Secure The Borders

The GOP has spent quite a bit of rhetoric on securing the borders. Now their emphasis seems to be on the illegal immigrants crossing for jobs. Given that a border is the edge of a nation there is some reason to think it being an actual edge ought to mean something, even if it is just a line on a map. There are some issues with borders that aren't disputed, the biggest one being some form of smuggling, whatever that is including terrorism.

The job stealing aspect is another thing entirely and the most obvious consequence of porous borders. Well, thinking a border won't be porous is pretty damn optimistic and if the most obvious thing is jobs then why aren't you addressing jobs and employment? Let's be clear, legal hiring and illegal hiring are two completely different things.

Even if an illegal hire has proper taxes with-held they have essentially no recourse with an employer. Thanks to their legal status they cannot afford to stick their heads up and they're easily replaced by another. The consequence is low wages and a second class work force. Because business is profit driven a further result is lower wages in surrounding employment. In virtually every business endeavor labor cost is the one variable, material costs of whatever sort are pretty even as well as regulatory costs. The outcome of legal hiring is that prices on some products will rise, the real question is just how much. The crux is that labor costs are a much smaller piece of the cost of an item than most people realize and the real costs of illegal hiring aren't too easily quantified and some are not measurable by dollars.

The aspect that isn't dollar oriented but that has huge consequences is the creation of a second class group of residents. Try real hard to comprehend the soul crushing mind bending results of having your life in a place depend on never attracting the notice of the government. Throw in the disdain or even hate of large portions of the legal residents and tell me this is an outcome this nation can afford. And... the driving factor is cheap labor.

The point where correction can be made is at the root, not the border but at the employer. Employers do not care because the costs of infractions are so low. It is easy enough to claim Americans will not do the work, which is entire nonsense, what they will not do is that work for that wage. No, businesses cannot survive when there is a large wage differential amongst competitors. If the farm next to yours, or across a state line, has significantly lower labor costs; your goose is cooked because you do not have the margin to cover it. You cannot address this by "securing the borders."

This issue is entirely separate from the reality dealing with people who have been in this country for quite some time in large numbers. The only possible way to make any form of amnesty work, whatever the qualifiers, is to lock down employment into legal compliance. It will absolutely not work without that just as St Ronnie's amnesty didn't. It is simply an invitation to enter until the problem is once again unmanagable. You will not be able to do a thing about the greedy cheating employers unless they understand that they will be caught and the costs will be unsupportable and that the playing field is even, that 'my' legal hires will not be undercut by 'your' cheating.

This matter cannot be left to States to sort out, they will not do it well and the results will be entirely uneven. This matter cannot be left to simmer much longer, the American public already is getting unreasonable in its temperment and willingness to scapegoat. It is time to stop with the idea of a Berlin Wall around this nation and do something real. If the employment issue is fixed the qualifiers for staying will be met or unemployment will be the result.

I do not have the time or energy to start trying to set out what qualifiers need to be, other than that we have a moral and ethical responsibility to do something right by those who've tried to do the right things without that work visa.

Border Security Whack-a-mole Continues

So a $600M bi-partisan bill passes to increase law enforcement on the Mexican border and... I suppose that there is a criminal element that is violent and uses that border to create wealth for themselves who really ought to be discouraged. Primarily that involves drugs and that isn't really what drives the illegal immigration furor.

People crossing the border in search of jobs is what it is really about. People are pretty smart about things like fences, they figure out ways to get around that. If the number of illegal aliens in this country is something like 20M, you can be real sure that drugs and other criminal activities isn't what needs addressed. The job picture is what needs addressed. Enforcement of the pissant employment laws is virtually non-existent, employers know that the chance of getting caught out is tiny and the fines small enough to cover with their illegal hire profits.

SS numbers really should be fairly easy to track, verify, and catch contradictions. Dead people and 80 year olds don't work construction. People seldom live in two places simultaneously, that might not be a disqualifier but it should hang a flag. Employment is the magnet and employers are the problem. Lacking real dis-incentives to do so, many will put profits ahead of the law and the well-being of the nation. This country cannot afford to have an illegal serf class socially and workers cannot afford to have labor devalued by cheating.

If I were to try to discourage employers I'd hang a first violation fine of Davis-Bacon wage for a year for each illegal employee, second time fine and jail, third time fine, jail, confiscation of the offending business. That would include an out for having verified the number/employee and notification of denied prospective employees and a corrective method for false negatives. I won't address the idea of guest worker programs, the impacts and methodology are beyond my knowledge level and time at this point.

Now you can judge for yourselves whether the GOP has any real interest in something that would address the problem or they're simply interested in pumping race and the interests of wealth. The one variable all businesses can most easily address in profit pursuit is labor, most other costs are very nearly equal for all. Labor is the smallest single cost in most enterprises that involve a product, but it is the most easily modified in this environment.

There are all kinds of other issues involved in some kind of comprehensive immigration reform that I have neither the time nor interest in dealing with. Issues like amnesty begin to vanish if the magnet itself is addressed and what to do with long term illegal residents really ought to be reasonably dealt with in a humane manner. St Ronnie's amnesty failed badly because no other issues were dealt with - a mistake we ought not repeat.

Hating On Arizona's Immigration Law

The failure of Arizona's law isn't that it is some expansion of police powers, its failure is that it focuses down onto the backs of the least rather than up at those with the most. Where it succeeds is in promoting heated debate about the issue. The bad aspects of the law are pretty clear - racial profiling and de facto "papers please" for a class of citizens or legally present people.

Lost in the uproar about the bad effects is the ongoing flood of illegal immigrants and what it is doing to our nation economically and socially to have an illegal serf class. I don't care squat about May 5th nor do I give a damn about accents, I do care that this drives racism under cover of a real issue. I do care that the plutocrats skate free while the poor are targeted and it becomes a national theme to do it.

Those here illegally are going to have to either be folded into our legal system or removed and the flow stopped. St Ronnie did the first and in the process encouraged the second. The debate today has not spit to do with stopping the flow, anyone determined will get past whatever "border defense" system the right can think of. It is the determination that must be addressed and seriously addressed. The very fact that something as vital as the Social Security system cannot detect and flag fraudulent usage is inexcusable.

The fact that around 60% of those polled support such a law should be a huge warning flag to the ... (impolite words unwritten) ... Congress that it is well past time. Go ahead and hold your breath over this political football.

Arizona - Always Look Down

The new Arizona immigration law features as policy the rhetoric of the aristocracy and plutocracy. Never, ever look anywhere but down the social scale for the source of problems. It must be the fault of the poor and disrespected that Arizona has an illegal immigration problem - they talk wrong and do dirty jobs. It certainly shouldn't be a newsflash that this country has a problem with illegal immigration and for my readers also not one that I am a foe of illegal immigration because I do not like what it does to the job market and I strongly disapprove of the creation of an illegal serf class.

People immigrate to this country for a couple reasons, economic improvement, escaping repression (except maybe AZ), family. The biggest driver of illegal immigration is financial improvement and that comes with having a .... wait for it ... job. That job is not provided by the socially down scale individuals, nope not even a little bit. Those jobs start with the middle class small business owner and move up to the stratosphere of monster companies. A hell of a lot of people have made a hell of a lot of money off the backs of the despised illegals and those folks are the ones being ignored.

The farmer will, with some justification, state that he cannot compete without access to cheap labor. That is true, but only when the competition is also using access to cheap labor. He will protest that he can't hire people to do the work, and that is certainly true at what passes for field wages. Maybe you feel sympathy for the American farmer ... do you have a bit more of a problem with the companies that support true wealth like, oh say, former OR Senator Gordon Smith who could afford to pay $100K for a couple golf clubs while employing illegally at his pea plant?

This problem was not created down the social ladder it was created by the masters of the social ladder. It is not in their benefit to have attention paid to their union busting, wage depression, ecological devastation, or their disregard for the safety of labor, it is in their interest to create a scapegoat for their destructive behavior - especially a brown skinned scapegoat.

By the way, Arizona my family has been here for a really long time, some since New York was New Amsterdam and some since the Revolution and plenty on the winning side of the Civil War. There's an issue, in the winter I get somewhere in the area of sorta pale but once the sun is out I am ... dark and dress in ... work clothes ... and my grey eyes are behind shades. Thinking I'm Hispanic in descent would be understandable (if totally erroneous) and I don't carry "papers" other than my OR license. Stopping me for something other than a legal violation would bring a rather serious reaction. I do not propose to be interfered with by anyone short of my having done something meriting interference - like a legal violation and suspicion of my nativity won't do. Now if you're one of those red-headed pale illegal Irish you probably won't have a problem with those Arizona coppers.

It is a time tried strategy for the ruling class to create strife and discord amongst those being oppressed. Why act surprised?

Vitter's Whores?

You might be amused by UAW Shreveport Local Rep Morgan Johnson's
comment about Sen Vitter that

"He'd rather pay a prostitute than pay auto workers."

but there is all kinds of truth floating around in that statement. You need to take a look at his record on various topics to see exactly how true it is.

Try to keep a few real basic things in mind about economics, labor is a commodity like any other when it is not organized and ordinary commodity market outcomes happen. Illegal immigration happens almost entirely due to one factor, better paying jobs. It doesn't happen because English is such a wonderful language or because the US has universal health care or because we have such a great reputation for treatment of minorities, it happens because of money. Vitter is one of the proponents of fences, yes fences to keep those illegals out and - if you haven't noticed - to keep them illegal. A damn fence does nothing to address the problem other than make it somewhat inconvenient, so the flow will continue. That continuing flow feeds the flooding of the labor market so that the commodity labor like any other commodity becomes less valuable. Simply put wages decline.

Now the converse is true of organized labor. Unions raise wages, not only in the sector they have contracts but also in any nearby or related sectors. There is a reason for the concentration of foreign makers in Southern right to work states, there is a reason a right to work state like Idaho exports so many contractors across the Oregon border, contractors going broke in Idaho. There is a reason plutocrats and by extension Republicans detest unions and it ain't ideological, it's all about who gets how big a portion of the pie. There is in reality a limit to the size of the pie. At a point the plutocrats don't get incredibly wealthy if they pay labor much because there is a limit to what the consumer will pay for a particular item.

I liked Morgan's comment but it doesn't go nearly far enough, we are his whores - any of us who work with our hands for a living. The dirty skanky whores are the illegals, bottom of the barrel easily dismissed and derogated and truly subject to police action if they get uppity. A bit more difficult are the ordinary whores, the unorganized labor, not so easily denigrated and not nearly as subject to policing, the simplest method is to replace them with the skanks and by association drive down their appeal. The high class hookers are a real problem, they have connections and an exclusivity so targeting them is a matter of opportunity, such as when their owners are having problems and would like some help.

You find something unhappy in the comparison of labor to prostitutes? Why? The most common rationalization for falling incomes and failing prospects is that laborers made unfortunate life choices, they could all have gone to colleges and been billionaires if only they'd chosen properly. Just like those hookers, bad choices made and the derogation of society for doing something unattractive. You like that less? Labor sells its body for a dime, these jobs eat the physique for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and some of them eat the mind. Enough years of construction will destroy joints and beat the cardiac system to pieces, line work does most of that and further grinds with mindlessness and repetition. Then add in that what is done is not respectable, the hands get dirty and calloused rather than paper cuts and it isn't carpal tunnel syndrome it's blown knees and shoulders and backs. There is no on paper product that generates money on the back of other paper generated money, there is some distastefully concrete item. Bend over son, you're getting screwed.

Vitter is a whoremonger and tool of the pimps and his incidental connection to the DC Madame is only instructive, not definitive because you can replace his unfortunate self with Corker or McConnell or any other of Southern Republican Senators with Labor in their cross hairs. McCain was crucified by that bunch for proposing to do something counter to the plutocratic interest with illegal immigrants. You have some idea it was low class rednecks? It was the plutocratic power structure that sank him using its tools of racism and class fear. Certainly, they played the losing end of the bargain against illegal immigrants, they've done it for years with the same tools. They and everyone with two live brain cells that talk to each other knows that to do something meaningful to curb illegal immigration the job magnet has to be removed - but that involves the other end of the scale, employers, people with actual money who support the Republican corruption machine.

No this isn't the corruption of selling a Senate seat, this is the basic corruption of the fabric of American life and values. It is the permanent creation of an illegal disenfranchised serf class. It is the absolute devaluation of labor, the creation of the perception of a monkey class of knuckle draggers unworthy of real compensation and a chance at a stable life. It is part and parcel of the fiction of trickle down economics or more sinisterly mislabeled supply side economics. It is a deliberate return to the Robber Baron Era, the very best model for it. If it means the destruction of the economy for the foreseeable future it is worth it to break unions and let the plutocrats pick up the broken pieces at fire sale prices. Who exactly do you think will own the broken factories and foreclosed houses? People with money? Well, of course people with money and who exactly will that be? Certainly not Toyota line workers whose pay will go into the toilet the second there is no union to keep away from the doors.

Does Vitter have enough brainpower to figure out whose tune he's playing on the whorehouse piano? If you've listened to him it is very doubtful you believe it and I certainly don't. He's the nickle's worth whore monger playing for the real Madame. Most of these dolts are just dancing at the ends of the money strings of their Madames, they're almost pimps, wanna be's jerking around without a real cut of the graft and profits thinking they're somebodies because they can fool people into voting for something they don't even believe. Oh yeah, when wishes are fishes we'll all be billionaires and they'll be an honest bunch. When wishes are fishes.

Maria Jimenez Dies For Profit

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.

Paris France

Anybody like what they see in Paris? This is what happens when you create a serf class - they get tired of it and they certainly don't feel like a part of the nation. I don't blame them, either. Too bad the innocents will get to suffer from their rage and the crackdown that's coming.