The border war...

[snuffbox 0]

Pink Floyd cds for every Mexican wouldn't be nearly expensive enough to satisfy the Tancredo crowd.

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

Czech just had a momentary lapse of reason

Don't meddle in my joke.

[Ginger Snaps 0]

and how are they supposed to instantly tell the difference between a normal illegal and a dastardly drug trafficker? The bad guys don't all wear black hats, nor do they all start fire fights.

 

I would imagine if the border agent sees a Mexican moving, you know, product.....that'd be a tip off.

 

I don't get what your problem here is. No one is saying that this is a majority of the illegals. But you're the other extreme, you act as if this thing isn't happening at all when it is.

 

Saying that you can't always tell the bad guys apart from everyone else is hardly acting as if the problem doesn't exist. The point is that if you say it's okay for the border guards to shoot people as long as they're drug traffickers, then they'll start blasting everyone and just say they were drug traffickers or at the least innocent people will accidentally be killed.

 

You're really not understanding me. Lots of people come across the border every day. Some of them get turned back, some don't even though border agents see them come over.

 

I was specific earlier, though. I said "product". If a border agent catches someone moving drugs across the border, if it's a situation where they know for a fact that the Mexican is a drug trafficker because the drugs are actually in front of their faces, and then shooting breaks out, I don't think a border agent should go to jail for shooting someone if he's actually putting his life on the line to stop the flow of drugs coming into the country. Come on. It's a big separate issue over whether we should look the other way when ordinary Mexicans cross the border but you're saying we should turn a blind eye in situations where we actually find out drugs are going across.

[Art Sandusky 0]

Perhaps your beefs should be with the people who continue to provide ready employment (despite it being, y'know, illegal) rather than those who are taking advantage of an opportunity. Turn the guns on the business owners instead of border crossers and the stream of people over the border dries to a trickle.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

See, that is a good, logical solution. If you cut off the jobs, welfare, and other resources to illegals, they'll leave on their own. It's not like you have round them all up to get them to leave.

[EricMM 0]

Yes, but they won't *actually* go against the employers, in any meaningful way.

 

Ever.

[Art Sandusky 0]

Something that gets lost in all this debate about "furriners takin' ar jerbs" and "have pity for the working man" is how all this endangers our economy's long-term health. Wouldn't that be incentive enough, or is any business-related legislation obsessed with immediate gains?

[Art Sandusky 0]

Double post.

[NoCalMike 0]

Yes, but they won't *actually* go against the employers, in any meaningful way.

 

Ever.

 

Well yes, that is the bigger problem. Right now we have ass-backwards policy that wants to punish the individual for crossing the border to seek work(and that is a joke as well too). What we should be doing is taking away the incentive for illegals to come over here. 90% of them just want to work, it's understandable, but at the same time, if they get here and there is no work for them, they aren't going to just keep coming, because they mine as well stay jobless in their own country. Oh and what Invader said about the destruction of the middle class was pretty spot on if you ask me.

 

I use this guy's work a lot...

 

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0705-23.htm

 

Reclaiming the Issues: "It's an Illegal Employer Problem"

by Thom Hartmann

 

Every time the media - or a Democrat - uses the phrase "Illegal Immigration" they are promoting one of Karl Rove's most potent Republican Party frames.

 

The reality is that we don't have an "Illegal Immigration" problem in America. We have an "Illegal Employer" problem.

 

Yet it's almost never mentioned in the mainstream media, because to point it out could slightly reduce the profits and CEO salaries of many of America's largest multi-state and multinational corporations - who both own the media and contribute heavily to conservative politicians. Republicans would prefer that the "criminals" covered in the press are working people, and that corporate and CEO criminals not get discussed.

 

As the Busby/Bilray contest showed, "illegal immigration" is a red-hot issue for American voters. The Democrat Busby was way ahead until she committed a faux pas before a group of Latinos, leading to (false) media reports (particularly on right-wing talk radio) that she was encouraging illegal immigrants to vote for her in the upcoming election. Her Republican opponent seized on this and hammered the district with ads for the last few days of the campaign (while voting machines curiously went home at night with some of the poll workers), and now a Republican lobbyist has taken the seat of a Republican congressman convicted of illegal deals with Republican lobbyists.

 

Encouraging a rapid increase in the workforce by encouraging companies to hire non-citizens is one of the three most potent tools conservatives since Ronald Reagan have used to convert the American middle class into the American working poor. (The other two are destroying the governmental protections that keep labor unions viable, and ending tariffs while promoting trade deals like NAFTA/WTO/GATT that export manufacturing jobs.)

 

As David Ricardo pointed out with his "Iron Law of Labor" (published in his 1814 treatise "On Labor") when labor markets are tight, wages go up. When labor markets are awash in workers willing to work at the bottom of the pay scale, unskilled and semi-skilled wages overall will decrease to what Ricardo referred to as "subsistence" levels.

 

Two years later, in 1816, Ricardo pointed out in his "On Profits" that when the cost of labor goes down, the result usually isn't a decrease in product prices, but, instead, an increase in corporate and CEO profits. (This is because the marketplace sets prices, but the cost of labor helps set profits. For example, when Nike began manufacturing shoes in Third World countries with labor costs below US labor costs, it didn't lead to $15 Nikes - their price held, and even increased, because the market would bear it. Instead, that reduction in labor costs led to Nike CEO Phil Knight becoming a multi-billionaire.)

 

Republicans understand this very, very well, although they never talk about it. Democrats seem not to have read Ricardo, although the average American gets it at a gut level.

 

Thus, Americans are concerned that a "flood of illegal immigrants" coming primarily across our southern border is, to paraphrase Lou Dobbs, "wiping out the American middle class." And there is considerable truth to it, as part of the three-part campaign mentioned earlier.

 

But Dobbs and his fellow Republicans say the solution is to "secure our border" with a fence like that used by East Germany, but that stretches a distance about the same as that from Washington, DC to Chicago. It'll be a multi-billion-dollar boon to Halliburton and Bechtel, who will undoubtedly get the construction and maintenance contracts, but it won't stop illegal immigration. (Instead, people will legally come in on tourist and other visas, and not leave when their visas expire.)

 

The fact is that we had an open border with Mexico for several centuries, and "illegal immigration" was never a serious problem. Before Reagan's presidency, an estimated million or so people a year came into the US from Mexico - and the same number, more or less, left the US for Mexico at the end of the agricultural harvest season. Very few stayed, because there weren't jobs for them.

 

Non-citizens didn't have access to the non-agricultural US job market, in large part because of the power of US labor unions (before Reagan 25% of the workforce was unionized; today the private workforce is about 7% unionized), and because companies were unwilling to risk having non-tax-deductible labor expenses on their books by hiring undocumented workers without valid Social Security numbers.

 

But Reagan put an end to that. His 1986 amnesty program, combined with his aggressive war on organized labor (begun in 1981), in effect told both employers and non-citizens that there would be few penalties and many rewards to increasing the US labor pool (and thus driving down wages) with undocumented immigrants. A million people a year continued to come across our southern border, but they stopped returning to Latin America every fall because instead of seasonal work they were able to find permanent jobs.

 

The magnet drawing them? Illegal Employers.

 

Yet in the American media, Illegal Employers are almost never mentioned.

 

Lou Dobbs, the most visible media champion of this issue, always starts his discussion of the issue with a basic syllogism - 1. Our border is porous. 2. People are coming across our porous border and diluting our labor markets, driving down US wages. 3. Therefore we must make the border less porous.

 

Lou's syllogism, however, ignores the real problem, the magnet drawing people to risk life and limb to illegally enter this country - Illegal Employers. Our borders have always been porous (and even with a "fence" will still allow through "tourists" by the millions), but we've never had a problem like this before.

 

And it's not just because poverty has increased in Mexico - today, about half of Mexico lives on less than $2 a day, but 50 years ago half of Mexico also lived on the equivalent of $2 today. Our trade and agricultural policies are harmful to Mexican farmers (and must be changed!), but we were nearly as predatory fifty years ago (remember the rubber and fruit companies, particularly in Central America?).

 

Yet fifty years ago we didn't have an "illegal immigration" problem, because back then we didn't have a conservative "Illegal Employer" problem.

 

As the Washington Post noted in an article by Hsu and Lydersen on June 19, 2006:

 

"Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.

"In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies. In 2004, it issued fine notices to three."

 

The hiring crimes of Illegal Employers are being ignored by the law, and rewarded by the economic systems of the nation.

 

Proof that this simple reality is ignored in our media (much to the delight of Republicans) is everywhere you look. For example, check out a series of national polls on illegal immigration done over the past year at www.pollingreport.com/immigration.htm. A typical poll question is like this one from an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted in June, 2006:

 

"When it comes to the immigration bill, the Senate and the House of Representatives disagree with one another about what should be done on the issue of illegal immigration.

"Many in the House of Representatives favor strengthening security at the borders, including building a seven-hundred-mile fence along the border with Mexico to help keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States, and they favor deporting immigrants who are already in the United States illegally.

 

"Many in the Senate favor strengthening security at the borders, including building a three-hundred-and-seventy-mile fence along the border with Mexico to help keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States, and they favor a guest worker program to allow illegal immigrants who have jobs and who have been here for more than two years to remain in the United States.

 

"Which of these approaches would you prefer?"

 

The question: "Or would you prefer companies that employ undocumented workers be severely fined or put out of business?" wasn't even asked. The word "employer" appears nowhere in any of the questions in that poll. Nor is it in the CBS News immigration poll. Or in the Associated Press immigration poll. Or in the Fox News immigration poll.

 

Only the CNN poll asked the question: "Would you favor increasing penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants?" Two-thirds of Americans, of all party affiliations, said, "Yes," but it went virtually unreported in mainstream media coverage.

 

"Illegal Immigration" is really about "Illegal Employers." As long as Democrats argue it on the basis of "illegal immigration" they'll lose, even when they're right. Instead, they need to be talking about "Illegal Employers."

 

Politically, it's not a civil rights issue, it's a jobs issue, as working Americans keep telling pollsters over and over again.

 

"Mass deportations" and "Fences" are hysterics and false choices. Start penalizing "Illegal Employers" and non-citizens without a Social Security number will leave the country on their own. And they won't have to confront death trying to cross the desert back into Mexico - Mexican citizens can simply walk back into Mexico across the border at any legal border crossing (as about a million did every year for over a century).

 

Tax law requires that an employer must verify the Social Security number of their employees in order to document, and thus deduct, the expense of their labor. This is a simple task, and some companies, like AMC Theatres, are already doing it.

 

For example, Cameron Barr wrote in The Washington Post on April 30, 2006, that: "At one area multiplex owned by AMC, the Rio 18 in Gaithersburg, 11 employees 'decided to resign' this month after they could not rectify discrepancies that arose during the screening, said Melanie Bell, a spokeswoman for AMC Entertainment Inc., which is based in Kansas City, Mo. She said such screening is a routine procedure that the company conducts across the United States."

 

Not wanting to be an Illegal Employer, the Post noted that AMC "has long submitted lists of its employees' Social Security numbers to the Social Security Administration for review. If discrepancies arise, she [company spokeswoman Bell] said in an e-mailed response to questions, 'we require the worker to provide their original Social Security card within 3 days or to immediately contact the local SSA office.' She said the process is part of payroll tax verification and occurs after hiring."

 

Easy, simple, cheap, painless. No fence required. No mass deportations necessary. No need for Homeland Security to get involved. When jobs are not available, most undocumented workers will simply leave the country (as they always did before), or begin the normal process to obtain citizenship that millions (including my own sister-in-law - this hits many of us close to home) go through each year.

 

Republicans, however, are not going to allow a discussion of "Illegal Employers." Instead, they will continue to hammer the issue of "Illegal Immigrants," and tie that political albatross around the necks of Democrats (who seem all too willing to accept it).

 

Bob Casey, for example, was beating the pants off Rick Santorum in the Pennsylvania senatorial campaign, until Santorum began running an ad that says:

 

"Bobby Casey announced his support of a Senate bill that grants amnesty to illegal immigrants, shocking hardworking taxpayers all across Pennsylvania. Now Casey's trying to wiggle out of it by saying the bill doesn't offer amnesty and requires illegal immigrants to pay their back taxes. Either Casey didn't read the bill, or he's trying to deceive you. The Washington Times reports the legislation gives amnesty to 11 million who are here illegally, and paves the way for 66 million more immigrants to enter the country. The bill also forgives two of the last five years of back taxes for illegal immigrants, something the IRS would never do for you. This Casey-supported bill even gives illegal aliens Social Security benefits for the time they were here illegally. Fortunately, Rick Santorum voted against the bill, and Rick's leading the fight to make sure it never becomes law. Now you know the advantage of having in our corner a fighter like Rick Santorum."

Casey is still ahead, but the ad is visibly eroding his support. As George Will pointed out in a June 18, 2006 op-ed titled "Calculating Immigration Politics":

 

"Many Republicans, looking for any silver lining in an abundance of dark clouds, think the immigration issue might be a silver bullet that will slay their current vulnerability. The issue is, as political people say, a 'two-fer.' Opposition to the Senate bill, and support for the House bill, puts Republican candidates where much of the country and most of their party's base currently is -- approximately: 'Fix the border; then maybe we can talk about other things.' And opposition to the Senate bill distances them from a president who, although rebounding recently, has approval ratings below 40 percent in 29 states."

Now even Bush is talking like the Republicans in the House of Representatives - time to "get tough" and give Halliburton a few hundred billion to build a fence.

 

But still nobody is talking about the real problem here - the Illegal Employers.

 

Hopefully one day soon a dialogue like this fictitious one may ensue on, for example, Face The Nation:

 

[bob Schieffer] Senator, do you really think the solution to the illegal immigration problem in America is to offer amnesty instead of building a fence?

 

[senator Stabenow] Bob, I think you've been drinking some of Karl Rove's Kool-Aid. Illegal immigrants aren't the cause of undocumented workers driving down wages in this country. It's caused by Illegal Employers. We need to do something about these corporate criminals.

 

[bob Schieffer (baffled)] Illegal employers? But what about the illegal aliens?

 

[senator Stabenow] Bob, the aliens wouldn't be here if they didn't think they could get a job. Of course, we need to clean up US agricultural subsidies and trade policies that are causing human suffering in our neighboring countries, but to truly protect the pay standards of workers here in the United States we need to crack down on the Illegal Employers. They're the magnets that are drawing people in from all over the world, many of whom come in as tourists and then overstay because they get illegal jobs. And these Illegal Employers are breaking the law - both immigration laws and IRS laws. I suggest that we need to tighten up these laws against Illegal Employers, adding huge fines for first offenses, jail time for CEOs for second offenses, and the corporate death penalty - dissolve their charters to operate - for repeat offenders.

 

[bob Schieffer (stammering)] The, the, er, did you say "corporate death penalty"? You mean against companies?

 

[senator Stabenow] Better companies die than human beings. These Illegal Employers, in their quest for ever-cheaper labor, are drawing people to cross our borders in ways that cause many people to die in the deserts of the southwest. These people were executed, for all practical purposes, by the policies of a few greedy and lawbreaking American companies. When companies are repeat offenders, they should be dissolved, their assets sold to reimburse their shareholders, and let other, more ethical companies pick up the slack. We used to do this all the time in America when companies behaved badly. Up until the 1880s, an average of around 2000 companies a year got the corporate death sentence in the US.

 

[bob Schieffer (bug-eyed)] But what about the illegal immigration problem?

 

[senator Stabenow (patting Schieffer's hand)] It's okay, Bob. You shouldn't listen so much to those Republicans. There isn't really much of an illegal immigration problem - it's an Illegal Employer problem. When we clear up the Illegal Employer problem in this country, we'll be back like we were before Reagan started allowing employers to behave illegally. When non-citizens can't get a job, most of them will go home, as they always have in the past. We don't need a fence, we don't need amnesty, we don't need mass roundups or deportations, and we for sure don't need guest workers. We have as many unemployed citizens in this nation as there are illegal immigrants - in my state of Michigan, for example, Flint and Detroit have massive unemployment since Reagan and his corporate cronies declared war on working people. When we get rid of Illegal Employers, that's one step in helping the job market tighten up so that legal employers will have to pay a living wage to attract legal citizens to work. That and rational labor and trade policies, and we can begin to restore our middle class and put our cities back together.

 

[bob Schieffer (nodding)] It makes sense, Senator. An "Illegal Employer problem." Who would have thought of that?

 

[senator Stabenow (smiling)] Well, Bob, the Republicans thought about it, back in the 1980s. But they thought it was a good idea. Which is why we have this mess today. Get rid of the Illegal Employers - toss a few CEOs into jail and shut down the outlaw companies - and the rest of this part of the problem will be easy and inexpensive to fix...

 

 

------------

[Ginger Snaps 0]

Perhaps your beefs should be with the people who continue to provide ready employment (despite it being, y'know, illegal) rather than those who are taking advantage of an opportunity. Turn the guns on the business owners instead of border crossers and the stream of people over the border dries to a trickle.

 

No one's going to really do anything about that though. More than lip service. Soon as someone does something about immigration, the immigration lobbyists call them a racist, and then both parties act like scared children because they're terrified that someone will believe that and they'll lose the growing Hispanic vote.

[NoCalMike 0]

Perhaps your beefs should be with the people who continue to provide ready employment (despite it being, y'know, illegal) rather than those who are taking advantage of an opportunity. Turn the guns on the business owners instead of border crossers and the stream of people over the border dries to a trickle.

 

No one's going to really do anything about that though. More than lip service. Soon as someone does something about immigration, the immigration lobbyists call them a racist, and then both parties act like scared children because they're terrified that someone will believe that and they'll lose the growing Hispanic vote.

 

Well the article I posted is from a guy who actually is a progressive liberal, and he doesn't hate illegal immigrants, but he understands the economics behind what they cost america as far as the destruction of the middle class and are specifically used as pawns to render labor unions powerless.

 

We need people running for office that are as unafraid of being called a racist, as they now are of being called "unamerican" for not supporting the "War in Iraq"

[snuffbox 0]

Know what scares me? These Mexicans swooping down on us all Red Dawn like. I dont want to drink deer blood with Patrick Swayze.

[2GOLD 0]

Know what scares me? These Mexicans swooping down on us all Red Dawn like. I dont want to drink deer blood with Patrick Swayze.

 

Unamerican Puss. Think of all the stories C. Thomas Howell could tell you about the set of "Soul Man"!

 

Can someone explain what the deal is with North Carolina and illegals? Around here the easiest way to tell the illegals from the legal citizens seems to be a simple NC license plate. I didn't believe it at first, til I realized there were about 60 cars in the Walmart parking lot with North Carolina tags. So unless the whole state is moving to Delaware, something is weird about the license plate situation down there.

 

Anyone know what it is? Cause we've got abandoned cars with North Carolina tags, accidents with cars with NC tags where the passengers all run for it after the crash, and of course Walmart looking like the NC militia is invading. What is the deal? I don't know exactly what the laws are in NC but there seems to be a slight problem.

[Art Sandusky 0]

Perhaps your beefs should be with the people who continue to provide ready employment (despite it being, y'know, illegal) rather than those who are taking advantage of an opportunity. Turn the guns on the business owners instead of border crossers and the stream of people over the border dries to a trickle.

 

No one's going to really do anything about that though. More than lip service. Soon as someone does something about immigration, the immigration lobbyists call them a racist, and then both parties act like scared children because they're terrified that someone will believe that and they'll lose the growing Hispanic vote.

Bullshit. Hispanics who vote despise those who try and stay under the radar. There's nothing wrong with keeping the current border enforcement (and things will change with more 9/11 commission ideas being implemented) and going after the fuckers that are allowing the country to go down because it helps their small business. In the end, no one would disagree with it that matters, meaning Americans. It'll take a massive effort, but track down everyone and go through the proper forms for citizenship or a temporary arrangement, and KEEP UP WITH IT. It'll expand the tax base and all pay for itself in time and money, as well as peace of mind that that innocent looking van trying to cross over might have more destructive cargo than a bunch of poor Mexicans.

 

Who can disagree with this course of action? It empowers a group of people, and this doesn't mean you have to get rid of signs in other languages and crap. It's important in the areas you see it most because many citizens are there, not freeloaders.

[Timmy8271 0]

It'll take a massive effort, but track down everyone and go through the proper forms for citizenship or a temporary arrangement, and KEEP UP WITH IT.

 

Good Idea but it will never happen The government doesn't have the patience

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Know what scares me? These Mexicans swooping down on us all Red Dawn like. I dont want to drink deer blood with Patrick Swayze.

 

Unamerican Puss. Think of all the stories C. Thomas Howell could tell you about the set of "Soul Man"!

 

Can someone explain what the deal is with North Carolina and illegals? Around here the easiest way to tell the illegals from the legal citizens seems to be a simple NC license plate. I didn't believe it at first, til I realized there were about 60 cars in the Walmart parking lot with North Carolina tags. So unless the whole state is moving to Delaware, something is weird about the license plate situation down there.

 

Anyone know what it is? Cause we've got abandoned cars with North Carolina tags, accidents with cars with NC tags where the passengers all run for it after the crash, and of course Walmart looking like the NC militia is invading. What is the deal? I don't know exactly what the laws are in NC but there seems to be a slight problem.

 

That's something I hadn't heard about. You should send an e-mail to Lou Dobbs. I'm sure they'd do a story on it. Seriously.

 

Another idea that isn't so outrageous. Bill Mexico for the costs of the illegal immigrants. They have plenty of oil and drug money they could cough up.

[snuffbox 0]

Or Glen Beck. North Carolina is a central front in World War 3.

[NoCalMike 0]

The thing is whenever there is a poll, around 75% of americans say they want something done about illegal immigration, so that is a lot more people then the 1 million or so you see marching in Los Angeles and Arizona. Also, many of the hispanics(among other races) that came here legally are very anti-illegal. They might sympathize with why the illegals do it, but when it is put to a vote, they still would vote against it.

 

The illegal immigration problem is a political issue waiting for someone to feast on, and when someone does come up with a solution that includes going after big business, they will reap the votes from the american people. We need a politician brave enough to target the incentives for illegals. Without the incentives, there is no reason for an illegal to risk death by crossing a desert.

 

Something sickening happening too is all the illegal labor that was being used for the reconstruction of New Orleans because it was cheaper to employ them then any residents that stayed behind or tried returning to the city. It's not just small business using illegal workers. This is a big time money grabber situation for large corporations, and they are getting away with because of the business lobby's control over government. It sucks because if the Democrats, or Progressives just sucked it up and grabbed this issue by the neck, they would probably get a lot of suprising voters turn out and vote for them come 2008.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Something sickening happening too is all the illegal labor that was being used for the reconstruction of New Orleans because it was cheaper to employ them then any residents that stayed behind or tried returning to the city.

 

Do you have a source on this?

 

I was pretty sure the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws applied in that reconstruction.

[theintensifier 0]

Exactly. Our government wants the immigrants to cross and become a cheap peasant class to fuel our labor needs, and destroy the middle class. That is why our national guard and military have been made to be completely limp wristed in dealing with the foreign horde.

That's pretty much dead on.

 

and how are they supposed to instantly tell the difference between a normal illegal and a dastardly drug trafficker? The bad guys don't all wear black hats, nor do they all start fire fights.

 

foreign horde? Where not talking about the Mongols here.

Just like in Iraq. We're in a war over there, we kill a recently injured Iraqi who was responsible for a few Marines deaths earlier in the day, and the Marine who killed the Iraqi is in the brig now. Ridiculousness.

[NoCalMike 0]

Something sickening happening too is all the illegal labor that was being used for the reconstruction of New Orleans because it was cheaper to employ them then any residents that stayed behind or tried returning to the city.

 

Do you have a source on this?

 

I was pretty sure the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws applied in that reconstruction.

 

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/10/23/Worldand...ding_New_.shtml

 

Who's rebuilding New Orleans?

Locals angrily point out migrant workers, saying they're taking jobs to the exclusion of residents who can't afford to come home.

By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN, Times Staff Writer

Published October 23, 2005

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Times photo: Willie J. Allen Jr.]

Migrant workers rest outside the downtown post office in New Orleans, where they're pressure washing the mold from walls and floors.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

NEW ORLEANS - As military helicopters thumped overhead, R.J. Rouzan paced and waved his arms inside an office in City Hall.

 

National Guard troops that morning last week had blocked him from visiting his property in the Lower 9th Ward. Something to do with needing a permit. City officials didn't know what he was talking about.

 

Then, in the middle of an argument that seemed to be about red tape, Rouzan veered suddenly toward a subject that has angered many local residents.

 

"They let trucks full of illegal aliens in there and not the property owners?" Rouzan yelled at a weary-looking receptionist.

 

Immigrant workers - some in the country illegally - have been pouring into New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city.

 

While no one knows how many Hispanic workers are in New Orleans, teams of Mexican and Central American laborers drawn from around the United States appear throughout the city. Wearing white protective suits and yellow boots, they pressure wash mold-infested rooms, tear out Sheetrock, rip down soaked insulation and empty rotten shrimp from refrigerators.

 

They retire at night to downtown or outlying hotels paid for by contractors, sometimes four or more to a room, or in tents in city parks. They are some of the more visible occupants of a half-empty city.

 

In an address to business owners and contractors during a "Back to Business" forum this month at the Sheraton, Mayor Ray Nagin said he knew what group members were thinking: "How do I ensure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers?"

 

They answered with applause.

 

Rouzan wasn't there. But he feels their frustration.

 

Rouzan, a black owner of construction and trucking businesses, said his employees are scattered across several states. Without a place to stay, they can't come back to work. Watching Hispanic workers take similar jobs, Rouzan seethes.

 

"They are allowing people to come in who are getting jobs while we as homeowners who built this city, they don't let us get access to our property," Rouzan said.

 

The city has long celebrated its French, Caribbean, African and Spanish roots, a famous mix of cultures that gave birth to jazz, jambalaya and lavish Mardi Gras parades.

 

But this recent and sudden influx of immigrants seems a little too much, too fast for some who worry the laborers are taking the place of displaced working-class black residents. Those residents wonder, whose city is this going to become?

 

 

* * *

 

Hector Hernandez and his co-workers sprawled across the sidewalk one day last week, taking their 15-minute break in front of the U.S. Postal Service building across from the Superdome.

 

Their work suits and stained boots reeked of mold. Behind them a nose-burning odor seeped through the vents from the basement of the building, which they had been cleaning most of the past month. A hose pumped out the water that remained.

 

"We change boots every day," Hernandez, 44, of Honduras, said in Spanish. Inside, they wear respirators as they clear out stinking garbage and pressure wash the walls and floors, he said.

 

They get paid $8 an hour and labor 11 hours a day, six days a week. Subcontractors pulled them together for Belfor USA, an American subsidiary of a multibillion-dollar international company specializing in restoration after disasters. Before New Orleans, they had separately held construction, farm or factory jobs from Texas to North Carolina, they said.

 

Hernandez sends the money he earns back to his three children in Honduras, which he left in search of work after Hurricane Mitch pummeled the Central American country in 1998. He spent several years in Mexico before arriving in North Carolina last year.

 

The men hadn't heard about the mayor's comments. They shrugged.

 

"There's a lot of work here for everyone," Hernandez said.

 

Other workers were more indignant.

 

"It's not fair," said Jairo Lopez, 19, just after finishing a lunch of beef, rice and beans at the Kenner Supermarket y Restaurante, a Hispanic business in Kenner just west of the city. He had heard about the mayor's comments on a Spanish-language radio news station.

 

"Everyone needs to work, and it's not our fault if (local residents) don't have jobs here," Lopez said. "The people who lived here are in other states."

 

Relying on Hispanic immigrants to rebuild after major catastrophes is nothing new for the country - Hispanic workers helped reconstruct the Pentagon after Sept. 11 and Homestead after Hurricane Andrew.

 

But for New Orleans - whose racial tensions were exacerbated by Katrina - the phenomenon of Hispanic day laborer pickup sites dotting streets is entirely new. Just 3 percent of New Orleans' population, or 15,000 people, was Hispanic in 2000, according to the U.S. Census.

 

Civic and immigration experts say that number will balloon, thanks in part to twin acts by the Bush administration.

 

After Katrina, President Bush, arguing for rapid cleanup efforts, suspended portions of the Davis-Bacon Act that required construction workers be paid the prevailing regional wage. Also, the Department of Homeland Security temporarily halted punishment of employers whose workers can't provide proof of citizenship.

While most immigrants interviewed by the St. Petersburg Times said they plan to go back to where they were before Katrina when the work is over, the demand for service jobs will remain long after the construction work is done.

 

In part, that's because residents aren't coming back.

 

A poll done by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation showed that less than half of the Katrina evacuees living in Houston-area shelters plan to return.

 

 

* * *

 

Renee Langie and husband Burnell walked inside their home across the front door, which lay across the threshold like a plank.

 

In knee-high rubber boots, they climbed gingerly over the matted sofa blocking the entry way of their home in the Lower 9th Ward, the mostly black section of town that flooded twice - once after Katrina and again during Hurricane Rita.

 

The visit last week was their first time back after both. A police escort, obtained by some residents, helped them get by the National Guard checkpoint.

 

The pungent smell of mold - worse than a refrigerator full of rotting vegetables - penetrated their paper masks as they entered the three-story brick home on North Claiborne Avenue.

 

The neighborhood around their house - the house once owned by Burnell Langie's grandparents, the house where they were raising their two children, the house where they sold snow cones from the front lawn - was ghostly.

 

Shotgun houses, washed off their slabs, sat on other houses. Cars stood upright against fences. Garbage, refrigerators, random furniture littered yards and empty fields. Gray trees stooped over brown grass, both dead.

 

"Oh, my God," Renee Langie, 43, kept repeating, taking pictures of soot-covered walls and blackened keyboards, picture albums, laser printers, chairs, splintered wood, all heaped in random piles in the living room where the draining water left it.

 

"This is unreal. This is unreal. Do you see this?"

 

Her husband didn't answer. Burnell, 45, made his way up the steps. He had one thing on his mind: his grandmother's diamond Hamilton watch. He reached into the top drawer of his gun cabinet bolted to the wall in his bedroom, where the water level got chest high. There it was, untouched, still in its case. He grabbed it and breathed a sigh of relief.

 

Back outside the couple said they won't come back here permanently, though they'll keep the five pieces of property they own, four of which are in the Lower 9th Ward. They've already put their teenage children in schools in Texas and don't want to uproot them again. They can run their production business, Rhema Word Enterprises, from there.

 

They worry about other black residents who want to come back but can't and are now resettling elsewhere.

"From an African-American perspective, we had a lot of history," she said about the area.

 

Part of that could have been preserved if the federal government had obtained temporary housing fast enough to ensure work for local working-class black residents, they said. They could have jumped on the lucrative construction jobs she and her former neighbors see going to immigrants, she said.

 

"There could have been jobs right here for people to get," she said. "This is our city, we should be rebuilding it."

 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversees housing for evacuees, says it has procedures to follow. Housing priorities are set by the state and local governments, said FEMA spokesman James McIntyre.

 

Employers with existing, displaced workers from the area can get help with housing through the Louisiana Economic Development Office and FEMA, he said. But only if they are doing "infrastructure-related jobs." Contractors who bring outside workers into the area must find housing on their own, he said.

 

"People without jobs have to go through the standard housing process," McIntyre said.

 

But FEMA estimates that 100,000 families in the region need temporary housing. But only 3,105 families have been placed in travel trailers and another 70 in mobile homes, McIntyre said. The nearest trailer settlement to New Orleans is 80 miles away in Baker.

 

"We try to house people as close to the area as we can get," he said. "We are not particularly housing people seeking jobs."

 

 

* * *

 

Signs for workers crowd medians all over the city.

 

Mike Dunbar, a black business owner whose company removes Sheetrock and insulation, put up some of them.

 

But he won't hire immigrants.

 

"I'm not prejudiced," he said. He worries if Hispanic workers settle into the area, black residents won't have jobs when and if they return.

 

So far he's hired only nonimmigrant workers from Georgia and Texas because his former employees have not returned.

 

"I think some people aren't going to come back," said Dunbar, 42. "I think housing is the No. 1 problem. When we came back, we didn't have anywhere to live. That's holding a lot of them from coming back. You can work, but you need some place to stay."

 

Those who can't find a place to sleep are missing out on roofing jobs that can pay $25 an hour.

 

Dunbar houses his 12 workers in rental apartments owned by his father. He stays there, too, while his wife and children are in Alabama.

 

So far he has resisted the calls offering immigrant laborers. But if he's forced to, he'll hire them.

 

"I have to feed my family," he said.

 

Rouzan, the frustrated property owner and businessman at City Hall, said he's going to hold out for his construction employees or other American workers.

 

"I want people I can talk to and whose money is going to circulate back into the local economy," Rouzan said.

 

 

* * *

 

Mealtimes at the Kenner Supermarket y Restaurante last week were packed.

 

Diners eat plates of bistec, rice, beans and plantains. They stare blankly at telenovelas or the news in Spanish blaring from the wall television.

 

In the grocery half of the store, shoppers order beef at the deli. In the aisles, they fill baskets with tortillas, corn mix, milk or sometimes just a six pack.

 

Immigrants who stay do make a contribution to the city, said 53-year-old Obed Irula, the owner whose business has more than doubled since Katrina.

 

Irula, from Honduras, arrived in the New Orleans area to join other family members in 1998 before Hurricane Mitch hit. Since then, he's watched the city's Honduran population swell. Many bought homes.

 

"If Latinos come to work, they work hard," Irula said.

 

Carlos Banuelos, resting at a bus stop downtown last week after a day cleaning at the Hyatt, said he likes New Orleans.

 

After leaving Mexico for the United States in 1973, he picked strawberries in Plant City and worked on farms across the country. He lived in Chicago and worked construction before a company hired him at $12 an hour for demolition work at the Hyatt in New Orleans. With so many jobs available, he planned to leave the next day to get his wife in Chicago.

 

"I'm going to bring my wife here to work for a different company out of Pennsylvania," he said, before taking a stroll along the city's Riverwalk.

 

"Maybe we'll stay here and buy a house in the future."

 

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report, which used information from Times wires.

 

--------------------And this....leads to this....................

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July06/Flaherty10.htm

 

According to a powerful new report released last week by the Advancement Project, the National Immigration Law Center and The New Orleans Workers Justice Coalition, Black and Latino workers in Post-Katrina New Orleans have faced a shocking catalog of abuses, including wage theft, widespread and massive health and safety violations, racism and discrimination, law enforcement violence, and more.

 

Through first hand accounts, the report paints a detailed and dramatic picture of declining worker’s rights in the city. Despite a huge need for labor to restore the city, and billions of dollars spent on rebuilding, Black and Latino workers have been pitted against each other in a race to the bottom, while well-placed businesses and contractors have gorged on huge profits. With housing still unavailable for many, profiteering and displacement has been the rule.

 

Pre-Katrina, Latinos made up 3% of New Orleans population (although a larger percentage in New Orleans’ suburbs). Most were long-term residents, and there was very little in the way of social services and infrastructure specifically for the recent immigrant community. When thousands of immigrant workers arrived for work in the city’s reconstruction, they faced hostility and exploitation, with few allies and very little infrastructure of support. Simultaneously, African-American workers from New Orleans have faced personal loss and displacement, combined with a legacy of workplace exploitation that goes back to New Orleans' status as a center of the southern slave trade.

 

The demonizing of immigrant workers, while blatant violations of worker’s rights were ignored, set the stage for the abuse that followed. In October, Mayor Nagin asked a gathering of businessmen, “how do I ensure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers?” Later, in a mayoral debate, he added, “Illegal is illegal, so I'm not supportive of illegal aliens or illegal immigrants working in the City of New Orleans.” For the most part, the New Orleans media has followed this same framework.

 

Progressive organizers in the Black community have also expressed reservations about the new arrivals. “I’m not disputing the desirability of all oppressed peoples uniting against a common oppressor,” Mtangulizi Sanyinka, project manager of New Orleans’ African American Leadership Project tells me. “But right now this idea of Black-Brown unity is more of an idea than a reality.

 

“You have to put this into perspective,” continues Sanyinka. “Latinos are working in horrible conditions that ought to be illegal, and being exploited. At the same time, many black people resent Latinos for coming in and working under those conditions. Its like when you have a strike, and a group is brought in as strikebreakers.”

 

“Who is to blame?” Sanyinka asks, “Who is always to blame; those that control the money and power. When you see Blacks and Latinos on the street, they don’t act antagonistic. It’s not a personal antagonism. But there is an institutional antagonism.”

 

Its not just poor Black and Latino workers that have been exploited in New Orleans -- the Black middle class has also been devastated. The United Teachers of New Orleans -- UTNO, the teachers union -- was the largest union in the city, and a majority of those represented were Black workers. The School Board voted in the fall to lay off all but 61 of the 7,000 employees, and last week let the teacher’s union contract expire with little comment and no fanfare. “Elites of the city may prefer the teachers don’t come back,” Jacques Morial, community advocate and brother of former mayor Marc Morial, said at a recent forum. “Because they represent an educated class of Black New Orleans, with steady income, seniority and job protection.”

 

Rosana Cruz, Gulf Coast field coordinator for the National Immigration Law Center, is sympathetic to the apprehension from the Black community. “There are anxieties that are incredibly valid about a cultural genocide of this city,” she tells me. “This is a city that was built on racism. The organizing we’re doing is a counter to the racism dividing immigrants and African-Americans against each other.”

 

“It’s a conversation that’s so juicy,” Cruz adds, discussing the media complicity in framing the debate as Black versus Latino. “Whenever white folks get to not be the bad folks, when communities of color are pitted against each other, it spreads like wildfire. When the boss starts making people compete, its no accident. It’s not immigrant workers who started this discourse of, “we like to work harder than anyone else,” it’s the business community. Its not immigrant workers that left people on rooftops or didn’t have an evacuation plan, or left the school system to decline. It’s the elites of this city. Immigrants and people of color have been used throughout history to break unions. As long as people keep talking about Black-Brown tension, no one’s talking about the real power brokers in this city.”

 

“We have to redirect the conversation to white accountability,” Cruz adds. “What it means to be an antiracist white ally is central to this discussion. There needs to be a focus on the real stakeholders here, the real players. We’re talking about fundamental issues to our society. What are the sources of power, who is benefiting, and how can they be held accountable. It’s not just about immigrant workers. Both immigrants and African-Americans are dealing with a lot of the same issues, whether is right of return or housing or voting or law enforcement violence, all these issues have connections. Trying to bridge this artificial divide is key.”

 

On May First in New Orleans, thousands of Latino workers demonstrated for immigrants’ rights, filling several blocks of Canal Street in the heart of New Orleans’ business, hotel and tourist districts. While small compared to the hundreds of thousands who marched in cities such as Dallas and Los Angeles, the March was still one of largest the city has seen in decades. “Being part of the Latino community in New Orleans, we’ve always had issues of visibility around immigrants,” said Cruz. “Now for five thousand people to come out and do something so public and visible … it’s amazing and beautiful.”

 

Despite the media, politicians and contractors pitting workers against each other, the Mayday march demonstrated that these alliances are both possible and important. As the march flowed through the city, residents I spoke with expressed their support.

 

Jerome Smith, a Black community organizer from New Orleans’ Treme neighborhood, came to express his support for the immigrants’ rights struggle. “I heard from Houston evacuees they were excited by your walking out (of schools and jobs during the national day of action) and wanted to join but didn’t know to get involved,” he told the crowd. “I want you to know that your struggle is in the heart of my people.”

 

“Cheap labor from Blacks has been integral to this city’s history and still is,” Smith told me later. “Its woven into the fabric of this city. And now, corporations are benefiting from exploiting Latinos just like the old money of this city benefited from slavery.”

 

Out of town visitors to our city are still shocked by the miles of darkened streets, the piles of trash and the shuttered storefronts. Just over a third of the city’s 3,400 pre-Katrina restaurants have reopened, and a much smaller percentage of other businesses are back. With most businesses that have reopened concentrated in white areas such as the French Quarter, the Loyola/Tulane area, and the Garden District, historically underserved neighborhoods are even more devastated. For a rebuilding with justice, a wide and united movement is needed, now more than ever.

 

Walking along with the mayday March, I met Taz, a young African American from New Orleans who had heard about the march through friends. “This is what this city needs,” he told me, excited at the huge exuberant mass.

 

Wanting to join in, Taz asked what the marchers were chanting. When told they were chanting, “the people united won’t be defeated,” in Spanish, Taz nodded and smiled. “Yeah, that’s right, we wont be defeated.”

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

That was Oct. 23, 2005.

 

On October 26, 2005, after pressure from both Democrats and Republicans, Bush rescinded his emergency order and restored the prevailing wage requirement.

 

from wikipedia (Davis-Bacon Act entry)

 

The second article you posted raises other issues, though.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

Exactly. Our government wants the immigrants to cross and become a cheap peasant class to fuel our labor needs, and destroy the middle class. That is why our national guard and military have been made to be completely limp wristed in dealing with the foreign horde.

That's pretty much dead on.

 

and how are they supposed to instantly tell the difference between a normal illegal and a dastardly drug trafficker? The bad guys don't all wear black hats, nor do they all start fire fights.

 

foreign horde? Where not talking about the Mongols here.

Just like in Iraq. We're in a war over there, we kill a recently injured Iraqi who was responsible for a few Marines deaths earlier in the day, and the Marine who killed the Iraqi is in the brig now. Ridiculousness.

 

Preciseley. The only feasible option is to authorize military personel to shoot Mexicans and Iraqis on sight with no questions asked. That'll stop 'em.

[theintensifier 0]

Since you have an opinion on everything, instead of being an obnoxious prick, why don't you share it.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

Take the flaming to The Chocolate Socket, please. This folder is for ill-informed political opinions and pointless arguing.

[Slayer 0]

Byron is my new favorite poster

[Guest RayCo]

The plan is to turn this into a recognises civil war around 2012 which will kill off most Americans.

[Slayer 0]

a recognises civil war

That's the worst kind!

[Art Sandusky 0]

Who is this RayCo.

[Guest RayCo]

Who is this RayCo.

I know things.