[MJY1288]

Thanks for pointing that out, it's basically my point. We are not owners of the country, we just share the dream. We have made our mistakes and we try to learn from them. We're not perfect, we're just the best place to live on the planet and it's not hard for me to understand why people want to come here. But saying we will only hire Americans kinda flies in the face of our motto carved in the base of the Statue of Liberty.

Unions have created this problem and it will take many more years to recover from the days of the General Motors factory employee who spends his day repeating the unskilled task of tightening 4 drive shaft bolts on each passing vehicle on the assembly line at a rate of $35.00 an hour. The fact is, Unions have killed the manufacturing sector in this country with crippling labor rates. I've been a blue collar worker all my life and if I have seen first hand what unions have done to this country, and until we abandon their socialist platform that says to the factory owners, "Why work hard... The pay is the same?" our manufacturing industry will continue to leave this country, it's called Capitalism

[HRoarke]

Well put. I think Gephardt's demise may point to a similar fate for the union kingpins. I don't blame the members really, it's good work if you can get it.

[Fledermaus]

I could write a book on my two summers working at Whirlpool in Ft. Smith and the stuff the union workers would pull.

But they at least were better than most in that they didn't treat us summer college students as the "enemy" and were very nice to us.

[A Citizen Reporter]

"The fact is, Unions have killed the manufacturing sector in this country with crippling labor rates."

Which is the dirty little secret behind the outragous screaming on immigration. The so-called "right wingers" on immigration don't fool me one bit. This is an economic argument, and if you've been paying attention, it comes from the same stupid "economists" who carried water for Pat Buchanan four years ago.