The Sacramento Bee reports that Maria Jimenez was until May 16th just another 17 year old undocumented farm worker. That is until she died of heat working for Merced Farm Labor pruning grape vines for West Coast Grape Farming. Gov Ahnuld showed for her funeral. Water and shade were the problems, probably compounded by being 2 months pregnant.
Cheap labor is provided by people with no legal right to employment. People with no right to employment and in the country illegally don't have a lot of avenues to pursue with complaints about working conditions. So, there you are; they'll work cheap in bad conditions and not complain. Sounds like a real winner if profit is your god, doesn't it? Oh, that's right, they'll do the work Americans won't. They also won't interfere in the system by voting and stuff like that. Damn good deal for the plutocrats, real rough on the serfs - what do you call right less workers? It also is kind of rough on legal labor, drags wages down something fierce and reduces employment opportunities.
The creation of a serf class in this country is an abomination and a return to the age of the Robber Barons. Democrats and Republicans are equally guilty of this for different and equally short sighted reasons. I oppose it. Maria is one of the reasons I oppose it. You enablers killed this girl, face it, this is what you advocate tolerance of. I keep trying to tell you that there are real serious problems with your tolerance of illegal labor and you keep pooh-poohing. I keep trying to tell you that you harm everyone involved in labor for the benefit of plutocracy and you call me names. That's fine, you go there and tell Maria's family all the benefits of a disenfranchised serf class.
7 comments:
Well said, Chuck. Only a few years ago children were cut off of ADC, in the summer [ Aid to Dependent Children] in the state of Oregon. This was done to force children to go to work for the farmers. Same conditions as you describe about Maria. So for 3 months the children of poor people were indentured to work at appalling low wages. No sweat shops..only sweat fields. Today the serfs are Illegal Aliens. Why do dimmos have a hard time saying the word " Illegal"? FDR's New Deal vanished along time ago in my state of Oregon. Arnold showing up for the funeral is as asinine as Super K going to fallen soldiers funerals in Oregon.
Good grief. Thanks for blogging this. What an outrage.
Great post. The real fun begins as the economy gets worse and unemployment increases. The people who have been repeatedly told by their hypocritical leaders that all of this country's problems can be traced to foreigners will decide that picking grapes for 2.50/hr isn't such a bad gig after all, only they can't get it because some foreigner "took" it.
Since history loves to repeat herself we know they won't go after the people who employ the foreigners.
jsg, that's what bugs me. After several thousand years of getting screwed over exactly the same way, you'd think they would have figured out who's doing the dirty and who's getting done.
Nope, they always head for their fellow-sufferers instead of the people inflicting the suffering.
Very sad, probably more common than generally known. Crimes by employers and by others generally aren't going to be reported by people afraid of deportation. Throwing the book at 10 employers would have a greater affect on illegal immigration, salaries, and worker rights than arresting 10,000 laborers. La Migra is busting the wrong folks.
I've said repeatedly that it is the employers that tick me off. The sad part of it is that the solution is probably two pronged, employer and employee. It won't happen that way under the plutocrat enabler BushCo.
I read where the Immigration cops are not going to go after the employers in Iowa, just the employee, even after Social security had sent many letters with 500 names of bogus SS numbers.
It wasn't that the employers had no knowledge just uneven policing by this administration.
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