What America Owes its 'Illegals' (Ultra Barf Alert!)

The Nation ^ | June 12, 2007 | Barbara Ehrenreich

[2ndDivisionVet]

Rush Limbaugh has been expecting liberals to start "whining" about the $5000 fine undocumented immigrants will have to pay to gain citizenship under the new immigration bill, but most liberals have been too busy chortling about the immigration-induced split in the GOP to make their own case against the bill. So let a mighty whine rise over the land: Undocumented workers shouldn't be fined; they should get a hefty bonus!

All right, they committed a "crime"--the international equivalent of breaking and entry. But breaking and entry is usually a prelude to a much worse crime, like robbery or rape. What have the immigrants been doing once they get into the US? Taking up time on the elliptical trainers in our health clubs? Getting ahead of us on the wait-lists for elite private nursery schools?

In case you don't know what immigrants do in this country, the Latinos have a word for it--trabajo. They've been mowing the lawns, cleaning the offices, hammering the nails and picking the tomatoes, not to mention all that dish-washing, diaper-changing, meat-packing and poultry-plucking.

The punitive rage directed at illegal immigrants grows out of a larger blindness to the manual labor that makes our lives possible: The touching belief, in the class occupied by Rush Limbaugh among many others, that offices clean themselves at night and salad greens spring straight from the soil onto one's plate.

Native-born workers share in this invisibility, but it's far worse in the case of immigrant workers, who are often, for all practical purposes, nameless. In the recent book There's No José Here: Following the Lives of Mexican Immigrants, Gabriel Thompson cites a construction company manager who says things like, "I've got to get myself a couple of Josés for this job if we're going to have that roof patched up by Saturday." Forget the Juans, Diegos, and Eduardos - they're all interchangeable "Josés."

Hence no doubt the ease with which some prominent immigrant-bashers forget their own personal reliance on immigrant labor, like Nevada's Governor Jim Gibbons, who, it turns out, once employed an undocumented nanny. And as the Boston Globe revealed late last year, Mitt Romney's lawn in suburban Boston was maintained by illegal immigrants from Guatemala.

The only question is how much we owe our undocumented immigrant workers. First, those who do not remain to enjoy the benefits of old age in America will have to be reimbursed for their contributions to Medicare and Social Security, and here I quote the website of the San Diego ACLU:

Undocumented immigrants annually pay an estimated $7 billion more than they take out into Social Security, and $1.5 billion more into Medicare.... A study by the National Academy of Sciences also found that tax payments generated by immigrants outweighed any costs associated with services used by immigrants.

Second, someone is going to have to calculate what is owed to "illegals" for wages withheld by unscrupulous employers: The homeowner who tells his or her domestic worker that the wage is actually several hundred dollars a month less than she had been promised, and that the homeowner will be "holding" it for her. Or the landscaping service that stiffs its undocumented workers for their labor. Who's the "illegal" here?

Third, there's the massive compensation owed to undocumented immigrants for preventable injuries on the job. In her book Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights, Jennifer Gordon reports such gruesome cases as a Honduran who died from inhaling paint while sanding yachts in Long Island and a Guatemalan worker whose boss intentionally burned him with hot pans of oil for not washing dishes fast enough. "Death rates for Latino workers," Gordon reports, "have risen over the past decade even as workplace fatality rates for non-Latinos have fallen."

When our debt to America's undocumented workers is eventually tallied, I'm confident that it will be well in excess of the $5000 fine the immigration bill proposes. There is still the issue of the original "crime." If someone breaks into my property for the purpose of trashing and looting, I would be hell-bent on restitution. But if they break in for the purpose of cleaning it--scrubbing the bathroom, mowing the lawn--then, in my way of thinking anyway, the debt goes in the other direction.

[devolve]

[P-40]

Which our income would disqualify us for

I'm betting your school does not have a hotline to the IRS to verify such info and even if they did they would not use it. The more money they spend this year, the more they get the next.

[SpaceBar]

Thanks for the info. Wasn’t aware of her background.

[Porterville]

I’m against slavery in any form. It is a moral thing.

[potlatch]

Very nice! You did a variation on this one!

[pulaskibush]

Illegals make up 4.4% of the workforce according to the US Dept of Labor. They make about 2.2% of the GDP for America. The rest of GDP is done by the real backbone of the US economy which is the legal worker!

Also, if illegals payed more into the system than they took out, they wouldn't need the system.

[freespirited]

Barbara is clueless (I know, we didnt need this piece to discover that). She conveniently forgets all the costs such as courts, prisons, educating their children, school lunches, WIC services and food for pregnant women, infants, and children, and translators.

Take the last item. If a hospital spends 150K a year on translators, that’s money it can’t spend elswhere. That the kind of money could probably buy valuable medical equipment. She is so wrong to take these tradeoffs so lightly.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Just say NO to Amnesty!! Keep calling!! It’s NOT OVER!!

U.S. Senate switchboard: (202) 224-3121

U.S. House switchboard: (202) 225-3121

White House comments: (202) 456-1111

Find your House Rep.: http://www.house.gov/writerep

Find your US Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

[Nathan Zachary]

"In case you don't know what immigrants do in this country, the Latinos have a word for it--trabajo. They've been mowing the lawns, cleaning the offices, hammering the nails and picking the tomatoes, not to mention all that dish-washing, diaper-changing, meat-packing and poultry-plucking."

What a bunch of crap. What about the car thieving, the break and entering (not the "into the country" crap this article leads off with) the rape of women, drug smuggling, murdering, latino gang violence, prostitution rings, defrauding government social programs, defrauding or just plain theft of medical treatment, identity theft,-and the list goes on and on,- 99% of these criminals commit, not to mention tax evasion, and voting illegaly for idiotic sympathizers that they KNOW are stupid clueless suckers.

We owe them alright, we owe them a brief moment to stand before a judge, who will tell them the crimes they have committed, and explain to them why they will never be alowed to enter this country again. Then we owe them a paper towel to wipe the ink off their fingers after they are fingerprinted and photographed. We owe them a bottle of water to drink after we drop them off at the SOUTHERNMOST MEXICAN BORDER which will ensure they don't walk back across the USA/Mexican border the next day.

[antiunion person]

I personally know of a number of situations that rag heads have come into our country and received a $50,000 check from Uncle Sam and a wet kiss just to give them hands-up to get a good start. This is, of course, tax free and will probably never be paid back to the government. But, hell, that’s okay. We, as citizens, in the country, could and will never get such a helping hand.
Can anyone else give me their opinion about this??

[antiunion person]

I personally know of a number of situations that rag heads have come into our country and received a $50,000 check from Uncle Sam and a wet kiss just to give them hands-up to get a good start. This is, of course, tax free and will probably never be paid back to the government. But, hell, that’s okay. We, as citizens, in the country, could and will never get such a helping hand.
Can anyone else give me their opinion about this??

[ConspiracyTheorist]

I agree we owe them nothing. The came in here illegally.

[hole_n_one]

Have you ever tried to go to sleep with the tune of zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay pounding away in your skull?

For me, this is gonna be the 3rd time this month!

[blackbart.223]

"um....where to start ?"

Try this one. Bullshit.

[hole_n_one]

What about the car thieving, the break and entering (not the "into the country" crap this article leads off with) the rape of women, drug smuggling, murdering, latino gang violence, prostitution rings, defrauding government social programs, defrauding or just plain theft of medical treatment, identity theft,-and the list goes on and on,- 99% of these criminals commit, not to mention tax evasion, and voting illegaly for idiotic sympathizers that they KNOW are stupid clueless suckers.

The drunk drivers have become a plague.

[TAdams8591]

If true, it’s outrageous. How did they get it, do you know?

[Nathan Zachary]

"Anyone caught re-entering the United States will do one year in detention (work gang) and then returned to Mexico, again."

Maybe that will satify the thirst for cheap labor of these "companies" who are unwilling to pay a fair wage. Quite frankly I could care less if those type of "employers" (they can hardly be called that) go out of business. Perhaps houses will be able to withstand a stong wind if they atre no longer built by cheap unskilled and unqualified labor. Fat liberals can cut their own grass, they need the excersize anyways.

[devolve]

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Emailed out with bgsound:

“THE LONELY BULL”

[Clock King]

In a different time, Barbara Ehrenreich would have sung the praises of slavery. All those happy blacks working in the fields, singing, and sooooooo happy.

Yep! Say it again. She is filled with her "soft" bigotry. Typical leftist writer, She never worked a real job in her life. She's blessed to live one long party.

[antiunion person]

I don’t have any idea how they got it. But, I talked to truck drivers of Middle East descent and many of them told me they did it. If only one person had told me this, I would have said they were lying. Since multiple people have told me, it must be true.