kyle]

I tried to go to McDonald's yesterday for lunch and was turned away from going inside. The manager said that they did not have enough employees show up for work today so they could only support the drive-thru being open. I was curious so I asked the manager if the employees that didn't show up called in sick or scheduled vacations or if they just didn't show up. He said that they just didn't show up! I then asked him what was going to happen to these employees and he told me nothing...there was nothing that they could do to them!

I was just curious what you guys thought about this and anything else you might have heard that happened yesterday. I was shocked to hear the manager say that there was nothing that he could do. It's written on the first page of my handbook "If you are absent from work and you do not call in you will be terminated." All the other jobs I've ever had have had something similar to that. I just hadn't seen anything posted about the Day Without Illegals so I was curious.

PS. Rick, you should take your raquetball raquet and hit Caleb on the knee with it!

[Thanin]

Yes that was the day a decent amount of immigrants didn't go to work or school. It was their attempt to show america how it needs them and how they want a fair law supporting immigration reform.

Personally I love it. This whole issue is magnifying the rift between the very racist republicans (or the PC term 'Nativists') and the supposedly less racist republicans who want the equivalent of slave labor here in america. Moreover, it shows hispanics how a large amount of republicans don't want them here because of their brown skin. This is great because hispanics are the fastest growing minority group in america and will/are a major factor at the voting booths.

[Jeff]

Where I live about 98% of the population is Hispanic. I am the minority. Not a big deal for me since I’ve always been the white Indian anyway. But it is a big deal for Maddie. For example, she was called the n-word last week in school, and I had to help her appreciate all the levels of irony to that.

About 33% of the Hispanics in south Texas are here illegally, from the girlfriend of the assistant chair of my department to the guy who does our lawn. If these people and their supporters, probably 50-75% of the population, had not shown up for work, our fair city would have been crippled. But there were no marches here and no outages of any kind. Why?

I think the reason is that this close to the border there are so many without work who are willing to work for next to nothing. Reynosa, our sister city in Mexico, housed a little over 100,000 souls before NAFTA, now it houses 1,000,000. Mostly the newcomers live in cardboard houses. Their dream is that someday they will work for a regular paycheck. They want to know how much they will make each month, so that they can know their children will be able to eat. My heart goes out to them, everyday. I have students who live in the shelter here in McAllen. They think of themselves as living the American Dream. The immigrants and their supporters who felt confident enough to strike have already achieved much of what the good folks here in south Texas want.

On the other hand, I do believe strongly that illegal immigration is bad for almost everyone. For example, we have border patrol agents who get shot and sometimes killed just for doing their job. Part of the problem lies in our current caps for Mexican immigration. Right now we let in about 200,000 legal immigrants per year. And this is more than we allow from any other country. But it is nowhere near enough.

This is the reality: America is being repopulated by Native Americans. Americans are going to have to get used to it. We can either open the legal door or it will be beaten down.

Kyle’s question is more limited. If the absent workers were engaged in political activity, then I think it would be wrong to fire them. In fact, since he had to go through the drive through I think they made their point rather effectively. Also, it would be the worst kind of PR disaster if all the businesses that employ illegal immigrants were to suddenly fire them. So, the other part of the solution is to find a way to naturalize the illegals that are here now.

What will never work in a million years is tightening border security. The border cannot be made secure. Give up that idea America, please! 10 foot walls are met with 11 foot ladders. People will always be able to be bribed. Etc… We might be able to slow down immigration a little, but it will never be to the trickle that the pundits fantasize about. I live here and I can tell you that the future of America is brown. America has to start getting used to it.


PS According to this source the population of Reynosa is 1.2 million: www.medc.org/reynosa_community.aspx

According to wikipedia its population in 2003 was only 450,000: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynosa Now that's growth! (And they are coming for jobs.)

[Tyler]

Whenever this comes up in conversation I always use Dave's argument. Argure vehemently for the Republican point of view, and then, at the end when you've got everyone agreeing with you, tell them you're talking about deporting all the white people. The arguments work the same, and you can't really argue for the deportation of the current immigrants without arguing for the deportation of the earlier ones. I think I'll switch to the perspective of racoons next and argue that you guys should move back across the landbridge.

[Thanin]

tyler said:

I think I'll switch to the perspective of racoons next and argue that you guys should move back across the landbridge.

This of course relates to my ultimate point that humans should no longer exist, so I whole-heartedly agree with this argument. But on a shorter sighted note, I think it is time for this particular native to re-cross that land bridge. america started out as a failure and has no ability to ever improve, so keep polishing the brass on the titanic all you want peeps, cause I might just be outtie.

[Tyler]

What's the most attractive foreign country for each of you? I've always been partial to amsterdam, what with the cheeses and whoring and all.

[chris]

Anything that makes poor people stand up and not let their rights be sacrificed on the altar of macrocapitalism ("but if they go on strike, then the economy will be hurt -- boo hoo!") is all right in my book.

My feelings aren't quite so clear on illegal immigration in general. There are rational (not necessarily good, but rational) reasons for immigration quotas, and flouting those laws isn't exactly behavior that I think should be encouraged. On the other hand, I'm all about "Give me your tired, your poor..." in abundance. In principle, I think America is big and strong enough to absorb whatever influx of people "yearning to breathe free" comes our way.

And let's be clear and correct: it was the Day Without Immigrants, not Day Without Illegals (despite what Lou Dobbs may have wanted to say). The Greeks who closed down their cafe down the street from us for the day in solidarity are quite legal, I can assure you.

"Today, of course, was the `Day Without Immigrants' ... Or as the Native Americans call it, the good old days.
---Jay Leno

Maddie got called the n-word?? *rolling up sleeves* Whose pre-pubescent ass do we gotta go kick?

[kyle]

Well, to be accurate, didn't start out being a day without Latinos?
Then it changed to a day without immigrants, then it got changed to the Great American Boycott of 2006.

Do you think that they switched it from a day without immigrants to the boycott of '06 because legal immigrants got pissed? Just something to think about...

PS. I listen to Rick Roberts in the morning and he's the one I've heard saying the day without illegals...Lou Dobbs just likes to here himself talk...

[kyle]

This is a pretty racist sight here too, pay close attention to those racist Mexican pigs...Articles 11, 16, 32, and 33. How dare they put their citizens above foreign citizens...racist scumbags

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Mexico

You see David, as much as you want to though out the race card, yet again, it seems pretty clear to me that Mexico has no problem trying to enforce laws that protect itself. Does that mean that all Mexicans are racists?

Also, how can you call it slave labor? Didn't these people make the personal choice to break the law to find work here. There goes that pesky personal choice again. All the history books that I read said something about African-American slaves being FORCED to work and being paid NOTHING. Yes they to had a choice, work or be punished or killed but I think we all can agree that those are some pretty shitty choices.

[kyle]

Here are a couple of quick facts off of Rick Roberts' website. Even you say that this is only half true, these are still good reasons to fix this problem:


Not everyone breaking into America is coming here to pick lettuce and fulfill the American dream.
Here are some facts you should know:

40% of all workers in L.A. County (L.A. County has 10 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This was because they are predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card.

95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.

75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.

Over 2/3’s of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal whose births were paid for by taxpayers.

Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.

Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.

The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.

Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.
21 radio stations in L.A. are Spanish speaking.

Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops but 29% are on welfare.

29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens.
Just thought you should know.

[Jeff]

Hey Kyle,

You’ve posted three times here and have gotten no response. Here’s one: The basic reason that no one is responding is that no one knows what to do about the immigration problem. I certainly don’t. But I do have a handful of observations that I think are worth mentioning.

Before I get to them, I wanted to point out that even if all those alleged facts from your last missive are true, there is still plenty of room to debate about what they mean and how we should react to them. We both agree (don’t we?) that most of the illegal immigration is by poor people looking for some way to live. If so, then your list looks almost totally banal, since poverty is associated with all the things on your list. Poor people tend to work for cash more than the middle class or the wealthy. Poverty is associated with violent crime. The poor tend to have more unwanted pregnancies. And on and on. So the question remains: How should we react to the poor from another nation that are flooding the US? But that’s just where we started this debate.

Here are my observations. Again there are no solutions of any kind here:

1. There is nothing intrinsically different between an illegal alien or me or you. If we were in their shoes we would do the same things to feed our families. All human debasement is adaptation to some external or internal force. Since there are no significant internal differences among races or economic classes—the denial being bigotry of some type—it follows that the pressures detectable in aggregated numbers, such as those you posted, are external. That is, we may blame a man for some of his own debasement, but when statistics single out a group so clearly, the blame lies elsewhere. It is external. So, far from lending any credence to a sort of righteous indignation toward illegals, your statistics point out the prejudice inherent in that kind of response.

2. Poor starving people should command your moral attention, whatever their nationality. The closer they are to you the worse it is if you do nothing to help them.

3. The Mexican border cannot be made secure. This is a first-hand observation. Come down and see it for yourself. I’ll put you up for as long as you want to stay. Really.

4. Illegal immigration is a bad thing. People die in the desert. Border patrol officers get shot. It encourages criminality. Etc…

5. The movement of people from the interior of Mexico into the US is escalating. One of the major culprits is free trade. NAFTA encouraged the building of thousands of maquilidoras along the border, which concentrated large segments of very poor Mexicans. Many of them left families and known forms of life behind when they moved north. Again, the numbers are striking: Reynosa had an estimated population of 450,000 in 2003; now it’s 1.2 million. But business is moving on because labor has gotten more expensive in Mexico. So far Reynosa has not lost any maquilidoras, but they are not being built at the rate they were in the 1990s. This has created a huge surplus of labor, which has driven down wages. Most people don’t like to work for cash, but there is little real choice when you are competing with a million souls for comparatively few jobs. So there is considerable pressure for both legals and illegals to earn money however they can here or flee deeper into the US interior. As the population continues to surge around the border, such pressure will only increase.

Americans are not alone in lamenting the exportation of jobs overseas. I would say the Mexicans share our pain, but it is closer to the truth to say that they bear it.

6. American taxpayers are not wholly to blame for the current sad state of affairs. Sure we buy the cheapest goods we can, but American business creates such choices by exploiting labor in the developing world. Since they have reaped the profits, they should have to pay for at least part of this catastrophe along the Mexican border.

As always I am flabbergasted that anyone who shops at The Gap or at Walmart—gasp!—would vote Republican when their economic interests are so obviously at odds with the party’s platform. Unrestrained trade is bad for everyone except the people at the very top of the economic food-chain. Free trade is a powerful force, but it must always be ethical and fair. The alternative is suffering and ultimately violence.

I have little sympathy for a business environment that supports exploiting labor and taxpayers at every opportunity. Business interests are frequently at odds with both groups. Three quick examples that just leap to mind: The Katrina no-bid contracts, the outlandish fraud in the Iraq Debacle, and the immigration mess we are now discussing.

I don’t advocate class warfare, but I don’t see why not at this point.

Jeff

[Thanin]

I didn't respond because I only just saw this today.

kyle said:

This is a pretty racist sight here too, pay close attention to those racist Mexican pigs...Articles 11, 16, 32, and 33. How dare they put their citizens above foreign citizens...racist scumbags

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Mexico

You see David, as much as you want to though out the race card, yet again, it seems pretty clear to me that Mexico has no problem trying to enforce laws that protect itself. Does that mean that all Mexicans are racists?

Also, how can you call it slave labor? Didn't these people make the personal choice to break the law to find work here. There goes that pesky personal choice again. All the history books that I read said something about African-American slaves being FORCED to work and being paid NOTHING. Yes they to had a choice, work or be punished or killed but I think we all can agree that those are some pretty shitty choices.

First, I said it was the equivalent to slave labor. There's a difference.

Secondly, yes, I would say most mexicans are racists. You see, there are large amounts of mexicans who are direct descendants of the spanish and the spanish were just as evil as any other euro-trash that came over here. So I have no sympathy for those of pure spanish blood, though I hear that the intermixing of Central American blood is more confusing than it is up here. But if they claim ancestry to spain, then fuck them.

Thirdly, american laws banning people from crossing some imaginary line are just blatantly hypocritical, therefore breaking a law that’s bullshit and has no leg to stand on amounts to a non-issue.

So, with you being a white republican, I can see why you'd think and say the things you do, but you're still wrong.

[Thanin]

Oh and one other thing. Kyle you don't address most of the points in my original post.. but then again that's probably because you can't since they're true.

[Tyler]

I know very little about economics. I've never had an economics class or met an economist as far as I know. So, and I'm begging here, somebody set me straight if I'm wrong here.
Isn't an economy just people providing goods and or services for each other? If we have a large enough group of poor people, can't they create their own little incestuous economy? Couldn't some grow crops while others build homes while others hunt while others fish while others sew while others loom, etc? I understand that they're lacking land, but isn't there a shitload of unused land? Can't the poorest of the world, at least instead of starving, go back to the old ways?
Couldn't someone with a modest quantity of land and money provide the essential tools and land that they would need?

[jtmx1]

“Can't the poorest of the world, at least instead of starving, go back to the old ways?”

Depending on where you live subsistence farming takes between ¼ to 10 acres per person ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_farming ). A family of four may require up to 40 acres just for themselves. There is just not enough arable land on earth for everyone to do this.

There are 7.68 billion arable acres ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arable_land ), or 11% of the land in the world. (The rest is divided up like this: 6% permafrost, 10% too wet, 22% too dry, 23% chemically inappropriate, 28% soil too shallow.) As you might expect people still live in areas with little or no arable land. And the world’s population is 6.5 billion ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population ). If we just divided up the arable land evenly among the world’s population, everyone could have only 1.18 acres of it.

Besides, going back would mean abandoning 89% of the available land in the world and concentrating all the world population in arable regions.

This could never happen. First, guess what class of people is generally forced to live in unarable regions…that’s right, the poor. So, the borders of countries with lots of arable land would have to be thrown open for these folks. And you know what: that’s part of what is going on in northern Mexico now, and we’ve seen the American reaction so far. Further, the people who own the arable land now are not going to just give up their land. Thus we have reason #146732 that the poor stay poor.

But even if we set all these problems aside, subsistence farming is fraught with peril. Famine is a huge concern for subsistence farmers, who have to cope with lots of factors that lead to it like drought and insects. Further, crops must be rotated and sometimes fields must lie fallow…Subsistence farming means uncertainty, risk, and inefficiency.

We are past the point where we could be subsistence farmers. And even if we weren’t, it is not an attractive life for most people since it is labor intensive and its yields are so uncertain. Finally, the poor are the people least capable of initiating the conditions that would allow them to be subsistence farmers again. That would have to be the product of efforts from government and land owners.

PS Nice link: www.fao.org/documents/show_cdr.asp?url_file=/docrep/U8480E/U8480E0e.htm

[Jeff]

"If we have a large enough group of poor people, can't they create their own little incestuous economy?"

I don’t know much about economics either, Tyler, since I’ve only had one class in the subject. But here is some info that I think I know. If anyone on the board knows better, then correct me, please.

The basic economic problem is that although wants are virtually limitless, resources (labor, capital and natural resources) available to produce goods and services are limited. The basis of economics is scarcity. Economics considers mechanisms for dealing with scarcity.

We call the poor, “poor,” because they do not have (m)any resources to trade, despite the fact that they have a full set of human needs, for things like food, shelter, clothing, companionship, meaning, etc… So, they are reduced to trading their labor for the goods and services they need to survive. If there is no market for their labor and they can find no other resources to trade, then they are just out of luck. In such situations, trading immoral activity for food becomes very attractive.

You ask whether little economies could be created. If we are starting with basic deficiencies (food, shelter, and water) then the answer is negative. If you and I both have no food and the people who do have it (or access to it) won’t trade with us, then we can trade our labor with each other all day and not create a single stick of Slim Jim thereby. On the other hand, the poor can pool their labor in all kinds of ways to make their living conditions better if the necessities are secured.

Most, though not all, economists distinguish between wants and needs. The ones who don’t tend to be supply-siders. In any case, at the point a community can fulfill its basic needs, lots of economic doors open up, many new forms of life. I think we should distinguish between the poor who can fulfill their needs and those who cannot, perhaps Allen’s miserable and the horrible distinction would serve.

[Tyler]

shit.



Yep, that's all I have left.

[chris]

A thought crossed my mind. What would be the cost and effort required for the government (at state or federal level) to guarantee daily access to hot meals (or cold, if they like cereal...)for every resident of the United States? I'm sure both the cost and effort would be substantial, if not prohibitive, and I know there are already government food programs (free cheese!) about which I am woefully ignorant, but the thought crossed my mind.

[jtmx1]

What a great question, Chris. I have no idea, but I'll look. In the meantime, this site helps someone every day, and one barely has to lift a finger: www.thehungersite.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CTDSites

[jtmx1]

Here are some preliminary data:

www.worldwatch.org

In 2004, Worldwatch estimated that it would cost just $12 billion for reproductive health care for all women, $19 billion for the elimination of hunger and malnutrition, $10 billion for clean drinking water for all, and $13 billion to immunize every child in the world from common major diseases.


This doesn't exactly answer you question, as these figures seem to include only those who could not provide for themselves. A guaranteed program would feed anyone who stopped by, right?