And the beat goes on....
Posted on 07/12/2004 8:06:22 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
LIVE OAK - Peaches are in season, and Leticia Lopez has just spent six hours doubled over a bin, picking out the misfits.
Lopez came to this small town north of Yuba City about a year ago, leaving five children - ages 3 to 17 - in Michoacán so she could earn money for them here. The 34-year-old widow finds it difficult and frightening without her family and without papers.
She would prefer to be here legally, but economic realities compel her to stay.
In Mexico, Lopez made about $15 a week cleaning houses and washing clothes. Here, she makes $6.75 an hour sorting peaches. So, like countless other farm workers, Lopez hopes Congress will approve a guest-worker program that would allow immigrants to live and work in the United States legally.
"I wish there would be an opportunity for me to bring my family with me," Lopez said. "There needs to be some way for people to come into the country."
But Lopez's wishes are colliding with politics on Capitol Hill. Despite high hopes among proponents and furious maneuvering in recent days, the only immigration reform plan deemed to have a chance in Congress this year has stalled.
The measure, informally known as AgJOBS, would grant qualified agricultural workers and their families temporary legal status in the United States. Ultimately, participants could obtain permanent legal status upon completing additional farm work over the next three to six years.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
What a silly thing to say.
As they make up a small fraction of illegals & they perform a useful function, temporary work visas for agworkers is fine.
But NO families, NO path to permanent residency.
as well as their cousins, their neighbors, their friends, their....
No doubt. An illegal alien who doesn't claim to be a farm worker will be about as hard to find as an honest leftist.
There IS a way; it's called legal immigration.
Take a number, ma'am.
Damn right. A country that takes in more immigrants legally than all other major nations combined has got nothing to apologize for.
And why is she whining to US? Why doesn't she whine to Fox about not being able to make a living in Mexico?
And the beat goes on....
If there is a good reason to alter the immigration quotas to allow more legal immigrants into the U.S. who WANT to become U.S. citizens and WANT to perform work here, fine. Increase the immigration quotas.
As for special "guest worker" visas which allow non-citizens to come to the U.S. to perform work here, who are NOT interested in becoming Americans, who will send American dollars to another Country, who might compete with American citizens for other jobs, who will form a permanent underclass of disenfranchised foreigners living as a foreign colony in America - I say no deal.
Either you want to be an American or you don't. If you don't want to be an American, I don't want you here, except as a tourist spending money or a student spending money.
The entire "guest visa" program is a poor idea which will generate lots of problems for the American public while only benefitting those employers who exploit them and those countries who ship them here and a group of radicals seeking to detach the American southwest from the U.S. in order to reunite it with Mexico.
And people who break our laws by coming here illegally, regardless of motivation, should not be entitled to benefit from that law-breaking.
There is. The United States accepts more legal immigrants each year than any other country.
Coming here isn't a problem, just don't crawl under a fence, swim a river, or dig a tunnel to do so.
The more things change the more they stay the same, especially when the government is involved.
There's no shortage of American workers. Just a shortage of American workers that will do that job for $6.75 with no benefits.
I was a kid on the cotton farms of West Texas when the Bracero Program was in effect.
It worked great.
Men brought their families over from Mexico for a short time to chop the cotton or pull the cotton, then they returned to Mexico.
There was no free ride for anything. Everything the workers needed had to be provided by the employer who had requested them.
Me and my family were pulling cotton right beside the Braceros. We ate what they ate, and we lived in the community housing provided just like they did.
When the work was finished for that farmer or group of farmers, the Braceros gladly went back to Mexico.
They could live all year in Mexico on the wages made in three months of pulling cotton, while we went to California to pick fruit or New Mexico to gather potatoes because we were Americans.
The balance shifted when the liberals decided that the Bracero Program smacked of slavery, and it was disbanded.
Now it's much more attractive for the illegals to remain in the US and take advantage of the multitude of welfare programs available.
That doesn't mean that the whole idea of importing workers for a short period of time for specific duties is a bad one.
GW's plan calls for three to five years illegal residence. That's entirely too long.
His plan doesn't address the problems associated with the millions of illegals already here of which we have no accounting.
His plan doesn't stop the drain from the federal and state coffers to pay for the welfare of these illegals.
GW is a brilliant political strategist.
I just hope that in his next term he modifies his plan to meet the needs of Americans and not Mexicans.
Well said, my FRiend.
Are you interested in becoming a policy adviser in the next Bush Administration?
I'd forward a letter to the President on your behalf (for all the good that would do!), because I'm willing to bet you'd do a much better job of protecting American interests than the current crop.
I agree 100 percent.
And thanks for your story. I, too, think that would work! AGAIN.
Former apricot-picking BUMP.
Where are those workers working now?
The politicians don't even pretend to get it. The truth is, they don't give a d**n about all the havoc their inane policies wreak on the lives of those who have to live with them, day after day.
BTW, my children are half Mexican, for those poised to shoot the racist arrow.
Why, so they can start receiving welfare and education benefits?
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