Posted on 02/22/2005 12:02:06 PM PST by Marine Inspector
Nothing is more disgusting than hearing Americans whine about today’s America and its work force.
Drive through hundreds of counties in the country and count the number of “Americans” working in the flower, strawberry and tomato fields, nurseries, or at construction sites. Do this and wonder what the whiners are complaining about.
The President clearly stated in his recent news conference that those here illegally come to work “in jobs Americans won’t do.”
Contradicting the President are whiners who claim that: (1) There are plenty of Americans who will do the work illegals do. (2) That illegals work for a “dollar” (Pat Buchanan). And (3) that illegals deserve none of the state or federal financed benefits they pay for with their taxes because those taxes paid are “meager.”
Argument 1: If so many Americans are willing to work at jobs illegals do, where are they? People are hired daily at our strawberry, flower and tomato fields and these illegals are hired by the thousands throughout the South and Midwest to work in poultry and meat processing plants. Does any American ever apply for these jobs? In Arkansas, thousands of American born and bred poverty level Blacks refuse to apply for these jobs at Tyson Foods because they want more money. So be it. Not enough pay, the whiners whine. But if one is unemployed and his unemployment checks (gifts for doing nothing) have run out, doesn’t $6-10 an hour look good? I guess I too vividly remember jobs that paid me a dollar an hour in the 50s and 60s.
Argument 2: Whiners like Pat Buchanan complain that illegals will work for cash and underbid American workers. Naturally, Buchanan nor any of his supporters can produce any bona fide studies that confirm their view. They can produce no witness to their claims. The State of California has run many studies and it does all the time and it concludes that the average California agricultural field worker earns more than the state minimum wage and has for years. California’s minimum wage is 30 percent higher than the federal minimum wage.
Argument 3: Denying state and federal “benefits” to people who pay taxes is not only immoral, it is outright theft by family values charlatans. The “excuse” that illegals only pay “meager” taxes is nonsensical, untrue and insults many Americans who, because of their circumstance, pay the same taxes or less than illegals do. For example, who pays more in taxes, the South Central Los Angeles woman who collects welfare and aid to children and doesn’t work, or the illegally resident woman in East Los Angeles who works for her money. The welfare mother pays nothing in Social Security, income taxes and pays only sales taxes, unlike the East Los Angeles woman who pays through the nose for all taxes out of her hard earned income.
The East Los Angeles (or Chicago, or New York, or Miami) woman probably pays Social Security taxes into an account that doesn’t belong to her. She can’t ever collect Social Security benefits qualified for with those tax contributions. As she is not eligible for Section 8 rent subsidies like the South Central woman receives, the illegal alien woman pays property taxes to her city, the city’s schools and county through her rent. Those property taxes consume a far larger percentage of her income than anything the South Central welfare mother will ever encounter during her public welfare career.
Silly, uninformed words like “meager,” and “what part of illegal don’t you understand” are countered by hard work, taxes paid for unavailable benefits, Americans who refuse to work at any price, free enterprise and guts, pure sheer guts.
Contreras’ newest book—THE ILLEGAL ALIEN: A DAGGER INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA?? – is available at www.amazon.com Contact at: draoul@att.net
(Editor’s Note: The below Counterpoint was submitted in response to HispanicVista columnist Raoul Lowery Contreras’ article “Whiny Americans demean us all” appearing on the January 24, 2005 issue (http://www.hispanicvista.com/HVC/Columnist/rcontreras/012405contreras.htm). It must be pointed out that Dr. Petersen went through great pains in researching all the facts used in the Counterpoint. However, note must also be made that the references used are for the most part from sources known to be anti-immigrant individuals or groups. Some other sources such as the Time Magazine article (September 2004) claiming that 3,000,000 illegal immigrants enter the US through the Southern border have been discredited by leading experts in the field. Other sources come from anti-immigration organizations founded and either wholly or in part funded by John Tanton dubbed the Puppeteer as he has established numerous similar organizations in an effort to show a larger grass roots movement. Nonetheless, Dr. Peterson’s thoughts are shared by a significant percentage of the US population including many in the Hispanic community.)
Just imagine if millions of Americans were to enter Mexico illegally, demand that the local government provide free medical care, demand bilingual doctors and nurses, demand bilingual government forms, fly the US flag from their homes and cars, demand courses on American culture in their schools, demand local driver's licenses, and insist that local law enforcement officers speak only English.
America is the greatest and most successful experiment regarding the integration and assimilation of people of differing cultures, languages, and religions.(1) --- Alan Caruba ---
The above quotes dramatize why most Americans object the massive illegal immigration that is taking place in our country today. They have begun to realize that, contrary to those founding principles, the 18-20 million illegal aliens here today are not integrating and assimilating.(2)(3)(4) Americans are noticing, more and more every day, and everywhere, the balkanization of their neighborhoods, communities, and nation. Many Americans believe their country is under assault by a 'human tsunami' of illegal aliens!(5) They believe that the "melting pot" is about to boil over!
Each year a million people enter our country legally.(6) Millions more are permitted to enter with legal visas, then stay on after they expire.(7) The cohort under discussion includes those 'visa overstays' as part of the18-20 million illegal aliens.
Senator John McCain claims "[a]ccording to the U.S. Border Patrol apprehension statistics, it is estimated that almost four million people crossed our borders illegally in 2002."(8) Time magazine has estimated similar figures.(9) These estimates equate to nearly 10,000 illegal aliens entering our country every day!(10) Frustrated Americans want to know why law enforcement is not apprehending and deporting those invading millions! Many Americans ask why our government officials, including the president, are violating their oath of office "to protect and defend" our laws and constitution.
Americans also know that there are resulting consequences for such massive uncontrolled illegal immigration. One result will be a population explosion! Do the math-- it's breathtaking! If all 18 to 20 million illegal aliens here today are given guest worker amnesty along with "family reunification," it will add roughly 60 million people to the current legal population of 293 million.(11) In 2050, just forty-five years from now, demographers say there will be half a billion people residing in America!(12) Just imagine what kind of impact that will have on our natural resources and quality of life!
Thinking Americans believe that the exploitation of illegal aliens is driven by a lust for cheap labor. However, they may not know who is lobbying so diligently for that cheap labor. They include the following protagonists: U.S. Chamber of Commerce; high-tech companies like Microsoft; giant labor unions; the construction industry; clothing manufacturers; the meat packing industry; the hotel and restaurant industry; the gaming industry; and of course the Agri-business and farmers.(13) The massive inflow of illegal aliens is also promoted and desired by many Hispanic groups both inside and outside of America.(14) Until our government enforces our current immigration laws, businesses will continue to defy them by hiring illegal aliens.(15) Therefore, they will continue to come! Americans know that our immigration system is not 'broken' but simply lacking any semblance of enforcement!
President Bush has proclaimed he wants to "match any willing [foreign] worker with any willing [American] employer." Just how would that program work when you consider that there are at least a billion 'willing workers' world-wide who would immediately apply! It is a pronouncement that infuriates Americans because we are smart enough to know it is a policy with such terrible consequences for America and its workers that it boggles the mind!
The American public constantly hears the mantra that they're here to do the jobs Americans won't do.(16) That is a bald-faced lie! It is a myth! The true fact is that Americans can't afford to take those jobs at the low wages being offered!(17) Many Americans have been forced into the ranks of the under-employed because overwhelming cheap labor has driven down their wages or are unable to economize by living twenty to a rented house.(18) Others are forced to close their businesses when they can no longer competitively bid in an arena filled with employers who hire illegal aliens.(19) These 'goodhearted people' can no longer 'put food on their tables!'(20)(21)(22)
Insidiously, the America economy suffers when cheap illegal alien labor is paid "under the table" or claim nine dependants to avoid paying any income taxes.(23) If the IRS could collect all the taxes it says that it is owed from the underground economy in a given year, then the current budget deficit would disappear overnight. And if the IRS could collect these taxes every year, then the nation would have surpluses as far as the eye can see.(3) According to experts, we are in fact adding millions of jobs, they're just not 'on the books' which may explain why there is a 'jobless recovery.'(24)(25)
Illegal aliens, financially and physically overburden our hospitals, jails and schools.(26)(27)(28)(29) They bring in diseases which we are required by law to treat and pay for with taxpayer dollars.(9) Then, they compound the felony, by sending billions of dollars back to their home countries, removing money from America that could help sustain and improve its economy! Mexico alone received $16.6 billion in 2004 and according to Mexico's President Fox, those remittances "are our biggest source of foreign income, bigger than oil, tourism or foreign investment."(30)(31) Too bad there isn't the same concern for American citizens' and legal immigrants' wages and benefits which are declining each and every year!(32)
Many Americans find it insulting to be asked to "press '1' for English" when calling a bank or business. They ask why, here in America, do we need to "press one" to speak in our own native language?(33) Most Americans believe that our country will be destroyed if we turn America into a bilingual, multi-lingual, and bi-cultural country.
History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.(34) [When] Societies are bilingual [they become] two competing and nation-dividing languages. A nation is much more than a place on a map. It is a state of mind, a shared vision, and a recognition that we are all is this together . . . [and] one indispensable element must be that we all speak one common language.(35) -- Former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm --
Unfortunately it is an open secret, revealed by Caruba when he says "Hispanics in America have been lobbying, often with success, to make Spanish the second official language of the nation. There is even a movement to "reconquer" those formerly Mexican areas of the nation and the official policy of the Mexican government is to create a southern border which Mexicans could cross at will, electing to live here if the wish, enjoy all the benefits of American citizenship, but retaining their own citizenship at the same time."(1)(36)(37) This attitude is a serious impediment to achieving the assimilation and integration, so necessary and vital, for a thriving American culture and society.
Can the proposed guest worker amnesty fix all the problems?(38) Previous high-level scholarly commissions have concluded with agreement "that guest worker programs are not in the [American] national interest and [the commission] unanimously and strongly agreed that such programs would be a grievous mistake."(39) Eighty-five percent of Americans believe that illegal immigration is a serious problem and sixty-five percent oppose the guest worker amnesty!(40) They want President Bush to enforce our immigration laws by closing our borders, punishing the businesses that hired them and deporting all of those who are here illegally.(41)
If we decided to deport all the illegal aliens, we could avoid the "cruel and inhumane" hue and cry of their supporters by instituting an inexpensive, effective, humane alternative that would force illegal aliens to 'self-deport.' We could generate laws that would deny 'any and all' taxpayer financed social services and benefits to illegal aliens such as: Free health care (including the much abused 'emergency care'); free American education for their children; free use of Head Start programs; automatic citizenship for their babies; driver's licenses; in-state college tuition rates; motor-voter registration; bi-lingual 'everything;' subsidized housing; food stamps; worker's compensation; free lunches and breakfasts; rent assistance; immunizations; and more, much, much more!(42)(43)(44)(45)
Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentrically and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together. [If the aim is to destroy America] I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with the salad bowl metaphor . . . reinforcing their differences rather than as Americans, emphasizing their similarities.(34) --Former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm --
The assault on our sovereignty, language, and culture, has occurred because our immigration laws are not being enforced! This egregious act has allowed an overwhelming mass of humanity to flood into our country without the time and effort necessary to integrate and assimilate resulting in the balkanization of America!46)(47)(48) We are fast becoming a third world, multi-cultural, multi-lingual "tower of babble" heading toward a racially divisive and linguistically divided society.(49)(50) For these reasons, intelligent Americans overwhelmingly oppose a guest worker amnesty! We believe it is time to end to this 'open borders' insanity and slam closed the door!(51)
In conclusion, since the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has abandoned enforcement of our immigration laws and condoned the "open borders" policy of this administration, there is serious doubt that the invasion will ever end.(52) The only glimmer of hope, is the proliferation of proposals similar to Arizona's Proposition 200 which are now being considered by many other states.(53)(54) Laws that many, angry but hopeful, Americans want enacted, so that their children and grandchildren can grow up in an America that is fully assimilated, where our laws and sovereignty are enforced, and the American culture is honored and held inviolate!
Dr. Daneen G. Peterson has requested contact be made through HispanicVista.com. Please direct remarks to info@hispanicvista.com Subject Dr. Peterson.
Note: All bracketed [ ] notations, within the quotes, are added for emphasis or clarification.
References
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Copyright Febreary 17, 2005 Daneen G. Peterson, Ph.D.
Ping.
And they should be demeaned. If they broke the law, get the hell out of my country.
Agreed, I don't care what their purpose in this country is, if you're ILLEGAL, get out, period.
Hey boob! There not there because Paco, Jose, and Maria are all working the jobs! Duh!
Yup, illegal means illegal. Kick 'em out or change the laws. I don't care where they are from or what they are doing.
Vicente Fox should start solving Mexico's problems instead of dumping them on our back porch!
Time for Mexico, one of the world's richest nations, to take off the American training wheels and start peddling through life on her own!
Semper Fi,
Kelly
What amazes me is that Mexico imprisons and deports people coming into Mexico illegally from Central america, yet they are crying over the USA enforcing immigration laws.
I agree.
They shoot them also.
I'll vote for the post (the point) as opposed to the counterpoint as education, skills, personal ambition and intelligence mean nothing outside America. One has to live outside America for a few years to understand.
There seems to be a lot of confusion lately about the meaning of the word "illegal."
Hedgecock, sitting in for Rush, said the same thing a little while ago..
They make plenty of babies, so we can depend on them to replenish our population when the average urban female fertility rate drops well below the replacement rate. And they don't clutter up the criminal justice system with angry Amish street gangs who vow to take over the country and expel all the Gringos.
All we have to do is give Anabaptists room to expand. Lower property taxes. Control the borders and as the farms in the southwest start going broke because they don't have any more peon labor, the land will be bought by the Hutterite farmers.
We don't need to import people to replace an aging population as the Europeans do. We have the right people here.
I agree with you. I said if they are illegal get them out of this country.
Wrong. I've visited over 30 countries in my years and lived in a very poor country, India, as well as in a wealthy country, Hong Kong.
Education, skills, personal ambition and intelligence mean the same everywhere.
Yep.
Hmmm. This doesn't appear to be correct; I did a very simple google (terms were "illegal immigrant wage site:.gov"), and one of the first items I found was this DOJ's Inspector General report about the INS from back in the 1990s. Its main finding was:
RESULTS OF THE INSPECTION
ILLEGAL ALIENS WORKING IN SWEATSHOPS Illegal aliens comprise a substantial portion of the sweatshop work force. These undocumented workers are easily exploited by unscrupulous employers and frequently labor for long hours at less than the minimum wage under unsafe and unhealthy conditions. In some cases, illegal aliens are held in sweatshops under conditions of involuntary servitude. Sweatshops exact both social and economic costs including lost wages and taxes and the fostering of organized criminal enterprises including alien smuggling, drug trafficking, money laundering, labor racketeering, and extortion.
Education, skills, personal ambition and intelligence mean the same everywhere.
I partially agree as the post struck a nerve. However, American models that include India, Taiwan, Japan, North Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and most countries in Western Europe are exceptions. One is hopeless in other countries.
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